Best TVs Right Now: What to Buy in the UK and Europe

Three technologies, three use cases. OLED gives you perfect blacks and the best off-angle viewing, and the current Primary RGB Tandem panels have largely closed the brightness gap that used to hand the argument to LCD. Mini LED gets brighter still and costs far less at large sizes, but you trade some backlight control. RGB Mini LED is the interesting newcomer: it uses red, green and blue emitters in the backlight to widen the colour gamut while pushing brightness higher than OLED can manage. If your room is dark and you watch films, buy OLED. If it is sunny and you watch sport with the curtains open, Mini LED earns its place.

The Sony Bravia 8 II is the successor to the widely admired A95L and remains the reference point for anyone who cares about how a film is supposed to look. Sony pairs its latest QD-OLED panel with processing that prioritises authenticity over spectacle: the set claims around 25 per cent more peak brightness than the A95L and roughly 50 per cent more than the standard Bravia 8, but the achievement is that it stays cinematically accurate straight out of the box. Acoustic Surface Audio+ also makes it one of very few televisions whose built-in sound is genuinely good. Two sizes only, 55 and 65 inches, and limited HDMI 2.1 sockets are the catches.

For most households the flagship money is unnecessary, and the LG C6 is where the sensible purchase now lives. It is brighter, richer and more refined than the C5, cleaner and more expressive than any previous C-series set, and it retains what has always made the range popular: class-leading gaming support across four HDMI 2.1 ports at up to 4K/165Hz, plus webOS with effectively every app you could want. It spans 42 to 83 inches, so it fits a bedroom or a cinema room. Built-in audio is mediocre, as ever on LG, and heavy discounting on 2025 models makes it look expensive by comparison.

Two sets justify the step up for different reasons. The LG G6 is the complete premium package: a Primary RGB Tandem panel, Alpha 11 Gen 3 processing with roughly 20 per cent more peak brightness than the G5, Reflection Free Premium certification, Dolby Atmos FlexConnect and the Gallery design that sits flush to a wall. It lacks Dolby Vision 2 and HDR10+ entirely. The Philips OLED+951 answers with the opposite trade: a META 4.0 Tandem 2.0 panel quoted at up to 4,500 nits, every HDR format including Dolby Vision 2 Max, four-sided Ambilight with AmbiScape and a 70W 2.2 sound system — but the smaller TitanOS app catalogue and only two screen sizes.

If you want perfect blacks without flagship spending, the Philips OLED761 is the value play. It uses LG Display's more affordable OLED SE panel with a quoted 1,000-nit peak, adds three-sided Ambilight with AmbiScape, four HDMI 2.1 sockets and HDR10+ Gaming, and comes in 55, 65 and 77 inches. Its predecessor was widely praised as exceptional value for an OLED. Meanwhile the Hisense UR9 is the first mainstream RGB Mini LED set to be fully reviewed, with 980 dimming zones, full HDR format support and VIDAA as its operating system in the UK. It is the set to consider if you do not want an OLED at all.

TCL has become impossible to ignore in Europe. The TCL C7K is the performance-per-pound pick of the current range, delivering explosive brightness, impressive backlight control and vibrant colour, with HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision all supported and 4K/144Hz gaming. It runs from 50 inches up to an absurd 115, and the 98-inch version is the go-to if you want a genuinely enormous picture without flagship money. Below it, the TCL C6KS is the cheap set worth buying: not perfect, but startlingly good for the outlay, with clear dialogue, decent gaming specs and total HDR format support at 50 to 75 inches.

Skip any 8K set; there is still nothing to watch. Skip televisions without at least two HDMI 2.1 inputs if you own a current console. And think carefully before dismissing 2025 stock — the LG G5, Samsung S95F and Sony Bravia 8 II are all being cleared at large reductions, and a discounted previous flagship frequently beats a full-price new mid-ranger. As for waiting: Philips' first RGB Mini LED, the 85-inch MLED981 with 11,520 zones, arrives in October, as does the 100-inch PQS9001, the largest Ambilight television yet made. Both are worth seeing before you commit to a big-screen purchase.