How we score, price, and pick

What we don't do

We don't run a test bench. We don't measure brightness, input lag, battery life, or noise cancelling, or soundbar output, and nothing on this site is a hands-on review. When a page quotes a number, it names the outlet that measured it. Desk TV pages also name the screen size that outlet tested, because it's often a bigger one.

What we do instead: read the testing, check the spec sheets, check prices on a dated day, and turn all of it into scores you can compare across brands. No brand pays for placement, and no brand gets to approve a page before it goes live.

Fit scores

Every product gets a score from 1 to 5 for each situation its category cares about. Higher means a better fit. Scores are whole numbers, and they're specific to a situation on purpose: a TV can be a 5 in a dark room and a 2 in a sunny one, and the decision helper uses that difference.

A score is our judgment, built from published testing and the spec sheet. It isn't a lab number. It changes when new testing comes out, and the value score also moves with price.

TVs

15 TVs, six scores each. The scores in use today run 2–5. TVs have no overall average; the helper weighs the scores by your answers.

• Bright room: Brightness, and how the screen copes with reflections from windows and lamps.
• Dark room: Black levels and contrast with the lights off, including blooming on mini-LEDs.
• Movies: Contrast, HDR highlights, HDR formats, and processing for films and series.
• Sports: Motion handling, upscaling of broadcast feeds, brightness for day games, and off-angle viewing.
• Gaming: HDMI 2.1 ports, 4K at 120Hz and up, VRR, and input-lag reputation for consoles and PCs.
• Value: The 65-inch estimate against what the other TVs here charge for a similar picture.

Desk TVs

5 desk TVs, all 42- or 48-inch OLEDs, judged as a desk display for consoles, a gaming PC, and work, not for a living room. Five scores each, running 2–5.

• Console + PC gaming: HDMI 2.1 ports, 4K at 120Hz and up, VRR, and input-lag reputation for an Xbox Series X, PS5 Pro, or gaming PC.
• Work / desktop use: Text clarity at arm's length, auto-dimming on static windows, burn-in safeguards, and how well it behaves as a PC display.
• HDR games and movies: HDR highlight brightness, contrast, and supported HDR formats.
• Desk fit: Screen size for arm's-length viewing, stand footprint, weight, and VESA arm mounting.
• Value: What you get at the approximate street price.

Monitors

12 PC monitors, five scores each, running 1–5. Pages flag OLED burn-in risk and each maker's burn-in warranty.

• Gaming: Motion clarity, refresh rate, VRR, and input-lag reputation.
• Work / productivity: Text clarity, screen space, ergonomics, and USB-C or KVM docking.
• HDR: HDR highlight brightness, contrast, and how consistently it holds up in games and films.
• Color / creative: Gamut, factory calibration, and uniformity for photo, video, and design work.
• Value: What you get at the approximate street price.

Headphones

15 headphones and earbuds, six scores each, running 1–5. Pages also flag phone lock-in: Apple's extras need an iPhone, and Galaxy Buds need a Galaxy phone for their best features.

• Travel / commute: ANC strength, battery, comfort, and portability for commutes and flights.
• Office calls: Mic quality, multipoint, and comfort over long meeting days.
• Workouts: Fit security, water and sweat resistance, and weight.
• Music listening: Tuning, codecs, and EQ for critical listening.
• Gaming / latency: Latency, plus wired or low-latency options.
• Value: What you get at the approximate street price.

Soundbars

14 soundbars, five scores each, running 1–5. Three of them follow RTINGS. Its numbers are for members only, so we don't quote any, but every review still opens each use's verdict with a word, as in “great for music.” For the 13 bars RTINGS has tested, that word sets our movies, dialogue, and music scores. The grouping is ours, not RTINGS' own scale:

Bars RTINGS hasn't tested yet (the Sonos Beam Ultra) get our reading of other outlets' testing instead, explained on the bar's page. Bass we set by hand for every bar:

• 5: A subwoofer in the box, and the testing praises deep bass with no real catch.
• 4: A subwoofer in the box, and the testing finds plenty of bass with a catch (it compresses or rattles when pushed, or favors high bass over the deepest notes).
• 3: No sub in the box, but the testing finds unusually strong bass for a standalone bar; or a sub whose bass the testing calls boomy or imprecise.
• 2: No sub in the box, and the testing finds it short on low bass.
• 1: A compact bar the testing finds short on bass at every depth.

• Movies and surround: Height and surround effects, dynamics, and how big it sounds with films and series.
• Dialogue and TV: How clearly voices come through for shows, news, and sports, including center channels and voice modes.
• Music: Tuning, stereo width, and streaming: Wi-Fi, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Chromecast.
• Bass: Depth and punch, from an included subwoofer or the bar's own woofers.
• Value: The Amazon price against the written price bands, a point lower when a cheaper bar here matches all four of its other scores.

Soundbar pages also list the TV-brand features each maker names, with the TV years it names, and the screen sizes a bar fits under. A bar fits when it's no wider than the screen's picture: 0.872 × the diagonal on a 16:9 screen. Every TV is a little wider than its picture, so a bar that passes won't overhang the set.

Desk TV, monitor, headphone, and soundbar pages also show the plain average of a product's scores, to one decimal. The finders give that average a small weight (×0.5).

Value scores

Value is the one score about money. For TVs it follows written price bands, judged on each TV's 65-inch estimate. A TV loses a point when a cheaper TV here gives you the same picture.

No TV we cover sits between about $1,500 and $2,500 right now, and none scores 1. We re-check a value score when an estimate moves between bands, or when a cheaper TV's price or scores change. Here is every TV's value score today, cheapest first:

Desk TVs, monitors, and headphones don't have written bands. Their value score is a judgment of what you get at the approximate Amazon price on the research date shown on each page.

Soundbars do, and the site computes their value score rather than setting it by hand. The Amazon price picks a band, and a bar loses a point when a cheaper bar here matches or beats all four of its other scores:

Every soundbar's value score today, cheapest first:

The TV decision helper

The Find my TV helper asks four questions and ranks every TV in the catalog. This is exactly what it does with your answers.

1. Size. Your distance becomes a size: distance in inches ÷ 1.6, rounded to the nearest common size (43, 48, 50, 55, 65, 75, 83, 85 inches). Cozy (5.5 ft) gives 43", Standard (8 ft) gives 55", and Spacious (11 ft) gives 83". Each pick is shown in its closest available size. Distance never changes the ranking.
2. Room fit. Bright uses the bright-room score, Dark uses the dark-room score, and Mixed averages the two.
3. Use fit. Movies & TV, Sports, and Gaming use that score. A bit of everything averages all three.
4. Score. (room fit × room weight + use fit × 1.3 + value × 0.6) × budget factor. The room weight is 2.4 for a Bright room and 1.2 for Mixed or Dark. A bright room is where a dim TV really misses, so brightness counts double there.
5. Budget. Budgets are checked against each TV's 65-inch estimate. A TV under budget earns a bonus for the share of your budget it leaves unspent, capped at 30%. A TV over budget is never shown while anything fits. Only if nothing fits does the helper fall back to the closest over-budget TVs, scored down by how far over they are and flagged. With today's catalog that can't happen: the cheapest TV, the TCL QM7L, is ~$900.
6. Picks. The top three are shown. Under $1,000 only 2 TVs qualify (TCL QM7L and Roku Pro Series OLED), so you get 2. With No limit every TV gets the full bonus, so the ranking comes down to fit and value alone.
7. Ties. When two TVs score exactly the same, the order of our list never decides it. The helper compares them on, in turn, the higher value score, the lower 65-inch estimate, the better fit for your room, the better fit for your use, more total picture points, and the name, alphabetically. Total picture points are the five fit scores added up, so that step favors the set that copes better with the conditions you didn't pick. With No limit, a Dark room, and Movies & TV, the LG C6 OLED and Samsung S90H OLED tie exactly: the same dark-room, movie, and value scores at the same estimate. The Samsung S90H OLED ranks first on more total picture points.
8. Reasons. Each pick gets a one-line reason. “At a standout price” only appears on TVs with a value score of 5: right now LG B6 OLED, Samsung S85H OLED, TCL QM7L, Hisense U8QG, and Roku Pro Series OLED.

Because budgets use the 65-inch price, a Spacious answer can suggest an 83- or 85-inch size that costs more than your budget. The helper says so under its picks.

Worked example

Standard distance, Under $1,200, Bright room, Movies & TV. Only the 5 TVs at $1,200 or less are ranked. Room fit counts ×2.4 here.

The desk TV, monitor, headphone, and soundbar finders

The other four finders share one formula with different questions: use fit × use weight + the product's average fit score × average weight + value × value weight − the share it runs over budget × overage weight. Value only counts when you set a budget, so “Any budget” ranks on fit alone. Headphones add a phone adjustment, and soundbars a TV-brand one. Each finder shows its top three.

• Desk TVs: Console first averages the gaming and HDR scores, PC gaming uses gaming, and Work + play averages gaming and work. Size and budget are soft: models that fit both come first, then models that only miss the budget, then the other size (tier penalties of 1 and 2, added up; lower ranks first).
• Monitors: Gaming, Work, and Creative use the gaming, work, and color scores; Both averages gaming and work. Size, panel, and budget are all soft. Models that match everything come first, then models that only miss the budget, then the panel type, then the size (tier penalties of 1, 2, and 4, added up; lower ranks first).
• Headphones: the score for the use you pick. Style is a hard filter: Headphones means over-ear or on-ear, Earbuds means in-ear. Models in budget rank first; pricier ones only fill empty slots.
• Soundbars: Movies, TV and news, Music, and Bass use that score; All-round averages the four. Screen size is a hard filter: only bars no wider than the picture are ranked (each size answer checks the smaller size in its label). A bar whose maker names a feature for your TV brand that covers that brand's current sets gets +1, half a point of use fit, because any bar works over HDMI. Bars in budget rank first; pricier ones only fill empty slots, and exact ties go to the cheaper bar.

The headphone finder's phone adjustments:

Everything else gets no adjustment.

Sources

We lean on outlets that publish how they test and what they measured, and every page names the ones it uses. The main ones, by category:

• TVs: RTINGS is the main input, for brightness, reflections, contrast, motion, input lag, and its long-run burn-in testing. Tom's Guide fills in lab numbers for sets RTINGS hasn't tested, like the Roku Pro Series OLED. The makers' own pages give sizes, ports, HDR formats, and warranty terms.
• Power and running costs: U.S. Department of Energy certification data and FTC EnergyGuide labels for power draw, ENERGY STAR's TV criteria, and U.S. Energy Information Administration electricity prices for the cost math.
• Deals and returns: Consumer Reports and NBC News on Black Friday “derivative” models, and the retailers' own return policies.
• Desk TVs: RTINGS, including its monitor-style tests of the 42-inch LG C5 and 48-inch LG C6, plus Tom's Guide, What Hi-Fi?, CNET, and TechSpot.
• Monitors: RTINGS, TechSpot and Monitors Unboxed, TFTCentral, Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, and others.
• Headphones: SoundGuys, Wirecutter, The Verge, Trusted Reviews, Tom's Guide, PCMag, and others.
• Soundbars: RTINGS' published verdicts, pros, and cons (its numbers are members-only), plus What Hi-Fi?, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, SoundGuys, PCMag, and Engadget. Sync features and compatible subs and rears come from the makers' own pages, manuals, and support articles.

Product pages and some guides embed one YouTube video from an independent channel, credited by name. Those views are the channel's own.

Prices

Every price on the site is a dated estimate, not a live quote.

• TVs have one catalog estimate each, for the 65-inch model. We take the price of a new unit sold by Amazon.com itself, not a marketplace seller, and round it to the nearest $100. We change the estimate when the price we see is more than about $50 away from it.
• When Amazon.com doesn't sell a model, the estimate comes from the maker's own store or list price, and its Check price link goes to an Amazon model-number search instead of a product page. Today that's the LG G6 OLED (LG.com), the Samsung S95H OLED (Samsung.com), and the Sony Bravia 9 II (Sony's list price).
• The last TV price check was October 19, 2026; the table above dates each TV. Guides that name a price for a specific size, like an 85-inch, quote that listing's own dated price, and each TV model page lists every exact price we've recorded for that set, by size, store, and date.
• Desk TVs, monitors, and headphones show the approximate Amazon price we saw, not rounded: October 7, 2026 for desk TVs and monitors, and October 5, 2026 for headphones.
• Soundbars show the exact Amazon price we saw on October 26, 2026: the buy-box price for a new unit, with the seller named on the page, whether that's Amazon.com or a marketplace store.
• During Prime sales we show what a shopper without Prime pays, and mention the Prime-only price separately.

Each check gets a dated research note: the listing, the seller, the price, and every page it changed. That's where the dates on the site come from. Prices still move daily, so check the live price before you buy.

Corrections and updates

Found a wrong spec, price, score, or a broken link? Email privacy@whichtvshouldibuy.com with the page and what's off. We check it against the source, fix the page, and update its date. Every guide, comparison, and product page shows when it last changed, and guides and comparisons carry the same date in their structured data.

Who runs the site and why is on the About page. How the site makes money is in the affiliate disclosure.