How Much Should You Expect to Spend on a TV?

Given the sheer amount of options available on the flat panel TV and Smart TV market, knowing how much to expect to spend on a TV can help you narrow down your options and make the task less daunting. There are some basic guidelines to keep in mind when it comes to the cost of the best TVs, and much of it depends on what you’re looking for in terms of performance and size. Knowing what you’re getting into can help you make the smartest decision when purchasing a TV, so you’ll have a regret-free viewing experience for years to come.

Bang for your Buck

Probably the best way to approach knowing what you’re getting into when looking to purchase a TV is to look at what you can expect to get at various price tiers. While there’s bound to be some variation here, manufacturers have a habit of offering very similar features and sizes at roughly the same price ranges, with some exceptions for “prestige” brands. It is worth noting that you should always also consider how much power do tvs draw.

$250 and Under

In this range, the target consumer is one looking for smaller TVs with screen sizes most likely under 40″, and with maximum display resolutions of 1080p (or standard HD). Increasingly, you can find TVs at this price point with some degree of “Smart” technology such as Bluetooth connectivity, but it’s not something you can count on yet. If you’re looking for a TV for the bedroom or kitchen, where a smaller screen and lower resolutions are more acceptable, this is a good range to look at.

$300-500

$400-500 is the most common price range for TVs bought in the US, and it’s in the $300-500 range where you can start to find larger (42″-55″ or so) screen sizes, more features, and often, higher resolutions (4K or Super HD, specifically.) This is a great price range to be looking in if you want a fairly immersive, high-quality viewing experience and you don’t need to fill a whole room with a giant screen. Not every TV in this range will be “Smart” or have built-in access to streaming services, and some will still be standard HD instead of 4K, but Super HD is within your reach starting here.

$500-1000

In this range, you’re paying a premium for Super HD (4K resolutions) with larger screen sizes- up to 65″ or so. For sports, HD movies, video games, and other content where high-detail, room-filling images really make a difference, it might be worth stretching your budget to look in this range- though you still may not get what would be considered truly premium features here such as HDR and full Smart TV functionality in this tier.

$1000 and up

Once you break the $1000 barrier- and even more so the $2000 barrier, you’ll start to have truly next-gen features like HDR, QLED, OLED, Dolby Vision, Quantum Dots, full Smart TV functionality, and even 8K Ultra resolutions, as well as sleeker, more upmarket designs, and some of the largest screen sizes (72″ and thereabouts.) Be absolutely sure you’ll really be making the most of such features if you’re going to be stretching your budget to this point. Currently, there isn’t a lot of 8K content available or in production, so you may want to wait for a period of time while 8K prices go down and content becomes more available.

Consider Components

One thing you’ll want to keep in mind when deciding how much you’re willing to spend on a TV is whether or not you’ll be buying any components in addition to the TV itself. The most common peripheral most people choose is a soundbar or other speaker system as an upgrade to less-than-impressive built-in TV speakers. These can easily cost $100-200 themselves, adding quite a bit to your total budget in additional cost if you’re looking at TVs in, say, the $300-500 range. For example, you should have an easy time when seeking how to connect speakers to tv with speaker wire with your new TV.

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