The other day a friend of mine was asking me: should I get a 55″ or a 65″ TV? He had enough money to get the 65″, but wasn’t sure if it was necessary.
Which, as we all know, is a bit of a silly question to be asking. But if we’re being serious, it’s a sensible thing to ask.
I grew up with plenty of old PCs around me, and I didn’t get my own TV until I was a working adult and could afford to have one. The first TV I ever had was a 32″ panel from ALDI, which still works today and ended up being a wonderful bedroom companion. I still remember finishing a long midnight shift, coming home and playing Assassin’s Creed for an hour in bed. Good times.
These days, I have a 60″ Sony TV in my lounge room. It seems about the right size, and I’m pretty happy with it even though it takes a year and a half to wake up after hitting the power button.
What size TV do you have – and if you’re in the market for one today, what size would you like to get? (I’ve allowed for multiple answers, given that a lot of gamers and households have multiple TVs.)
Comments
35 responses to “The Big Question: TV Sizes”
what’s the old rule of thumb?
Don’t sit any closer than 1.5x the size of the tv?
My old loungeroom was pretty small, so I went with a 42″ which was adequate then.
My new loungeroom is much bigger, so I’d lean towards a larger screen.. but I still have to take into account that my next TV will be 4K, and, if my budget restricted my choice between another ~42″ with 120hz and a 60″ with only 60hz I’d have to go the 42″ again.
I use 1.5~3 as a rule of thumb. So a 65″ TV should be viewed from 97 to 195 inches (Rounded 2.5M to 5M) away
32″ in the bedroom, 42″ & 55″ in the lounge.
The 42″ is a decade old plasma pretty much on it’s last legs and I’ll go for a 65″ when it dies / I talk myself into upgrading.
I think my TVs are 62″, and they’re perhaps a bit too big for my small loungeroom. Definitely don’t go too large. A good TV needs to be comfortable.
I have a budget quality Kogan 55 inch. It does the trick for the most part. The only problem is I have my PC connected, and some games can be either unplayable or too uncomfortable to play due to small text size. I’d love something bigger but can’t really justify the purchase.
I did daydream about this ridiculous 85 inch model on JB Hifi’s website… $10,000 on a telly is way out of my budget sadly.
I bought a 60 inch last year. Have a big lounge so probably could have gone with a 65 but the 60 is a vast improvement over my old 46 inch Sony.
I have a 60″ Plasma in the lounge, a 55″ 4K in my room that doubles as a PC monitor and a 50″ 4K in the shed.
If I was buying a mid to high end panel for the living room I couldn’t fathom picking up anything smaller than 60″ these days… but as a second tv in the bedroom or spare room then 42″ upwards is fine.
It’s funny because I remember as a kid I had a HUGE TV that would have been at most 42″. Everyone would comment that it was crazy how big it was.
Yeah totally, I guess it’s all relative though.
I have a 65 in my apartment and it’s bordering too big. if I had a 75 I’d be turning my head to see the screen so there’s definitely a cap on size lol. For an apartment I reckon 55-65 is the sweet spot depending on size. As much as I hate to admit it if my TV died today and I had minimal funds I’d consider buying an el cheapo big TV vs a high quality 42″.
My parents used to have an 80cm CRT tv which looked amazing. Rear projection ones were kind of the norm at that size during that time, but because this was CRT the clarity was simply amazing (despite it only being SD)
I later bought myself a widescreen 80cm CRT tv that did up to 576p, and that just blew me away at the time! Playing my wii/gamecube on that tv was heavenly!
Our old CRT was about 80 or so, and it seemed absurdly huge when we first got it. Now we’ve got this 55″ LCD and it doesn’t seem all that big any more either…
I just finished playing through both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword on my CRT via the Wii’s component cables, they looked so damn good on there.
Agreed! Wii and gamecube looked amazing via component compared to the SD connections! My ex was never one to care about tv qulaity/definition… until she saw Animal Crossing on the gamecube on that CRT! From that point on, she knew why I was so hyped about it, and could never go back! 🙂
Makes me wish I shelled out the $80 for a GCN component cable back in the day, rather than having to weigh up the ~$300 they go for now 😛
$300!!!!! YIKES! That’s insane!!!
Yep. We had a 34cm TV for my entire childhood. It lasted forever until my parents decided to splash out recently and upgrade to a flatscreen TV with HDMI input… they got the smallest one possible, like 24″ or something. They sit pretty far (~4 metres) away from it too.
Currently using an 8 year old 40″ Bravia, which is OK for our current loungeroom, but I can’t say I don’t start drooling a little when wandering through JB and see the 75″ UHD sets (not that they would be in any way practical for me)
55″ 4k = 24″ 1080p screen in DPI, so for me, I think thats the sweet spot unless your room is on the larger end of the scale.
Yeah 24″ is the biggest you’d want for 1080p for a monitor. Any bigger, and the pixels are too clearly visible.
TV’s are a bit different. My 50″ plasma looks amazing at 1080p, but I’d imagine too much bigger, and it’d start to look a bit crappy.
I even find 24″ at 1080p a little bit icky myself, but that’s mostly cos i was spoiled for so long by having 1920×1200 at that size. If you’ve been down the path of higher density, it’s hard to go back, but if you’ve never been exposed to it before, it’s fine!
For me I find more the opposite, I don’t like those higher pixel densities on my monitor. Makes everything too small. 1080p on a 27″ was good, liked it much better than the 23″ I was using before (except it turned out the 27 was dodgy and would randomly just black out so had to go back to the 23). That said I ended up with a 24″ 16:10 screen that has about the same pixel density as that 23″, so shrug 😛
heh yeah i guess it depends which way you start. I had my 1920×1200 24″ first, so even seeing 1920×1080 on the same size looked a bit weird to me, but then I got a 27″ 1080 for free, and set it up as a second screen, and it just looked like ass. Doesn’t help that it sits beside my 28″ 4k now though. I can see pixels so clearly, and as a graphic artist, that kind of bothers me. That’s probably got a lot to do with it too. Massive pixels vs massive pixel density makes a world of difference to the amount of workspace you have when you are doing 3d work, or stuff in photoshop and the likes.
At first, the 4k seemed like the text was too small, but it only took me a day to adjust to it. Now when I go to work and work on my 24″ 1080p screen, it feels like I’m on my mum’s old pc. She had a 23-4″ screen, but she’d run it at 800×600 or 1024×768 cos she was blind as a bat!
It’s funny, I have excellent eyesight and have always been told how I have such a great eye for detail, but when it comes to game graphics and screens I really struggle to notice all the little things that people get so hung up on. Like with those comparison videos that show the difference between High and Ultra settings or whatever. Or even now with the VR stuff, people complaining about the “low” resolution of the screens or about being able to see the pixels/the screen door effect. Feels to me like they’re missing the forest for the trees half the time 😛
I understand the feeling when referring to comparison vids between detail settings. For the most part, they are fairly difficult to tell the difference unless you know what you’re looking for.
Pixelation is a bit different though. I haven’t got any experience with current VR gear, so I can’t comment on that really, but when it comes to screens, it’s something that really bugs me, but as I stated earlier, I think that’s mostly due to me being a graphic artist for so long. Being able to look at an image on a screen with a high pixel density makes a massive difference to me, compared to looking at the same image on a large screen with low density. To your average gamer, it probably doesn’t matter so much, and if you’ve never been exposed to a higher density screen for a substantial amount of time before, you wouldn’t likely think twice about it. It’s one of those thing though, where after you’ve used it for a while, when you go back, it’s glaringly obvious, and can’t unsee it 😉
I have 2 50″ plasma’s. One in the bedroom, and one in the lounge. I don’t have huge rooms, but they seems to suit just fine. Perhaps if I went to 4k, I might consider 55-65, but I honestly don’t think I’d have enough room for anything bigger.
I have a 28″ 4k monitor for my PC, and it’s perfect for me. I think if it was any bigger, I’d start to notice pixels more clearly, but the density at this size, and the distance it is away from me (about 1m or <) is just gorgeous.
Speaking of TVs! I need a new Headset for my PS4 to avoid waking my roommate during my late night gaming sessions as my current headset has just shat itself, sad day. I have about $100 and need recommendations and experiences please… oh ahh, TV speakers are too loud? (Thats my TV reference)
I’ve got a SteelSeries Siberia V3 Gaming Headset. Very light, comfortable, and most importantly gives an excellent seal around the ears to help block external noise. The sound quality is great too. You should find one around the $120 mark.
I bought my dad a pair of sennheiser wireless headphones for his pc a number of years ago. They were about $200 at the time, but i’d imagine they’ve come down a bit since then. He was able to walk out in to the kitchen (a good 10m+ away) and would never lose connection, and said the sound quality was amazing. They even had a wireless charging stand thing. Just had a steel kind of rod you’d sit the headphones on, and they’d charge while in contact.
I find this very handy for deciding on a screen size to pixel depth to distance from screen.
http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship
69 inches
I have a 5 year old 40″ in the living room. Wife thinks it’s great so no chance of an upgrade any time soon. My house isn’t huge so i’d be happy with a 55″ 4k
I’m moving house soon. I’ve been considering… erm… “dropping” it while moving to expedite the replacement process…
Ive got a 4K 65″ in my Lounge Room, 4K 60″ in my second lounge/games room and a 50″ in my bedroom. All Samsung and all amazing TV’s
79 inch LG, do not regret it at all. Best purchase of my adulthood
I can’t help myself. I want that ultimate man cave experience. I’ve been eyeing off the impossible. 85″ 4k and 105″ Ultrawide 5k. Way out of my budget, but, hell, I just want to game, stream and process photos on those bad boys, wall mounted.
I did have a LG 42″ in the TV room, which is a nice TV, but it was a tad small (it is now in the main bedroom), so I got a 55″ Panasonic 4K in TV room, I sit around 2.5m from the TV and it is just right. any bigger and I think it wouldn’t be as nice.
I actually found a better investment was the lounge. Managed to get $7.5k worth of leather lounge (a 2 seater and a 3 seater) for $2800 as the company was clearing stock for a store closure. SOOOOO comfy !