Why is the right TV so important for gaming?
Running the wrong TV can really affect your gaming experience. Depending on the quality of your display your experience can go up or down, which has a real impact on your ability to game skillfully. Running at lower resolutions looks bad and prevents you from seeing those bag guys across the map. Having a 42” or larger quality TV means you’ll see people instead of pixels, and your guns will be 1:1 scale in FPS’s too. Let’s take a look at the different ways we can tell if a TV is good or not.
What to look for in a Gaming TV
Response Time
Response time is the measurement by which we judge displays. It is usually from grey to grey and often measured in milliseconds. The smaller the number the better the screen. While high end gaming monitors runs at 1ms, TV’s haven’t caught up yet to these blazing speeds yet. Just keep in mind that the larger the screen and the more pixels the slower it will be.
Refresh Rate, Motion Lag and Hz Ratings: 60 vs 120 vs 240
You won’t always find response time listed on the TV’s specifications so you can also measure quality by hertz. While most TVs display at 60 Hz, there are TVs that can go much higher. When playing movies these TVs cause the soap opera effect, where everything appears like live TV series. But this is a good sign for gaming. The faster rating means less motion lag and distortion in your game.
Often times you might have noticed ghosting in games especially in dark maps. This can be helped with higher speeds. Keep in mind that vendors sometimes don’t post the actual speed but rather use marketing names they invented. Look for actual ratings by avoiding names like “UberMotion240hz” or “SuperduperMotion480hz.” While these do optimize video they aren’t true measurements of performance.
Connections
Inputs are also important in deciding which TV to buy. Keep in mind most people use their TV with many sources. They use cable, console, Blu-ray, Media Player and any other device they might have lying around. Having enough connectors means a simple remote switch rather than swapping wires.
Why Not Go With A Monitor?
While monitors have the best performance in this category, we simply still don’t see large enough monitors with fast rates. They seem to stop at 29” which is great for the desk, but bad for the couch. Hopefully in the near future we’ll see the crossover between 144Hz and televisions. And we can reunite everyone in the same room again.
