A couple of years ago I did what a lot of other people do, treated the family to a new TV at Christmas. We had an old Sony which I thought was perfectly fine but it wasn’t a smart TV and after a lot of nagging about cable, Netflix, Apple TV I buckled under pressure and went for the then brand new Oled from Samsung. We paid about £2000 for a 65” 4K smart TV which is a lot for a TV but the picture looked incredible, the reviews were very positive and we did get a £200 cash back deal. It was a bit of a hassle, we did get it eventually but wouldn’t buy into this type of marketing offer again.
I don’t have any complaints regarding the TV quality particularly. It was easy to set up. The Tizen operating system is pretty straight forward and we connected the cable subscriptions we wanted immediately. And you get the Samsung gaming hub built in, so instant access to top gaming services for an additional fee.
We started with Prime, Apple and Netflix and have ended up with just Amazon prime. We did subscribe to ad free You tube too but at about £12 a month decided we didn’t get the value so cancelled that after a few months.
I checked out the price of the equivalent Samsung S95F this year. The latest equivalent Oled model which I could buy today for £1800 new so the cost of TVs is coming down. Not sure I’d buy a high end TV new again and definitely not from a retailer like John Lewis or Curry’s as my TV is currently available new for about £800 and secondhand for less than £600 and that’s just a couple of years old. A bit more work and you maybe don’t feel you have the come back should anything go wrong but most come with a manufacturers warranty.
The one thing that has made my new TV investment disappointing is how many times when we are watching a cable network, a documentary or something on catch up and the TV stops to buffer. Obviously this is our internet connection but we often laugh how we didn’t have this problem with the old Sony. And with a pretty amazing movie library having to connect and disconnect the old DVD player is a bit of a faff too.
It’s hard to justify paying for movies we have in our collection we want to watch, a lot of old black and whites particularly the cable subscriptions charge for and then suffering the extended buffering.
For me the old set up was actually better even though the new Samsung Oled TV is a fantastic picture, quantum HDR plus throws you right into action that actually looks so real it took some getting used to in the beginning.
Do love the TV if the internet didn’t hinder us watching without interruption but I guess that depends on where you live and which service provider you have. Ours is Sky which I cannot recommend but I haven’t got round to changing yet.