55-inch TVs used to be the most popular size, but now people are buying 65-inch and 75-inch TVs more often. Still, a 55-inch TV is good if you have a small living room. The best 55-inch 4k TV for you depends on how you use it, where you watch it, and how much you can spend. High-end TVs are good for a wide range of uses and work well in both bright and dark rooms. On the other hand, budget TVs are better if you just want something simple and don’t care about performance. Check out the best 65-inch TVs if you want something bigger.
After buying and testing more than 375 TVs, here are our top picks for the best 55-inch TVs to buy. See which TVs and smart TVs we think are the best. Most brands will soon start releasing their 2023 lineups, so make sure to vote on which ones you want us to buy and test first.
Samsung QN55S95BAFXZA
The 55-inch Samsung S95B OLED TV is the best TV we’ve tested so far. It’s a high-end TV with a great picture overall and a huge number of smart features that are sure to please everyone. It’s great for gaming because it has four HDMI 2.1 inputs, so you can use the Xbox Series X and the PS5 to their full potential. The Tizen OS that comes with the phone is simple and easy to use, and it has a wide range of streaming apps.
It’s a great way to watch the newest HDR content at night. It has a high peak brightness in HDR, so it can show a bright, clear image that stays true to the intent of the content creator. Bright colors look much more vivid and real on this TV than they do on lower-end OLED TVs like the LG C2 OLED. It also has a very wide color gamut, which lets it show a much wider range of colors with some content.
Samsung QN55QN90BAFXZA
If you’re not in a completely dark room, the Samsung QN90B QLED is a better choice than the Samsung S95B OLED because it has a brighter screen. This TV has a feature called “Mini LED local dimming,” which makes dark scenes look better and brings out the bright parts. This gives it a great picture quality, with very deep blacks. It makes it a worse choice for a dark room because there is distracting blooming around bright highlights in dark scenes. On the other hand, it’s better than the Samsung S95B OLED or the Sony A95K OLED thanks to its high peak brightness and excellent reflection handling, so glare isn’t a problem.
It’s a great TV that can be used for almost anything. It has a lot of great gaming features, like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on all four HDMI inputs so you can play games at 4k @ 120Hz on the latest consoles or with a new PC graphics card. It also works with Xbox Cloud Gaming, so you can play some of the newest Xbox games without buying a costly console. Like the S95B, it uses Samsung’s own smart interface, Tizen OS, which is easy to use and has a wide range of streaming apps.
Samsung S95B OLED
The best Samsung TV we’ve looked at is the S95B OLED. It’s part of Samsung’s 2022 line-up, and it’s the company’s first OLED TV in a long time. It’s a little different from the very popular LG and Sony OLED TVs because it has a blue OLED backlight and a quantum dot filter layer. This lets it show a much wider range of colors than traditional OLED panels, and it also makes the colors brighter, so the colors look more real.
Like most Samsung TVs, it has a lot of features for gamers, like the ability to play games at 4k @ 120Hz and a variable refresh rate. This makes it a great choice for new-generation console gamers. Even though it supports HDR10+, which is something all Samsung TVs do, it doesn’t support Dolby Vision, which is the most popular HDR format for streaming services, so you can only use HDR10+. It also supports eARC, which lets you send Dolby Atmos signals to a soundbar or receiver that can handle them.
Samsung QN90B QLED
The Samsung QN90B QLED is the best upper-middle-range TV we’ve tested from Samsung. It’s Samsung’s best 4k LED TV for 2022, along with the Samsung QN95B QLED, which is basically the same TV with an external connection box. It has an impressive Mini LED backlight that makes small highlights stand out and reduces blooming in dark scenes. Overall, it’s a great TV with a wide range of features, so everyone can find something they like. In a dark room, it’s not quite as good as the Samsung S95B OLED because there’s still some blooming around bright objects and the blacks aren’t as deep and inky as they could be.
On the other hand, it’s a better choice for watching shows in bright rooms because it’s great at handling reflections and can easily get bright enough to fight glare. This means that even in the brightest rooms, you won’t have trouble seeing the screen. It also has Samsung’s “Ultra Viewing Angle” technology, which gives a good viewing angle. This is good for large seating areas because the image looks the same from any angle.
Samsung Q80/Q80B QLED
The Samsung Q80/Q80B QLED is the best mid-range Samsung TV we’ve tested. If you want a better picture without spending a lot of money, this is the one to get. This TV is a step up from the Samsung AU8000. It is a good TV overall, with great peak brightness in SDR and good handling of reflections, so it works well in a bright living room. Unlike most mid-range TVs, it also has a wide viewing angle. This makes it a great choice for a large room with lots of seating, since the image looks the same from any angle.
Unfortunately, the contrast suffers because of this wider viewing angle, so it doesn’t look as good in a dark room as the Samsung QN90B QLED or the Samsung S95B OLED. It has great gaming features, like most Samsung TVs, and all four HDMI ports support the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth that console gamers need. It uses the 2022 version of the Tizen OS smart interface, which has a large number of streaming apps and an easy-to-use interface.
Conclusion
Samsung, in general, makes very good TVs. The prices of their TVs have gone up over time, but most people can still find one that meets their needs. Even though they aren’t the best, their smart features are still pretty good. They can usually be used for a lot of different things. You might have to pay more for their TVs, but the picture quality is great, especially on the more expensive ones. You’ll find great picture quality whether you’re looking for the best Samsung smart TV or the best TV overall.
