We’ve pretty much arrived at the golden age of televisions. It used to be prohibitively expensive to buy anything larger than 55-inches or treat yourself to a 4K set, but these days you can get a large, high-res screen for under $900 or jump to a top-tier visual experience for more than double that. How much or how little you spend comes down to what exactly is important to you as a gamer.

Sony and Microsoft have both worked to make the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X not just be about 4K gaming, but 4K gaming with speed. Both consoles can run games at up to 120Hz (you can also think of it as 120 frames per second) which was previously only attainable on a high-end gaming PC. Televisions have kept pace and that means gamers really are spoiled for choice when it comes to picking out a new television.

Even if your current gaming hardware can’t make the most out of a 4K television, the technology found in modern displays will still improve your gaming experience and you will set yourself up for the future.

But now with so many choices, it can be hard to narrow down exactly what is important to you about your next television. We’re here to help, and the selections below are our picks for the best in different categories – and click here to see them in the UK.

Screen size: 64.5" | Resolution: 4K | Panel Type: OLED | HDR Compatibility: Dolby Vision (IQ), HDR10, HLG, HGiG | Refresh Rate: 120Hz | Adaptive Sync: G-Sync, FreeSync Premium | Inputs: 4 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x RF

LG has been sitting at the top of most recommendation lists for televisions for years now, and the LG C2 OLED Evo is the latest example of why: this television checks just about every box. It uses OLED technology for the fastest pixel response time currently available, and you can control color down to each individual pixel. Blacks are truly black, and there’s little worry about annoying “halo” effects around bright objects on dark backgrounds. The absolute contrast also makes colors pop and any scene from bright landscapes and skies to dark caves and creepy basements look incredible.

You’ll enjoy streaming movies and TV on the LG C2 OLED Evo, in part, due to an AI processor that upscales your less-resolution inclined content to 4K. However, it really shines as a gaming display thanks to its low latency, support for variable refresh rates, and excellent software clearly designed to cater to gamers. On board are four HDMI 2.1 ports that all support up to 120Hz, G-Sync and AMD FreeSync. You also get game optimizer settings, allowing you to fine-tune the picture to work best for the type of game you’re playing. That combination of features and picture quality is currently unmatched.

All this greatness doesn’t come cheap, and the 65-inch LG C2 OLED Evo will set you back around $2,500 (it is often on sale, gratefully). But if you want the best television for gaming with no compromises, this delivers.

Screen size: 65" | Resolution: 4K | Panel Type: Full-Array Local Dimming QLED | HDR Compatibility: Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG | Refresh Rate: 60Hz (240 Motion Rate) | Inputs: 3 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x RF

Prior to 2021, TCL was basically the best value television for the money on the market. But with the rise of Hisense, that crown has been contested. It didn’t help TCL that its 5-Series and 6-Series televisions had some major performance issues after adopting Google TV for the first time this past year, but those have been ironed out and the company has also dropped the prices, making the TCL 5-Series once again the most compelling contender when it comes to value.

The TCL 5-Series features a QLED panel just like the Hisense U7G which means great picture quality and the benefit of a brighter display than you get with OLED. TCL certainly isn’t cutting corners when it comes to picture quality, even at this lower price bracket.

If you aren’t sure you need 120Hz, then TCL offers the best specifications to save a few bucks. The 5-Series gives you almost everything about 6-Series’ solid picture quality but it maxes out at 4K 60Hz. This tends to be the most that game designers are packing into offline, story driven games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and A Plague Tale: Innocence right now. If you aren’t into competitive first person shooters or racing games, 120Hz isn’t likely to be high on your list of demands. If that’s the case, the 5-Series really makes a strong argument for itself at just $700 for a 65-inch television.

Screen size: 55" | Resolution: 4K ● Panel Type: Full-Array Local Dimming Quantum QLED | HDR Compatibility: Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG | Peak Brightness: 1,000cd/m2 | Local Dimming Zones: 90 | Refresh Rate: 120Hz, (480Hz Motion Rate) | Adaptive Sync: FreeSync | Inputs: 4 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x Composite, 1 x RF, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x Optical Audio Out, 1 x 3.5mm Audio Out

A lot of televisions offer fantastic picture quality, software, and port selection, but only a select few of them are bright enough to overpower even the brightest, window-filled room. If your gaming setup features a lot of natural light and you need a TV that can fight the glare and still give you a great experience, then the Hisense U7G is the television for you. Hisense has made sort of a name for itself by producing some searingly-bright televisions over the last two years, and the U7G is just the latest example.

All of the important gaming television features can be found here with the benefit of one of the nicest, brightest displays currently available. The U7G features four HDMI ports, two of which support 120Hz gaming (so you can have both your Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X plugged in at the same time), and it supports variable refresh rate and auto-low latency modes, which make it ideal for console gaming.

The U7G is no slouch when it comes to color accuracy thanks to its Quantum dots and it’s up there with the best options on the market that uses an LCD panel. But I’ve saved the best for last: the Hisense U7G gives all of this at a remarkably reasonable price of under $900 for a 65-inch version. This TV is great, and it’s probably the best choice on this list for most people thanks to how well it balances features and performance with price.

Screen size: 64.5" | Resolution: 4K | Panel Type: OLED | HDR Compatibility: Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG | Refresh Rate: 120Hz | Inputs: 4 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x RF

The Sony A80K outshines all other TVs on our list in terms of picture quality. Major advancements continue to be made with each iteration of Sony’s Bravia OLED lineup, and their screens display scenes with better graphical fidelity than any competitors. Its latest processor allows the display to offer rich, deep blacks and a high nit peak brightness, so you can take full advantage of that HDR technology. Plus, there won’t be any banding in the skies and the colors are spot on. Overall, you’re in for an insanely realistic and immersive viewing experience, whether you're watching an action-adventure movie or annihilating your enemies on the PS5.

Speaking of the PS5, the Sony A80K is packed full of features for gaming. Auto HDR Tone Mapping, a PS5 and Sony exclusive, is loaded in to ensure your TV has the optimal HDR settings to get the very best viewing experience from your games, similar to Dolby Vision. An Auto Genre Picture Switch feature also allows the TV to detect the content you’re viewing, like a show versus a game and switches modes to correspond with it. So, when gaming, it’ll automatically go to ALLM. Also, unlike older versions of this TV, you now get VRR support right out of the box for butter-smooth frame rates. And, multiple HDMI ports even support up to a 120Hz refresh rate in 4K.

That astounding picture quality does come at an eye-watering $2,500 price tag for the 65-inch model. But, you won’t be disappointed by the Sony A80K.

Screen size: 64.5" | Resolution: 4K | Panel Type: Full-Array LED | HDR Compatibility: Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG | Refresh Rate: 120Hz | Inputs: 2 x HDMI 2.1, 2 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x Composite, 1 x RF

If you play games because you love world-building, graphics, and cut scenes, then short of an OLED like the LG C2 or the Sony A80K, the Sony X90K gives you the best viewing experience for a television that uses a traditional LCD panel. By going LCD, you’ll be saving a whole lot of money. The 65-inch option is $1,000 less than Sony’s A80K and offers almost all the same features, except a Full-Array LED panel is on offer versus an OLED. Admittedly, HDR isn’t going to be as striking because of this, but you’ll still get deep blacks and solid viewing angles. Content should remain smooth with few pixelated artifacts or visible graduated lines in bright skies, thanks to excellent processing technology.

The features of the Sony X90K are what makes this TV a true standout. There’s the brand’s top-notch upscaler, film modes, and use of the Google TV OS. In gaming, you’ll be tearing through the action at 120Hz in 4K with little worry, as both ALLM and VRR are built-in. If you’re planning to use the PS5 with this TV, Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Switch ensures your TV has the optimal settings for the content you’re viewing without you ever lifting a finger.

The X90K isn’t going to win when it comes to hardware bonuses like great cable management or a super-bright panel, but it’s hard to beat when it comes to how great your games look on it at this price tier.

Screen size: 64.5" | Resolution: 4K | Panel Type: Neo QLED | HDR Compatibility: HDR10, HDR10+, HDR10 Adaptive, HLG, Quantum HDR 32X | Refresh Rate: 120Hz | Inputs: 4 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x RF

The line between a monitor and a television is starting to blur, and there are many PC gamers who are choosing a TV over a traditional gaming monitor thanks to the better color, brightness, and larger size that modern televisions offer. The Samsung QN90B has a fantastic panel that delivers high-quality visuals, up to 4K at 120Hz. All the actions with your mouse, keyboard, or controller will feel super responsive thanks to the low input lag and fast response times. Plus, the bright Neo QLED panel ensures you can see the monitor whether you’re lounging on the couch or sitting at your gaming desk.

The Samsung QN90B doesn’t offer a DisplayPort connection for PC, but if your graphics card supports HDMI, then this television is solid. All four of its HDMI ports are capable of offering 120Hz, which means you can hook up both a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X as well. There are also a variety of gaming modes that support ALLM and VRR, so you’re in for some insane motion clarity.

The Samsung QN90B isn’t cheap —$2,600 for 65-inches — but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a gaming monitor that can match all Samsung has on offer here for much cheaper. If you’ve been considering a TV for your desk, the QN90B is our top pick.

Since next-gen systems are right around the corner, everyone is looking to take full advantage of the incredible new visuals on offer. There are plenty of brilliant options for 4K gaming TVs in the UK, and we've managed to find the majority from this list as well.

There are many qualities to consider in choosing the best 4K TV for gaming: Color accuracy, contrast, color gamut, viewing angles, power utilization, screen reflections, smart TV features, and more.

However, since we’re all primarily concerned about gaming here, a built-in “gaming mode" with low input latency (ideally, 35ms or less) is crucial here. Without it, you're guaranteed to have your head in your hands wondering why you can't pull off Scorpion's spear move in Mortal Kombat 11 or track targets in Apex Legends.

Input lag is a critical spec to pay attention to when considering a 4K TV for gaming, and RTings has a very detailed chart showing the results of its input lag testing on all the best 4K TVs in various modes.

In your search for the best 4K TV for gaming, you'll come across two primary types of TVs: OLED and LED. While they might be very similar in name, they are worlds apart as separate panel technologies.

OLED TVs are categorized as an emissive screen technology, which means the pixels generate their own light by using an electric current to excite its compounds. As the pixels on an OLED TV generate both the picture and produce their own light, they can achieve true black simply by running zero current through them. No energy, no light.

In contrast, LCD/LED displays have separate image generating and backlight layers that produce the final picture you see. In this relationship, the backlight (LED) illuminates the pixels (LCD), which generate the actual images you see. To achieve the same level of true black with LED/LCD sets, TV manufacturers have implemented fully array backlighting systems, which split the backlighting layer into zones known as "local dimming zones." When you run across this specification, know that the more local dimming zones a TV has the better it is.

Samsung brands its TVs with the company's proprietary QLED (or quantum dot LED TV) technology. These QLED TVs essentially contain an extra layer of quantum dots that enhances the brightness and color spectrum of traditional LED panels.

In this way, quantum dots essentially act as an enhancement filter to produce brighter and purer light than LEDs can. This is exactly why Samsung TVs can hit peak brightnesses that are often a thousand or several thousand nits brighter thank OLED panels.

A look at the local dimming zones under Vizio's 4K TVs

Ultimately you get a largely identical image from either display, but there are some unique drawbacks and advantages to each panel type.

LCDs can produce much higher peak brightness levels, but they can suffer from narrower viewing angles and muddier blacks as the display can't fully turn off its backlight like an OLED pixel can just go to black.

OLED displays, on the other hand, are often dimmer than LCDs and can suffer from potential image retention (also called burn-in) problems. This issue occurs when static elements, such as a network logo or health bar, on the screen become temporarily or permanently imprinted onto the screen.

The good news is television manufacturers are constantly improving their respective display technologies. LEDs are getting smaller and smaller, and that’s allowing many more of them to be packed behind a display, giving LCD panels more dimming zones and thus a better control of the image.

You can already find this in some TVs with Mini LEDs, like Samsung’s Neo QLED TVs. And that’s just a start. Micro LEDs go even smaller, offering granular enough lighting control that they could become a serious threat for OLEDs because they, too, would have the ability to turn completely off but they wouldn’t have the same burn-in risk OLED has been known for and they can shine much brighter.

High-Dynamic-Range is a technology that greatly increases the range of brightness levels your TV can display, making a bigger difference between the brightest bright areas and darkest dark areas than non-HDR technology. It's a huge upgrade in visual quality, and one of the best things about 4K TV sets. But it's also a little complicated.

There are two major HDR standards supported by TVs today: HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Most 4K TVs that support HDR have support for HDR10, with a select few of the higher-end sets supporting Dolby Vision. When it comes to gaming, HDR10 is all you need, as that is what is output by the PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One S, and Xbox One X.

A TV that supports Dolby Vision would only be useful if you have a standalone 4K Blu-Ray player or a streaming media box with Dolby Vision support; it will not give you HDR gaming with your console.

Except for a couple of hard to find Sony TVs, all HDR-capable HDTVs are 4K TVs. For all practical purposes, there are no 1080p HDR TVs. So if you want to buy an HDR-capable TV set to play PC, PS5 or Xbox Series X/S games at 1080p, you'll be buying a 4K TV.

Hey, it's good to be future-proof anyway, right?

It's also important that the peak brightness of an HDR TV will be quite high in order to produce a big difference between dark and light areas in HDR mode. If a TV supports HDR but isn't very bright, you won't really see much of an improvement in image quality. For my own suggestions, we've ensured that every option in this guide supports HDR10, and has a sufficiently high peak brightness to make it look good.

Adaptive sync used to be one of those features you could only exclusively on a gaming PC and gaming monitor, but all of that's changing now.

For the uninitiated adaptive sync or variable refresh rate (VRR) are both technologies that enable a display to synchronize their refresh rate to the output of your device. Nvidia and AMD first debuted their respective G-Sync and FreeSync forms of VRR on the PC.

However, in the latter half of 2019 we saw adaptive sync technology trickle down to consoles with as LG and Samsung introduced G-Sync and FreeSync on its respective 2019 TVs. In 2020, everyone started jumping in on the fun. Vizio, TCL, Sony, Hisense, and pretty much every major TV maker you can think of will be adding FreeSync support to their mid-range to high-end sets, which makes them the perfect screens to play the Xbox Series X and PS5 on.

Not to be passed up, LG newest lineup of OLED TVs (including the CX, BX, GX, and ZX series) will support both G-Sync and FreeSync, making them the best all-around TVs for gaming no matter which platform(s) you own.

Outside of playing games on 4K capable gaming PCs and consoles (the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), 4K and HDR content lives primarily on these services below.

Streaming in 4K requires a pretty good internet connection and one of the best routers. For example, Netflix recommends users should be able to support at least 25Mbps of throughput on their home network. If all that is a bit confusing, I've posted a summary of them all right here for you.

To take advantage of 4K content you need a streaming box or console capable of streaming in 4K, or you can use the integrated smart TV app. The Xbox One S and Xbox One X support 4K streaming apps, as does the PS4 Pro, but the last time I checked the YouTube app on the Xbox platform still needs an update to enable it.

You can also use streaming boxes like the Roku (Roku Premiere only does 4K but not HDR, while Premiere+ and Ultra do both), a 4K-capable Android TV box (like the Nvidia Shield TV), the Apple TV 4K, or the Chromecast Ultra.

Of course, if you don’t want to stream, you can buy 4K UHD Blu-ray discs. This is the costliest option, but it provides the best picture and sound quality. The Xbox One S and Xbox One X support the format, while the PS4 Pro does not.

A quick note on HDMI: To take advantage of the latest features, you’ll need HDMI 2.1 compatible ports (on your console, receiver/switch, and TV). These ports offer 48Gbps of bandwidth, giving you the room you need to send 4K 120fps or 8K 60fps video with HDR.

If you're in the market for something more affordable, check out our guide to the best cheap TVs for gaming. We also have guides to help your PC get into shape for the new era of 4K gaming, including the best 4K gaming monitors and the best graphics cards.

You may see cables labeled as “4K certified” or something like that, but you won’t know whether your cable is truly up to spec unless it clearly indicates HDMI 2.1 or “Ultra High Speed”, and you don’t want a simple cable to be the thing holding you back. That said, you can still go for a simple cable. You don’t have to go for a fancy cable with impressive branding. As long as the cable is listing its HDMI 2.1 or “Ultra High Speed” specification, you should be able to count on it delivering your signal perfectly well.

Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

Mark Knapp is a regular contributor to IGN and an irregular Tweeter on Twitter @Techn0Mark