The 6 Best Gaming TVs in 2024

Just as a slow response time binds you with invisible shackles, high input lag is like wading through quicksand, pulling you down when speed is of the essence. Imagine you’re facing an enemy in a duel; you press the button to leap or strike, but there’s a delay. Your character stumbles a moment too late, and the opportunity slips through your fingers. It’s not just about delayed reactions; it’s about being desynchronized from the game’s rhythm, turning your split-second decisions into missed chances.

What exactly is input lag? It’s the time it takes for your game console’s signal to translate into action on your screen. Ideally, for gaming, you’d want an input lag of 20ms or less to stay in perfect sync with the game. At these low latencies, your actions are immediate, your commands precise, and your timing impeccable. With minimal input lag, when you command it, it happens – instantly.

A poor EOTF (Perceptual Quantizer Electro-Optical Transfer Function) can cast a shadow over your visual experience. Imagine you’re delving into a world rich with colors and contrasts, where the dark corners hide foes, and the bright skies guide your journey. EOTF ensures that the intensity of your game’s visuals matches your real-world expectations, keeping you immersed in the game’s environment without losing detail or atmosphere.

What exactly is EOTF? It’s the standard that governs how your display interprets and renders brightness and color, ensuring that the content creator’s vision is accurately translated to your screen. A well-calibrated EOTF means that when you’re sneaking through shadows or facing a blinding light, the experience is as the game designers intended. Dark scenes reveal their secrets without being washed out, and bright scenes dazzle without overwhelming.

Ideally, for gaming, you’d want a display that adheres closely to the PQ EOTF standard, ensuring that every scene, from the subtlest moonlit landscape to the most explosive action, is presented with the correct luminance and contrast.

Color Gamut is the least of important test results, especially if you’re a competitive gamer playing an FPS. Nevertheless, the right color gamut elevates your gaming to match the creator’s vision, immersing you in the vivid hues and shades they originally designed.

What exactly is color gamut? It’s the spectrum of colors that your display can produce. A wider gamut (P3)  means more colors.

Why is this so important? A wide color gamut ensures that the virtual worlds you explore are as rich and intense as they’re designed to be.

Standards like sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 are the benchmarks for this color journey. For a truly immersive gaming experience, you want a display that covers close to 100% of the sRGB spectrum, ensuring that the basic colors of your games are vibrant and true. And for those who crave a deeper dive into visual intensity, aim for a display that approaches 90% of the DCI-P3 spectrum, offering a more cinematic and enveloping color experience.

When it comes to gaming, brightness is important for a couple of reasons. Higher peak brightness helps counter in room ambient light and allows the display to deploy less tone mapping in HDR to meet the mastering requirement of individual content. Brightness is also important for enhancing how visible details are in dark or dynamic scenes, improving immersion and helping you confirm if that shadow you saw was just a shadow or someone creeping up on you.

Poor brightness can lead to washed-out colors, bad contrast, and muddy details. While 300 nits for SDR brightness is “good enough” for a gaming TV, for the best result, your set should be capable of pumping out 500 nits or more. And for HDR Brightness look for at least 750 nits.