No, You Don’t Need To Buy A $20K 88-Inch TV

Here’s the thing: If you have $20,000 to spare, you could buy Samsung’s new 88-inch, 4K Ultra HD TV. But you really don’t have to.

Best Buy is currently selling the pricy model for $19,999.

At that price, you will get an 88-inch QLED screen with a 2,160p resolution, HDR, and built-in WiFi. Samsung says the QLED TVs are the only ones that can achieve “100 percent color volume,” claiming that they “reproduce rich and colorful images just as they were intended to be seen using metal quantum dot technology.”

In any case, you could spend a lot less money and still get in on that QLED action, our colleagues at Consumer Reports say, like on this 75-inch version (which CR has not yet tested).

“Well, you could spend $20,000 on the 88-inch Q9 set and earn the envy — and perhaps derision — of your friends,” says Jim Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports. “But the 75-inch version of that set is a relative steal at just $9,000, so you’re paying almost $850 for every extra inch of screen.”

You could also opt for Samsung’s 75-inch MU850D-series set (UN75MU80D), which is a comparative steal at just $4,000.

“It, too, has excellent picture quality,” Willcox notes. “And I doubt few of us will complain that a 75-inch set is just too small.”

If you’re willing to go down to a 65-inch screen, prices will drop as the screen size does. For example, according to CR, the Samsung 65MU6500 ($1,500) has excellent HD and very good Ultra HD picture quality, while the LG 65UJ7700 ($1,300) has very good HD and Ultra HD picture quality.