Replacing an ancient 42" plasma TV

[ricotansky]

Hi all,

After 13 years of sterling service, my old Samsung plasma TV is starting to show its age and I think it is time to replace. Looking for similar size (42 inch), not sure about which technology is the one to go for now. Budget up to about £500, but happy to spend less!

Is there an obvious choice or ones to avoid?

Cheers!

Rico

[Defcon5]

You will be wanting a 48/49 in screen to fill the same ‘gap’ as your plasma will probably have a large bezel.

[Tony1963]

Tech-wise at £500 or less it’ll be LED. If you want to stay with Samsung, take your pick:

https://www.richersounds.com/tv-projectors/tvs-acc...

[Sheepshanks]

What are you usually watching, and what through (Freeview or Sky)?

Our 2008 37" Panasonic Plasma packed up when we had the toddler grandchildren here one weekend. So went to Costco and found they pretty well started at 49". Bought a cheap 4K Vestel (but branded Toshiba) for £350 to tide us over and on standard definition Freeview BBC and ITV the picture was terrible. On things like Dave it was unwatchable. It was also dark in each corner of the screen.

Took it back and spent £600 on a Sony KD-49XG8196 which is a far better (but on SD still not as good as the plasma). But the Android interface does my head in as it's so slow. The sound is terrible too - never had any issues with the Panny, but on the Sony had trouble following dialogue and the sound generally just seems 'confused' - like it's coming from somewhere else, not from the TV. Bought a Sonus Beam and that's perfect, but it's £400 I don't think I should have needed to spend for just general telly watching.

The XG is a 2019 model - quick glance shows it's XH now. There is a 43" available but we went for 49".

I should say that on 4K HDR (through BBC iPlayer) the Sony looks pretty amazing and even the cheap Vestel wasn't bad. But they just don't do a good job of scaling up lower resolution / bit rate images.

Edited by Sheepshanks on Sunday 3rd October 12:31

[boyse7en]

With a £500 budget I'd be inclined to stay with the plasma screen. Picture quality is likely to be better than any cheap LCD.

My 46" Panasonic plasma is around 11 years old but the picture is still very good. I plugged a £25 amazon Fire Stick in the back to give us all the streaming stuff. One of the speakers became "buzzy" so I now run it through a soundbar. Jobs a good un.

[V8covin]

boyse7en said:

With a £500 budget I'd be inclined to stay with the plasma screen. Picture quality is likely to be better than any cheap LCD.

My 46" Panasonic plasma is around 11 years old but the picture is still very good. I plugged a £25 amazon Fire Stick in the back to give us all the streaming stuff. One of the speakers became "buzzy" so I now run it through a soundbar. Jobs a good un.

Plasmas aren't made any more

[Defcon5]

He means OP should keep his current TV.

You can get a 48in LG A16 OLED on AO for 699 - well worth it if you can stretch that far

[ricotansky]

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Yeah, I've been keeping it as I'd read that some LEDs are not as good as plasma and not really wanted to throw away something that still does the job. Especially if the replacement has a worse picture.

However it's started playing up so think it's days might be numbered. I'll probably keep it till it dies, so maybe will increase the budget a bit if needed to get something to match it.

It's mostly used for Freeview and streaming via a Chromecast so was hoping my usage would be covered by something fairly basic, but sounds like QLED is the way to go?

[bristolbaron]

Within the past couple of years I’ve updated our similar age (but LCD) TV’s with these:





The 43” is the main tv, but as it’s in an alcove I couldn’t quite squeeze a 50” in. The second one has more space but for occasional use decided we decided QLED was excessive. Both came in well under £500 due to Blue Light Card discount, but come up for around £500 on Black Friday weekend.