Even the cheapest TVs today support 4K UHD, so what are you actually getting with a better model? To determine this, you need to push the smart functionality to the bottom of the list, because the extra cost comes down to the tech itself. The TV's display panel is often the biggest part of the cost, along with hardware underneath that helps prep each frame.

Display panels are the core component in your TV; without them, you can't see anything. As a result, the quality of that panel has the biggest impact on your TV-watching experience. Most cheap smart TVs from brands like Hisense or TCL use LCD panels with a fairly basic LED backlight. As you go up the pricing scale, the panel technology gets more advanced. QLED TVs use a quantum-dot layer to produce a better range of colors. Mini LEDs make the LED backlights smaller, producing more local dimming zones. The latest Micro RGB TVs use separate red, green and blue LEDs to give the backlight more precise control.

Nothing quite beats an OLED, though. With these, each pixel can produce its own light and switch off completely, giving you perfect blacks without any backlight spilling over. Expensive TVs have better specs, too - a faster processor can make all the difference in upscaling lower-resolution video and handling modern gaming at 120Hz refresh rates.