Why Thickness Isn’t Everything: Uncovering the Top 3 Features to Consider When Choosing a TV

Key Takeaways

• Thinness of a TV doesn’t matter much practically, as they’re rarely uniformly thin.
• Audio quality should be prioritized over thin design; look for thick bases for speakers.
• Thinner bezels matter more than overall TV thinness, enhancing esthetics and screen real estate.

The better technology gets, the harder it becomes to market. Which is why TV manufacturers often focus on flashy features that don’t actually mean much in practice. One of their favorite specifications is how thin a TV is, conjuring images of a TV that might as well be a window recessed into the wall. However, how much does the thinness of a TV actually matter? If you ask me, not very much at all!

The Big TV Thinness Lie

I recently, finally, took the plunge and purchased an OLED TV . Right after we unboxed it there was the usual ooh-ing and aah-ing about how darn thin this TV is, but that’s only if you ignore all the junk in its trunk. Yes, if you look a little lower down, it’s just about as thick as the QLED it replaced at its thickest point. So the only thing they really achieved was making a more fragile TV.

Sydney Louw Butler / How-To Geek

Unless it’s a TV where the speakers, electronics, connections, etc., have been moved to an external breakout box, then it will never be uniformly thin, and a TV is only really as thin as its thickest part.

Speakers Need Space. Give It to Them.

Instead of looking for a thinner TV, look for one that has a nice thick base for its speakers. One of the biggest casualties of TVs going on a diet is a lack in audio punch. In fact, some TVs have speakers so bad that I can’t imagine the manufacturer actually meant for anyone to use them. Don’t get me wrong, you can have a pretty thin TV and still have decent audio, but the point is to prioritize audio quality over esthetics here. Of course, if you intend to use external sound anyway, then it doesn’t matter, but plenty of people use a soundbar because they’re forced to. Not because they want to.

Bezels Make a Bigger Difference

While the thinness of a TV as a whole isn’t that important in the greater scheme of things, thinner bezels absolutely matter. While I wouldn’t describe the bezels on my previous QLED TV as thick, compared to how thin the bezels are on our new OLED TV they might as well have been a mile wide. Thin bezels have a noticeable and positive effect on how nice a TV is to look at. Not to mention that the thinner the bezels are, the more screen real estate you get within the TV’s frame.

Picture Quality Trumps All

Did you buy a TV to look at the TV, or to watch TV? If the idea is to have something that looks nice while turned off, by all means get the thinnest TV you can find. In fact, maybe you can just take a sheet of cardboard and print a picture of a TV on it. It will save you money and it is thinner than any TV in existence.

If, on the other hand, you want a nice TV to enjoy movies, shows, and video games, then the only thing you should really be concerned about is image quality. Does the TV have a good contrast ratio? Does it have variable refresh rate , is it a 120Hz model ? These and other aspects of image quality all matter much more. I would take a TV three times as thick if its specifications were twice as good as the scrawny competition.

In any event, the absolute difference between the thinnest TVs and the thickest ones on the market might look significant when expressed as a percentage, but in absolute terms, they’re all pretty thin. Certainly, for those of us who grew up with CRTs that practically needed a forklift to move, this almost literal cleaving of hair seems a little silly.

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