I won’t buy a TV without these 2 features again, and neither should you

Long gone are the days when you didn’t have much to think about when buying a TV other than whether it turned on or not. With the advent of smart TVs, there’s a lot you have to think about before pulling the trigger. Not every TV is created equally, and now you have to differentiate between LED, OLED, QLED, and the list goes on.

Things get even harder when you take USB and HDMI ports into account. These ports matter a lot more than you think, and you’d be surprised by how versatile your USB port can be. That’s a discussion for another day, but I do think it’s time to stop sleeping on HDMI ports. My current TV is a Sony Bravia X90J, and while it’s still a good performer, it’s also getting up there in age, and I’m itching for something bigger.

There’s also another thing that I’m keeping my eye on, and it’s an eARC port. Most high-end TVs come with this port, but there are still TVs out there, mainly budget options, that forego it completely. I think that anybody buying a TV today, especially gamers, shouldn’t skimp out in this area. An eARC port along with a handful of HDMI 2.1 ports are a necessity as far as I’m concerned.

I won’t buy a TV without these features

Hard to live without

Having an eARC port is essential for anybody hoping to get the most out of their modern technology. Your Xbox Series X, PS5, Roku Ultra, Apple TV 4K, etc. all need this port to reach their full potential. The eARC port allows more bandwidth than your typical ARC port does, and it means more data will be flowing through your cable. This is essential for audio formats such as Dolby Atmos as it ensures you’re getting the best quality available today. Atmos still works over regular ARC with an HDMI 2.0 cable, but I don’t see much of a reason to experience Atmos in that way if you don’t have to.

High-end TVs nowadays almost certainly come with an eARC port, and you need to make sure you’re using it. I’ve invested a fair amount of money in an Atmos setup in my living room along with a hefty 4K Blu-ray collection, so it’d be a shame if I wasn’t getting the most out of all that. It’s easy to make the mistake of not using the eARC port, especially since everything works in a different port. If you have an audio receiver, make sure you have it plugged into the eARC port on your TV.

The eARC port doesn’t make a difference for visuals as it’s for audio, but your HDMI cable does. An HDMI 2.1 cable is needed to get the best performance possible from your modern game console and 4K Blu-ray player. Things that modern consoles have such as VRR, HDR, and Dolby Atmos all benefit from these two things. HDMI 2.1 gives the bandwidth necessary to hit 4K 120 FPS on the current-gen consoles, so it’s important to find a TV with the right ports.

My X90J has two 2.1 ports, but I have a receiver hooked up that allows me to get more ports, so that’s a nice workaround to my limitation. When I first bought my TV, I wanted something that supported 120 FPS for my Xbox Series X, and the Bravia is one of the ones I came across, but I didn’t fully understand why that was the case. Now that I’m more informed, I’ll pay a lot more attention to the ports my future TV has. If I make sure to stay away from budget options, it shouldn’t be anything I have to worry about, but I’m still going to double-check the specs to make sure I get what I want.

HDMI matters far more than you think

Don’t make these common mistakes

I forgive you if you don’t spend a lot of time finding out the difference between HDMI cables, but it’s something you should do if you value getting the most from your purchases. HDMI 2.2 is on the horizon, and while I’m not expecting to be an early adopter, it’s important to know what it’s capable of and whether you need to upgrade or not. Chances are that if you haven’t bought a cable in a long time, it might be time for you to unplug what you have and replace them with something new.

HDMI 2.2 isn’t likely to see mainstream adoption for a while, as it feels like we’re just now to the point where your devices can start utilizing much of what HDMI 2.1 has to offer. I don’t anticipate a world where we need something capable of 8K resolution any time soon, but your 2.1 cable is capable of hitting that resolution. With us being so far away from maxing out 2.1’s power, I don’t know why we’re already moving on to 2.2.

What I do think you should start doing if you haven’t by now is start replacing your older HDMI cables. If you’re still using a 1.4 cable, which you very well could be if you haven’t upgraded in a while, you should move to a 2.0 one. If your TV is relatively modern, you should have 2.0 ports on your TV that aren’t reaching their full potential if you are using a 1.4 cable. You might not even realize you’re still using one as it’s still perfectly capable of hitting 4K resolutions, but only at 30Hz.

I don’t necessarily blame you if you haven’t upgraded, because I don’t think companies do a great job of differentiating what makes one cable better than the other. On top of that, it’s hard to even tell what cable you have if you have a bunch of them in a box. You can typically tell by reading what it says. For example, HDMI 2.1 cables are usually identified with the Ultra High Speed moniker printed on the packaging or on the cable itself. Somebody who has used HDMI cables for a decade or so likely has a lot of extras lying around that they don’t know what to do with, so it’s important to not only know the difference, but also how to tell them apart.