In 2017, 4K rules (with HDR, please). In contrast to recent years, this year hasn’t seen a major feature introduction like HDR, 4K, OLED, curved panels, Smart TVs, and so on. Because current technologies have matured, this holiday season might be the best time in a long time to pick up a shiny new TV. Plus, 4K prices continue to drop, including OLED TVs—the best of the bunch.

As prices fall, consumers are starting to recognize just how much better OLED is compared to other panels. LG is really the only game in town when it comes to OLED, but that will change next year. This Black Friday, expect to pay over $1500 for OLED, but it’s worth the price if you love TVs.

This is the first year we’re not featuring a Samsung model, but not because they suddenly suck. At least one or more Samsung HDTVs could appear on this list every year, but Vizio and especially TCL (surprise) have really hit that great balance of excellent picture quality and good price that we love.

Lastly, why even bother buying a 1080p TV? Though you’ll see some random $100 1080p TV on Black Friday, it’s not worth throwing away the money. 4K prices are so low now that sub-$350 4K TVs are routine and high-quality 55” 4K TVs from the likes of LG or Samsung can be had for under $700. Besides, expect to see a 4K TV doorbuster around $200 on Black Friday.

Now let’s look at our favorite 2017 TVs and keep visiting Ben’s Bargains for the best deals this holiday season (set up deal alerts)!

LG C7P Series 4K HDR Smart OLED TVs (2017)

Display sizes: 55” (OLED55C7P) | 65” (OLED65C7P)

Pros: Stunning picture; Cons: Price, No more 3D

Click Here to Buy on Amazon Or Search Ben’s for LG C7P Deals

The LG OLED TVs only continue to get better. If you’re willing to drop nearly two grand, then look no further because this is the TV to buy. As TV enthusiasts will tell you, OLEDs are awesome because they get black levels right vs. LED black, which you can still “see” when the TV is on. OLED pixels literally turn off to produce absolute black.

There are a lot of grey market sellers out there underselling authorized retailers on LG OLED TVs, but manufacturer warranties do not support those channels. The current best price we’ve seen from an authorized retailer on the 55” model is $1797. It’ll probably go down another $100 around Black Friday.

Street prices for the 55” and 65” model are $1800 and $2800, respectively.

Vizio SmartCast M-Series 4K HDR LED Displays (2017)

Display sizes: 50″ (M50-E1) | 55″ (M55-E0) | 65″ (M65-E0) | 70” (M70-E3) | 75″ (M75-E1)

Pros: Google Voice control (with Google Home), Low input lag; Cons: No tuner

Click Here to Buy at Best Buy Or Search Ben’s for Vizio M-Series Deals

The popular Vizio M-Series 4K displays also made our top TV list last year, and the 2017 line continues to balance a superb picture quality with a wallet-friendly price point. Keep in mind, they are called “SmartCast Displays,” which means they are sold without a built-in tuner, so you can’t get OTA TV out of the box. For some buyers, that’s still a deal-breaker. If you only watch TV via a streaming player or cable, however, then you’re good to go.

The M-Series displays have HDR support and feature the SmartCast streaming platform, which is basically like using a Chromecast but with apps like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Vudu (among others) already built in. If you own a Google Home, you can control TV operations with your voice.

Street prices for the Vizio M-Series start around $600 for the 50″ model and go up to $2000 for the 75” model, with a total of five display sizes for every room and taste. Dell, Costco and Best Buy will be your best bets for the lowest prices on Vizio.

TCL P-Series 55P607 4K Dolby Vision HDR Roku Smart LED TV (2017)

Display size: 55″ (55P607) | (55P605—Best Buy exclusive with basic remote)

Pros: Built-in Roku, Local dimming, Low input lag; Cons: Not exactly Sony XBR level

Click Here to Buy on Amazon Or Search Ben’s for TCL 55P607 Deals

Chinese TV maker TCL continues to make inroads in the U.S. market and is a popular brand on Ben’s. The picture quality of the TCL 55P607 55″ 4K LED TV stacks up with—or even exceeds—more expensive models from well-established brands, plus it supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. One of the best things TCL did for itself is partner with Roku because Roku is still the best streaming platform on the market.

The customer reviews on Amazon and Best Buy lavish praise on the 55P607. It’s well worth going to your local Best Buy to check it out, especially if you’re not as familiar with TCL as Samsung, LG, Sony or Vizio. Best Buy sells a cheaper 55P605 model which is the same TV but with a basic remote that doesn’t have the voice search, Wi-Fi and headphone jack found on the 55P607 remote.

The street price for the TCL 55P607 is around $650, but we’ve seen it $50 lower on Ben’s. It will probably hit $600 again around Black Friday and less for the Best Buy model.

TCL S405 Series 4K UHD HDR Smart LED TVs (2017)

Display sizes: 43″ (43S405) | 49″ (49S405) | 55″ (55S405) | 65″ (65S405)

Pros: Price, built-in Roku, 4K HDR; Cons: Poor viewing angles

Click Here to Buy on Amazon Or Search Ben’s for TCL S405 Deals

What, two TCL sets on this year-end “Best of” list? It can’t be! Actually, the TCL S405 series TVs are popular on Ben’s because they offer appealing features like built-in Roku TV, 4K HDR and decent aesthetics while keeping the price low.

For OTA viewers, you can even pause live TV, but unlike the step-up 55P607 model (above), there is no voice control or local-dimming.

Street prices start around $350 for the 43″ model and go up to $800 for the 65″ model. We’ve already seen the 55” model drop to $400 (!) at Walmart and Best Buy, while Walmart has been selling the 65” model (65S401 variant) for just $698. Expect even better deals come Black Friday!

Sony BRAVIA XBR-X900E Series 4K HDR Smart LED HDTVs (2017)

Display sizes: 49″ ( XBR49X900E) | 55″ (XBR55X900E) | 65″ (XBR65X900E) | 75″ (XBR75X900E)

Pros: Picture quality, Aesthetics; Cons: No Dolby Vision

Click Here to Buy on Amazon Or Search Ben’s for Sony X900E Deals

Although eclipsed by Samsung in the TV market, Sony has been on a roll lately with their TVs. The 2017 Sony BRAVIA XBR-X900E series is another winner featuring fantastic picture quality with excellent brightness and black levels. While you do get HDR10 support (which is the most critical), Dolby Vision is not supported for some reason. (The step-up series X930E has it.)

With its ultra-thin (0.43”) bezels the Sony X900E is beautiful in an Apple-like way: understated and elegant.  Sony uses the very capable Android TV (ironically) as its smart TV platform and has made improvements over last year’s iteration.

Also like Apple, you will pay a steep premium for the Sony name and aesthetics. Street prices start at $999 for the 49″ model and go all the way up to $2999 for the gigantic 75″ model. Best Buy and Dell are likely to have sale prices on this line around Black Friday, with Dell discounts coming from bundled gift cards.

2017 Gift Guide: Your New Favorite HDTVs

Vizio’s been successfully making budget TVs for years, but recently they’ve targeted more discriminating buyers by adding features like Ultra HD (4K), full array LEDs, local dimming, and even HDR (coming soon in their posh Reference Series).

This year’s mid-range M-Series offers 3 of the above 4 features across the entire line, starting with the 43-inch M43-C1 ($600) and up to the ginormous M80-C3 ($4,000).

I tested the wallet-friendly M43-C1, which promises to be a big hit this Black Friday. On Ben’s Bargains, we’ve already seen the set as low as $510 with a $150 Dell Gift Card from Dell as well as $548 with a $200 Gift Card back in September. It regularly sells for $530 to Costco customers and $528 to Amazon Prime members, and I expect the price tag to easily drop below $500 (possibly $450) around Black Friday.

An Ultra HD Smart TV from a major manufacturer for under $500 is impressive, considering most 4K TVs last year typically cost you a grand or more.

Specs and Build Quality

The M43-C1 feels solidly built with cast aluminum legs that are set about 33 inches apart and a modern black (plastic) bezel that measures a thin 0.59-inch. The sides of the bezel are light silver. You can’t shift the width of the legs like you can with the premium sets from Sony, but they are far more stable than the old-school centered pedestal stands that are going out of favor.

The screen has a semi-matte finish, so it reduces reflections like a matte screen but also boosts color like a glossy screen. The overall design is understated and doesn’t look cheap.

Aside from 3840 x 2160 (4K Ultra HD) native resolution, the M43-C1 has a 60Hz native refresh rate, full array backlighting with 28 LED dimming zones, 802.11ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi, VIA Plus (Vizio’s Smart TV platform) and a quad-core GPU with dual-core CPU.

You get four HDMI inputs (4K @ 30Hz) and a fifth HDMI input (4K @ 60Hz) that’s compatible with both HDMI 2.0 and the new HDCP 2.2 copy protection standard.

The remote is where the budget price betrays itself the most. Although not bad—and it even has a backlit QWERTY keyboard on the backside—its keys are pretty small and it’s not in the same class as premium remotes (no backlighting on front side buttons, voice activation, etc.). This may not matter to you anyway if you’re intending to use a universal remote.

By the way, the shift key and number keys didn’t work for me on the QWERTY keyboard, so I ended up having to use either the on-screen keyboard or the keys on the front side of the remote.

Picture Quality and the Soap Opera Effect

The advantages of 4K are more noticeable on larger screens, although that’s more a factor of distance than display size. Today, a 43-inch TV is considered a “smaller” TV, frequently relegated to a secondary TV, such as one found in a bedroom. In small spaces, I think 4K on a 43-inch has some wow factor, but it’s dependent as much on the content as anything else.

Still, the first thing I absolutely had to figure out was how to turn off the “Soap Opera Effect” (SOE). It’s on by default on the M43-C1, and you either love it or hate it. You know when you see it, but SOE is the motion interpolation on TVs that smoothes out movement and makes everything look “hyper-real.” The setting can look good for sports but terrible for most everything else.

Your mission—should you choose to accept it—is to turn off the Soap Opera Effect.

If you want to turn off SOE, go to Picture Settings > More Picture. Set “Reduce Judder” to 1-2 and “Reduce Motion Blur” to 5-6 and “Game Low Latency” to Low. I definitely recommend choosing the Calibrated Picture setting under Picture Mode. The HDTV review site Rtings also has a list of more detailed optimized settings.

After I turned off SOE, I was pleased by the Vizio’s picture. Thanks to the local dimming, its deep black, black detail and contrast are excellent, perhaps falling short of only the most premium sets.

In general, I found Ultra HD content to have greater depth and detail than HD, but it’s not a mind-blowing difference. Obviously, 4K content is limited at this time, but that will change. There’s no doubt, however, that Ultra HD will be the standard within a couple years (or less).

With a native resolution four times that of standard HD, Vizio uses what it calls a “spatial upscaling engine” to blow up the most common video content (720p/108op) to fit the 4K display. The results are really good.

Even if you’re only watching 1080p HD content right now, this Vizio set is a worthy purchase as a regular HDTV as it is an Ultra HDTV.

Vizio Internet Apps Plus

In my review of the 2015 Amazon Fire TV (5/10), I found its 4K streaming capabilities on Amazon Instant Video to be inferior to the app on this Vizio. Thanks to the Vizio’s V6 six-core processor (quad-core GPU + dual-core CPU), I found performance to be excellent for a built-in Smart TV. The dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi is fast and buffering was quick with 4K content.

The Smart TV Platform is no-frills, but it’s snappy and non-intrusive.

In fact, if you don’t already own a 4K streaming box or stick and only need Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Hulu Plus, YouTube and other major channels, then you don’t really need to get a set-top box with this TV.

However, Vizio Internet Apps Plus is a totally no-frills platform and not as pretty or flexible as something you’d find on an Apple TV, Fire TV, Xbox or Roku. You press the “V” button on the remote and get a side-scrolling banner along the bottom of the TV that displays your apps. Press it again, and you can access a full-screen window and settings.

There’s no built-in internet browser, but I think if you’re used to simply watching apps on your TV, this is not a big deal.

Conclusion

Despite the Vizio name, I didn’t feel like this TV was a “budget” set in the sense that I was getting a bad picture or that the TV was a cheap plastic eyesore.

With its attractive price tag, Vizio’s M-Series is appealing for first-time owners of 4K HDTVs and budget-conscious consumers simply wanting to purchase a decent HDTV. I think this TV will also win some converts from Sony and Samsung who are curious about Vizio. (It does happen.) The M43-C1 has been rated as having very low input lag, which also makes it an excellent choice for a gamer who wants to use the TV in a bedroom or game room.

Just wait for Black Friday to pick up this quality 4K TV for under $500.

Vizio M43-C1 4K HDTV Review: Performance on a Budget