The 6 Best TVs For Watching Sports - Summer 2024 Reviews

The best TV for sports that we've tested is the Samsung S90C OLED. It has an incredibly wide viewing angle, making it a perfect choice for watching the big game with a large group of friends in a wide seating arrangement, as everyone will have a good experience; no more fighting over the best spot on the couch, as the image remains consistent even at a very wide angle. In addition to the wide viewing angle, the TV has a near-instantaneous response time, so fast-moving players are crystal-clear, with no distracting motion blur behind them. It has superb reflection handling, so you don't have to worry too much about glare on a sunny day. However, it's still not that bright in SDR, so glare can be distracting in a bright living room. It upscales lower-resolution content well, which is great as most sporting events are broadcast at a lower resolution. If you don't have cable, the Tizen OS interface has a great selection of streaming apps, and you can easily find your favorite sports channels.

This TV has a higher-end model, the Samsung S95C OLED. It's brighter in SDR, so it's an interesting option for people who want an OLED and like to watch sports in extremely bright rooms. However, the S90C is significantly cheaper and easily bright enough for almost everyone, so it's the best overall value.

There's also the 2024 Samsung S90D/S90DD OLED. It does a better job smoothing out low-quality content, has slightly better HDR gradient handling, and gets brighter in HDR. It's also currently a lot more expensive, so unless you really want the incremental upgrades it has, you're better off buying the cheaper S90C while it's on sale. It's worth mentioning that Samsung's 2024 OLED lineup is confusing, as they're releasing S90Ds with both WOLED and QD-OLED panels, depending on the region and size. You can read more about this here.

If you're not in a dark room, a premium TV with an LED backlight like the Sony X93L/X93CL is a better choice than the Samsung S90C OLED, making it the best TV for watching sports in a bright room. It gets significantly brighter than the Samsung, so it's a better choice in a bright living room or outdoors. It also has an acceptable viewing angle, making it a good choice for watching the big game with friends, although it's not nearly as good as the Samsung OLED. It also doesn't have the OLED's super deep blacks, but they're still quite good on this TV. The user-friendly Google TV platform has a large selection of streaming apps, including the most popular sports apps, so you can stream the big game without an external streaming box. It also upscales lower-resolution content, like from cable boxes, extremely well, with no noticeable issues. It has an excellent response time, ensuring you can clearly see the action, and it has good gray uniformity, with just a bit of dirty screen effect in the center.

For those with deep pockets, the Sony X95L is the best LED TV on the market and is especially enticing if you have access to its smaller sizes. Still, as amazing as it is for sports, it's not worth the price increase over the X93L for most people. You could also save some money by going with the step-down Sony X90L/X90CL, although it has a narrower viewing angle, much worse reflection handling, and slightly slower response time than the more expensive Sony TVs.

If you'd like an OLED but find the Samsung S90C OLED too expensive, the Sony A75L OLED is a great mid-range TV and can serve as an excellent entry point into the OLED market. The TV has even more features than the more expensive Samsung OLED but is much dimmer and less vibrant due to it having a WOLED panel versus the QD-OLED in the more expensive Samsung. It still delivers outstanding picture quality when watching sports, especially in a moderately lit or dark room, with its near-infinite contrast ratio delivering deep, inky blacks with no distracting blooming. It's also bright enough to look good in a bright room with its fantastic reflection handling. The TV is available in a narrower range of sizes than the more expensive Samsung or Sony X93L: you only get it in a 55- and 65-inch format.

This OLED TV has a near-instantaneous response time, leading to a nearly blur-free viewing experience even when watching the most hectic sports. Like all OLEDs, it has a superbly wide viewing angle and excellent gray uniformity, so it's truly a standout TV for watching football. If you're disappointed in this TV's narrow choice of sizes, consider the extremely similar but slightly more expensive Sony A80L OLED. It's built slightly better than the A75L but is otherwise almost identical.

If you want high-end performance but don't want to spend high-end prices, or if you watch football in mostly bright rooms, check out the Hisense U7K. It's cheaper than anything recommended up to this point and delivers picture quality that is almost as good as the Sony X93L/X93CL. It has a great Mini LED backlight, letting it simultaneously provide incredibly bright highlights and deep blacks, with barely any blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. Football looks great, and the TV's fantastic reflection handling lets it look its best even in very bright rooms. The U7K has very good image processing overall, so sports from streaming platforms are mostly free of compression artifacts, and the TV upscales sports very well.

Unfortunately, its viewing angle is sub-par, making it a bad choice for a wide seating arrangement. It runs the Google TV interface, which is fast and easy to use, and it has a great selection of streaming features, so you're sure to find your favorite sports. It's available in four sizes: 55, 65, 75, and 85 inches. If you want a brighter TV, go for the higher-tier Hisense U8/U8K. The U8K is incredibly bright and has the same features as the U7K.

2024's Hisense U7N is now available and is supposed to have some improvements like better contrast and increased brightness. It's also very expensive at launch, so unless you need those incremental upgrades, you're better off getting the cheaper U7K while it's still available and on sale.

The best budget TV for watching sports is the Hisense U6/U6K. It's a decent TV for watching football, with good picture quality and high peak brightness in SDR. It can handle moderate glare in a bright room but has worse reflection handling than the Hisense U8/U8K, so it's not as good in that context. Uniform areas like the playing field look good thanks to its decent gray uniformity, and it has a quick response time, so fast-moving objects (like the players) are clear and easy to make out. While a good product overall, it's a significant step down from the more expensive models, and it doesn't upscale lower-resolution content nearly as well as the TVs above it. It struggles with smoothing out digital artifacts from streaming content.

Still, it's significantly cheaper, is very colorful for such a cheap TV, and even has a functional local dimming solution to make it look good in a dark room. It runs the same great Google TV interface, and it supports hands-free voice control through either Google Assistant or Alexa to quickly open your favorite apps or search for content.

There's also the newly released Hisense U6N. It's supposed to have incremental upgrades like better contrast and brightness, but it's also quite expensive near its release. Since the upgrades it offers are minor, you're better off spending your money on the cheaper U6K while it's on sale.

The Sony X80K/X80CK is the best budget TV for watching sports if you have a wide seating area. Outside of the OLED, it has the widest viewing angle on this list, as all of its sizes use an ADS panel, which has a wider viewing angle than the VA panels used in the other LED options. It makes it a better choice for watching the big game with a large group of people, as you don't have to fight over the best spot in the house. As is typical of Sony TVs, it has good low-resolution upscaling, so content from cable boxes looks fine, although it's not nearly as good at cleaning compression artifacts from streaming apps. It has decent reflection handling and gets bright enough for a pleasant viewing experience in a bright room, but it looks its best in a moderately lit room.

It once again comes with the easy-to-use Google TV interface, making it easy to watch your favorite sports in just a few seconds. It has decent motion handling thanks to the satisfactory response time and a motion interpolation feature to smooth out low-frame-rate content. As usual, motion interpolation doesn't work as well with fast-moving sports like football, as it creates artifacts. The cherry on top is the TV's flicker-free backlight at any brightness level, so it won't give you any headaches during a sports-watching marathon. You could also opt for the extremely similar Sony X75K; they're almost identical and equally good for sports, so get the cheapest one.