Believe it or not, 8K TVs are available right now. Yep, 8K, as in four times the resolution of Ultra HD 4K TVs. You can, if you really want to, buy models from Samsung, Sony, LG and TCL in a variety of sizes. Samsung was the only one of the makers to premiere a new 8K TV at CES 2024, while the rest haven’t released new models in the past couple of years. As you’d expect from cutting-edge technology with over 30 million pixels, the prices are quite high. In most cases 8K TVs cost more than a high-end, and often higher-quality, 4K TV.
Should you consider an 8K TV? Are they the best TVs out there? In a word: No. In two words: Not yet. You’re better off getting a high-quality 4K TV for far less money. It will look better with 99.9% of the content you put on it. That said, 8K is here, and it’s not going away, so it’s worth taking a closer look. You’ll need to look very close, as those pixels are tiny.
Eventually 8K will be far more mainstream. It’s possible 4K will go the way of all those lower resolutions, and be relegated to tech history. Does this mean your 4K TV is already obsolete? Should you wait to buy a new TV until 8K prices drop? Do you need an 8K TV for the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? Read on for the answer to all these questions and more.
This shows the relative number of pixels in each of the major resolution formats. Not actual size of course; this is a chart not a visual representation (though it is to scale if you click on it). From largest to smallest: 8K (tangerine), 4K Cinema in 1.78:1 aspect ratio (black); Ultra HD (white); 2K Cinema in 1.78:1 aspect ratio (green); Full HD 1080p (red); 720p (blue). For more detail, pun intended, check out 4K vs. 8K vs. 1080p: TV resolutions explained.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Is it worth buying an 8K TV?
Here’s a quick summary of our current thinking regarding 8K TVs in early 2024.
Unless you have money to burn, don’t even consider buying one right now.
From what we’ve seen, there’s little, if any, image quality improvement over 4K TVs.
Any improvement we have seen required sitting very close to a very large screen.
To get the most out of any 8K TV, you need actual 8K content (and there basically isn’t any).
In the next few years 8K TVs will get cheaper and perhaps actually be worth considering.
To reiterate, one of the biggest reasons 8K TVs are not as amazing as you might expect, besides their price, is that there simply aren’t any 8K TV shows or movies to watch on them. And while the latest gaming consoles will eventually do 8K (maybe), 8K games today are basically nonexistent. The best you can get in most cases is 4K, so all those extra pixels of an 8K TV won’t be used to their fullest potential.
Now that you’ve slid your wallet back into your pocket, sit back and soak in everything there is to know about 8K TVs today.
A traditional HDTV from a few years ago is 1080p, which means it has 1,920 pixels horizontally and 1,080 vertically. Many digital cinema projectors — the ones in movie theaters — have a resolution of 2,048×1,080. Because it’s common in Hollywood-speak to only refer to the horizontal resolution, they call that “2K,” but it’s basically the same as the HDTV 1080p you have at home.
Mathias Appel/HDMI Licensing
The term “4K” comes from the digital cinema side, too, with a horizontal resolution of 4,096, hence “4K.” However, on the TV side, manufacturing efficiencies meant we got double the horizontal and vertical resolutions of 1080p HDTV, so 3,840×2,160 pixels. Everyone colloquially calls this “4K,” though the technical term is Ultra HD. This has four times as many pixels as 1080p HD.
Which brings us to 8K. You guessed it: twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of 4K, for a whopping 7,680×4,320 and 33,177,600 total pixels. Not only is that four times the resolution of 4K, that’s an incredible 16 times more pixels than 1080p. Or to put that differently, you could put 16 full-resolution 1080p videos on an 8K screen at the same time with no loss of quality. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, but hey, why not?
8K Ultra HD, Ultra High Definition (UHD), Super Hi-Vision, UHD-2
High-end TVs
4K
3,840×2,160
8,294,400
Ultra High Definition (UHD)
Most modern TVs, some projectors
1080p
1,920×1,080
2,073,600
High Definition (HD)
Smaller, less expensive and older TVs, most projectors
720p
1,280×720
921,600
High Definition (HD)
Very small and older TVs
The Samsung QN900D 8K QLED TV serves up slim styling and a host of AI-enhanced picture modes.
David Katzmaier/CNET
8K content: Can I actually watch anything in 8K?
Without 8K content, an 8K TV is just a 4K TV with a few thousand dollars stuck to it with duct tape. Samsung talks up fancy “AI” upscaling technology on its TVs, designed to improve the look of mere 4K and 1080p sources on an 8K screen. And other TV makers like Sony and LG have touted their own 8K special sauces. But to get the most out of all those 33 million-plus pixels, the incoming source needs to be 8K too.
There are three main aspects to getting any new format, like 8K, into your home:
1. Content recorded in the new format
2. Transmission of the new format (broadcast, streaming, etc.)
3. Playback of the new format
An 8K TV represents the last part of the system: playback. That’s the easy part. Any TV manufacturer can design and produce a TV with any resolution it wants. It’s just up to the company and its resources.
Creating content in the new resolution, meanwhile, is a lot tougher. While the number of 8K-capable cameras has dramatically increased in the last few years, they’re still expensive to buy or rent. In most cases, these cameras are used to create 4K content instead. There are lots of reasons it’s a great idea to capture in 8K. The end result, however, is 4K, because of the second part of the process (transmission).
A visual representation of how much more bandwidth the upcoming Ultra High Speed cables can handle.
HDMI Forum
What kind of HDMI cable do I need for 8K?
One thing we’ve already got is the physical connection thing sorted in case any 8K media streamers hit the market or they’re needed for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. HDMI 2.1 is capable of 8K resolutions and more. But before you rush out and stock up on HDMI 2.1-compatible cables, keep in mind there will almost certainly be a new standard between now and the wide adoption of 8K. So those cables might be obsolete, despite their current forward-looking appearance.
All of the major 8K TV makers say that their sets have HDMI 2.1 inputs capable of handling the 48Mbps bandwidth required for the highest resolution and frame-rate combinations (8K and 60 frames per second and 4K at 120fps). We also got a look at some new, higher-bandwidth HDMI cables.
To take advantage of higher 4K frame rates on the new consoles, presuming your TV can handle them, you might need new cables.
To put on my cynic hat, increasing resolution is one of the easiest ways to offer the appearance of higher performance. This is likely what TV makers are smoking, coming out with 8K TVs when there’s essentially no content and no 8K infrastructure.
Given how easy it was to market 4K as “better looking than 1080p,” TV makers are claiming the same thing with 8K. But resolution is just one aspect of overall picture quality, and not one of the most important ones. Improving other aspects, such as contrast ratios, overall brightness for HDR, more lifelike colors and so on, offer better image improvements but they are significantly harder to implement. This is especially true for LCD, which is a technology Samsung is still strongly flogging — e.g. all of its QLED TVs are simply LCD TVs with quantum dots.
It’s relatively easy to create a higher-resolution LCD panel, but improving the other aspects of performance for that tech is a greater challenge. Not “more” pixels but “better” pixels. This is why OLED is a thing, and why many companies are researching new technologies like true direct-view quantum dot displays, MicroLED, and mini-LED. Samsung is even coming out with an OLED-quantum dot hybrid that promises to combine the contrast ratio of OLED and the bright colors of quantum dot-based displays. These technologies, regardless of resolution, should look better than 8K TVs, which are currently only LCD-based.
Well, except for LG’s OLED, which costs $20-$30,000 depending on size.
Direct-view quantum dot display.
Nanosys
Bottom line: Don’t wait for 8K
If you’re thinking about buying a new TV, does this mean you should hold off? If your current TV works, you should probably hold on to it regardless. New 8K TVs shouldn’t be a factor, because as we mentioned above, early 8K TVs are expensive. We’re also many, many years away from any sort of widespread 8K content. We arguably don’t have widespread 4K content, and no one is talking about scrapping 4K to go directly to 8K.
The other aspect is a warning that will be seconded by countless 4K early adopters: There’s no guarantee these early 8K TVs will end up being compatible with any future 8K standard. There are tens of thousands of 4K TVs that can’t play any current 4K media content.
Lastly, even as prices drop, like they have with the $2,200 TCL 8K 6-series, you’re almost certainly better off with a 4K TV for the same money. It offers better picture quality overall and only lacks the bragging rights that you have more pixels than your neighbor. But if that’s your thing, go for it.
Update, January 19, 2024: This article was first published in 2018 and is regularly updated with new info.
