Best Budget HDR TVs 2021

HDR is a great way to experience a more vivid TV. It’s built on three main principles: A wide colour gamut, allowing for more colours to be displayed. A high level of brightness, allowing for bright colours to appear more vivid, ideally while also allowing darker colours to be dimmed. Finally, HDR standards, there are four main ones, with most content in the HDR10 standard, and the HDR10+ and Dolby Vision standards being more advanced.

To help you pick a good budget HDR TV, we’ve drawn up our list of the best budget HDR TVs in 2021.

The TCL 4 Series 2020 is available in six sizes between 43- and 85-inches across. It reaches a peak brightness in HDR content of 250 nits and covers 85% of the DCI P3 gamut. This means that colours don’t really show up particularly bright, however, the colour spread is pretty decent, if not great. Only the HDR10 and HLG HDR standards are supported.

The 4K60 VA panel means that the TV has good contrast but narrow viewing angles. Unfortunately for gamers, it is also missing any form of VRR support. It is very cheap though, coming in at under $400.

The Vizio M Series Quantum 2019 comes in just two sizes: 55-inch and 65-inch. The peak brightness of 480 nits is pretty good while the 98% DCI P3 gamut coverage is excellent. This means that a huge amount of colour detail is shown, and the colours can really start to stand out with properly vivid highlights. All major HDR standards are supported, which is generally unusual even in high-end TVs.

The inclusion of 90 full-array local dimming zones is a great extra, although this still leaves some bloom around small light sources such as stars and subtitles. The 4K60 VA panel has good contrast but narrow viewing angles. While gamers will appreciate the low input lag, the lack of VRR isn’t great.

The TCL 5 Series comes in four sizes between 50 and 75-inches. The peak brightness of 430 nits is pretty good while the 96% DCI P3 gamut coverage is excellent. This means that a huge amount of colour detail is shown, and the colours can really start to stand out with properly vivid highlights, the overall result is only slightly weaker than the Vizio M series 2019 above. HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision are all supported, but HDR10+ support is missing.

The inclusion of full-array local dimming is pretty great for a budget option, the number of zones is a little on the low side, with 40 zones in the 50-inch model and up to 80 zones in the 75-inch model. Too few zones can lead to noticeable light bloom or small light sources appearing dim. The 4K60 VA panel does offer good contrast, but that comes at the cost of narrow viewing angles.

The Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2019 comes in two sizes: 55-inch and 65-inch. The peak brightness of 630 nits is a noticeable improvement on the M Series 2019 above while the 98% DCI P3 gamut coverage is excellent. This means that a huge amount of colour detail is shown, and the colours can really pop with vivid highlights. All major HDR standards are supported, which is generally unusual even in high-end TVs.

The inclusion of 90 full-array local dimming zones is a great extra, unfortunately, the implementation in the M8 is pretty weak and can end up making content looking worse. The 4K60 VA panel has good contrast but narrow viewing angles. Gamers will appreciate the low input lag and the inclusion of Freesync VRR support between 40 and 60Hz.

The Sony X900H comes in four sizes between 55- and 85-inches. The peak brightness of 750 nits is great while the 91% DCI P3 gamut coverage is solid, if not remarkable. This means that a good variety of colour detail is shown, and the colours really stand out with very vivid highlights. The HDR10, HLG, and Dolby Vision HDR standards are all supported, but HDR10+ support is missing.

The X900H has 32 full-array local dimming zones, but this is just too few to make the effect particularly effective, especially at the larger screen sizes and so there is a fair amount of light bloom. While the panel is VA and so has narrow viewing angles, it is also 4K120 meaning it is the only entry in this budget list with a high refresh rate. HDMI 2.1 allows the transmission of 4K120 content and supports VRR although user reports suggest this is not reliable. At $1000 for the smallest 55-inch model this is expensive for the budget tier, but a very strong option.

Those were our recommendations for the best budget HDR TVs in 2021. Have you recently bought a budget TV for HDR viewing? Which model did you go for and what sold you on it?