I test TVs for a living — here's the 5 TVs for 2025 I'm most excited about

(Image credit: LG)

We’re currently find ourselves in the liminal space between the end of 2024 TV sales and the official release of 2025 models. If you’re not planning on saving big on last year’s TVs, there’s a good chance you’re looking at the year ahead as an opportunity to upgrade your living room, bedroom or den.

Most of the flashier sets from brands like LG, Samsung and Hisense aren’t slated to hit shelves for a few months, but I was lucky enough to see many of the best TVs at CES 2025 last month. Here are the five I’m most excited about — from impressive looking Mini-LEDs to OLEDs with all-new display tech.

TCL QM6K Mini-LED TV

TCL QM6K QD-Mini LED TV — (Image credit: Future)

One of the most enticing midrange models on the horizon is the TCL QM6K, a Mini-LED TV that aims to deliver a bright, well-rounded picture at a very reasonable price point.

LG G5 OLED

The most impressive-looking TV I laid eyes on at CES this year was the LG G5, the company's flagship OLED for 2025 and the follow-up to the super-successful LG G4 OLED.

The most impressive aspect of the G5 is a single feature that isn’t included: Micro Lens Array (MLA) technology. This display hardware had previously allowed LG’s flagship OLEDs to compete with searingly bright quantum dot-enhanced OLEDs from Samsung and Sony, and this year, LG has replaced MLA with something called Primary RGB Tandem technology.

The most impressive-looking TV I laid eyes on at CES this year was the G5.

At first, I was skeptical about the move away from MLA technology, as it seemed like the only means of competing with Samsung’s bright, colorful QD-OLED panels. Having now seen the G5 in action, I can say that it's every bit as bright as the G4. In fact, LG representatives at CES assured me that it's even brighter.

The G5 pairs its stunning new picture with a full slate of features: Dolby Vision support, four HDMI 2.1 inputs, a 165Hz refresh rate and a highly personalized, built-in smart platform in webOS 25. It just might be the TV to beat this year.

Samsung S95F OLED

The follow-up to Samsung’s 2024 flagship QD-OLED (the S95D) is right around the corner, and this time, it’s arriving in a larger-than-life, 83-inch model.

We only know a handful of things about the all-new Samsung S95F, but that extra-large size option is one of them. There’s a very good chance that the 83-inch version will be built around a Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel while the rest of the sizes in the series will lean on Samsung’s impressive QD-OLED display.

Regardless of the size you opt for, the S95F’s panel is treated with an impressive-looking matte finish that cuts down on glare from nearby light sources. It’ll come with a suite of four HDMI 2.1 inputs and just about every gaming feature under the sun, including a 165Hz refresh rate to rival the LG G5. It'll be interesting to see which of these two rivals comes out on top.

Samsung The Frame Pro

Samsung’s art gallery-inspired lifestyle TV, The Frame, has found a significant following in folks who want their TV to have more of an aesthetic appeal. The Frame Pro is upping the ante in 2025.

While previous iterations of the lifestyle TV tapped basic LEDs, The Frame Pro is using edge-based Mini-LEDs for improved contrast. I had an opportunity to see the two models side by side and the benefits were immediately apparent, as the Pro's picture featured much better contrast compared to its older counterpart.

Samsung Frame Pro Shuts Down The Art TV Haters! - YouTube

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But the coolest feature available on The Frame Pro has nothing to do with picture quality at all. Samsung is bringing its wireless One Connect Box to the newest Frame, which means more possibilities for setting the TV up in a way that leans into its chic, gallery-inspired design.

For instance, the wireless One Connect Box could be placed in a cabinet away from the wall where The Frame Pro is mounted. This introduces a ton of flexibility from an interior design standpoint.

The Frame Pro is also ready to deliver a better set of gaming features than most lifestyle TVs. It arrives with a native refresh rate of 144Hz and HDMI 2.1 support, making it a great lifestyle model to pair with current-gen gaming consoles and gaming PCs.

Hisense 116UX TriChroma Mini-LED TV

I don't suspect that very many people reading this will be buying the Hisense 116UX TriChroma Mini-LED TV, but it's an important TV for 2025, as its newly minted display technology could have massive implications for the marketplace in years to come.

This massive 116-inch display leverages a brand new take on Mini-LED technology. You can read all about it in our TriChroma LED explainer, but here's the basic gist: Rather than converting blue light into color by way of quantum dots, Hisense's new TV harnesses clusters of tiny lenses, each reacting to red-, green- and blue-colored LEDs.

According to Hisense, this technology is what allows this TV to hit 97% coverage of the BT.2020 color space. That's much better than what we've seen on QD-OLEDs like the Sony A95L and the Samsung S95D, both of which hit around 90%, according to our test results. Better yet, Hisense claims the 116UX can hit a whopping 10,000 nits.

The 116UX will likely be too big and pricey for almost everyone shopping for a TV this year. However, if the formula proves successful, we could be enjoying 65-inch TriChroma LED TVs sometime in the not-so-distant future.

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Michael Desjardin is a Senior Editor for TVs at Tom's Guide. He's been testing and tinkering with TVs professionally for over a decade, previously for Reviewed and USA Today. Michael graduated from Emerson College where he studied media production and screenwriting. He loves cooking, zoning out to ambient music, and getting way too invested in the Red Sox. He considers himself living proof that TV doesn't necessarily rot your brain.