Black Friday is here, which means myself and the wider What Hi-Fi? team have taken a short break from reviewing home cinema and hi-fi hardware to trawl storefronts and find the best deals to be had this year.
And having drawn the “OLED” card from this year’s sorting hat (which is lucky as I’ve helped test some of this year’s best), I’ve already seen a wealth of amazing deals on five-star, Award-winning sets.
This trend is headlined by two key TVs: the LG C4 and Sony Bravia 8. Both are great TVs that we wholeheartedly recommend to most buyers. This is why, as well as both earning five-star ratings when we fully reviewed them earlier this year, they both picked up trophies at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2024.
Specifically, the Sony Bravia 8 picked up our Product of the Year accolade, while the LG C4 won our best 40-43-inch, best 48-50-inch and best gaming TV categories.
So the fact you can currently buy the 55-inch Sony Bravia 8 for £1499 at Sevenoaks Sound and Vision – a £700 saving and its best price ever – is pretty incredible and a key reason we recommend it in our best Black Friday TV deals live hub.
If you want something smaller and care more about gaming, there are also solid discounts on the 42-inch LG C4, 48-inch LG C4 and 65-inch LG C4. I’ve attached a few quick links to the best we’ve spotted below.
And to be clear, I stand by What Hi-Fi?’s buying advice. Holistically these are the best OLED TVs you can get. At their current Black Friday prices this is truer than ever, and most people will be best placed with them.
But, when asked by a friend which TV I am specifically keeping an eye on, and the deal I’m currently most tempted by, my answer is slightly different. Specifically, if I were to part with my hard earned stipend of cash for a new OLED TV this Black Friday, it would be to get the Panasonic Z95A.
The 65-inch Panasonic Z95A is currently selling for £2799 at Richer Sounds and Sevenoaks Sound and Vision. Expensive compared to the C4 and Bravia 8? Undeniably. But that’s still a hefty £1100 saving on the Z95A’s launch price.
Why this TV specifically, you ask? There are two simple reasons. First, because I’m a magpie and always want the latest tech possible, if I can afford it. So the fact the Z95A has Award-winning Micro Lens Array (MLA) tech immediately adds an allure that is missing on the cheaper OLEDs we recommend to most people.
To catch you up, MLA is a panel technology developed by LG Display that debuted last year on the Panasonic MZ2000, Philips OLED908 and LG G3. It has a similar peak brightness-boosting goal to Samsung’s competing QD-OLED.
The second reason is even simpler: the Z95A seriously impressed me when I helped review it earlier this year. Having seen key flagship sets including the LG G4 and Samsung S95D, the Z95A holds a special place in my memory, as it merges the “oomph” factor that MLA’s brightness-boosting hardware brings to the table perfectly with Panasonic’s “as the director intended” focus.
During testing, despite offering wonderfully high peak brightness levels that exceeded anything I saw on last year’s first generation MLA sets, the Z95A retained a pleasing level of control during our review checks.
Whether it was the bright deserts on display running our Top Gun: Maverick 4K Blu-ray disc, or the grim, gritty Gotham cityscape in The Batman, the Z95A’s focus on control and authenticity shone, with skin tones, and colours in general holding an added layer of warmth and authenticity. Despite this, it still managed to take advantage of MLA’s added brightness, with the deserts of Dune: Part 2 holding an added sparkle that was missing on the basic OLED sets we tested it against. Hence we concluded:
“The Panasonic Z95A is a fantastic TV and a great showcase of how brightness-boosting MLA technology can be used to enhance picture quality. Thanks to Panasonic’s continued focus on delivering an authentic, controlled and balanced picture, the set uses the added brightness in a way that truly improves rather than distracts from what’s happening on screen.”
So why isn’t it an Award winner and at the top of our best OLED TV buying guide? Because there are some issues that mean, while perfect for me, the C4 and Bravia 8 are holistically better for most people.
The bolted-on soundbar along its bottom edge is an ongoing annoyance, for example. While it performs well by TV standards, even a moderately capable soundbar is still better. I’d love Panasonic to sell a cheaper version of the Z95A without the bolted-on speaker bar, as a result.
The main reason that we as a team don’t recommend the Z95A more generally is its high price. While we have a baseline level of performance we expect from any OLED, we always factor performance-per-pound (or dollar in the US) into our buying advice. And the Z95A is undeniably expensive compared to rivals.
Beyond that, while it’s great for my tastes, it’s not perfect. MLA still has colour volume issues in certain low-light scenes, so in some instances the C4 and Bravia 8 actually looked better during our tests – in the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049, characters looked slightly pale by comparison on the Z95A, for example.
But for me personally, the benefits of its focus on authenticity make the Z95A worth it. Which is why I penned this opinion piece, and would still recommend it to any home cinema fan with similar tastes to myself this Black Friday.
MORE:
These are the best 65-inch TVs we’ve tested
Check out our picks of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars
We reveal the best Black Friday soundbar deals
