I wish everyone knew about these TV size mistakes

Viewing distance and immersion

Always relevant, very subjective

Credit: Samsung

One of the reasons bigger isn't always better is your field of view. If your eyes can't take in the entire frame of an image at once, you're not just missing out on visual information -- you're actively stressing your eyes, which are going to be darting around constantly. I'm reminded of the time I went to see The Others in theaters and got stuck in the second row from the front. While I enjoyed the movie itself, it was physically draining to stare up at a screen I could never completely take in.

THX, the cinematic standards company, recommends that a TV fill approximately 25 to 40% of your field of view. Using that math, a TV about 6 to 7 feet away should measure at least 55 inches diagonally, and no more than 75 inches. Many people sit about 9 feet away, in which case the range shifts to between 65 and 85 inches. You may find that your ideal size is somewhere in the middle of a predicted range, particularly since TVs are sold in a wide variety of increments. There's no sense depriving yourself of other features because a model only goes up to 70 or 80 inches -- more on that later.

Personally, I'm willing to go above 40% of my view, simply because immersion is extremely important to me. I want to lose myself in whatever movie, game, or TV show I'm consuming, so the more of my room I can exclude from my vision, the better. I'm willing to put up with a little bit of eye shifting. If you're considering going the same route, though, I'd suggest testing that theory at a store or friend's home first. A set that's uncomfortable to watch every time you sit down is inevitably going to be returned.

Remember also to do realistic measuring for everyone who's going to be watching. If your couch is curved or L-shaped, some people are going to be closer to the screen than others, and may have a terrible time if the TV is oversized. Also, a TV mounted on a wall is going to be slightly further away than one sitting on an entertainment center, particularly if it's flush-mounted like the one in the picture above.

Practical room or moving limitations

Will it actually fit?

When I moved to Austin, Texas in 2011, my apartment was on the third floor. The benefit was high ceilings, but the tradeoff was a terrible time carrying anything up and down stairs, since there was no easy access to the service elevator. A memory that's forever etched in my mind is buying a 40-inch TV, but being barely able to grip it as I made my way up three flights in the summer heat. At the time, TVs that size were pretty heavy to carry solo.

The point of my anecdote is that getting a TV into your home should be just as much a consideration as anything. If you have a compact car, a 70-inch TV might not fit in the trunk. You can get around transportation issues by renting a truck or having a TV delivered, but you'll still have to get it through any doorways, elevators, or stairwells. Without help, that can sometimes be daunting or impossible.

The greater issue for most people tends to be the size of rooms and furniture. There's no point in a 70-inch TV if you only have 60 inches of free space above your mantelpiece or entertainment center. The solution to that is often a flexible wall mount, yet that can introduce its own complications if a TV ends up jutting too far out into your living space. I'd also recommend against mounting a TV in a corner, if you can. Though this sometimes solves trouble with viewing angles, anything but a small model is probably going to jut out a good distance, and be difficult to access the back of without leaving a deliberate gap. It's probably wiser to rearrange your room.

One aspect people often forget about is the practicality of moving a TV between homes. Having lived in four different houses and even more apartments over the decades, I've come to value appliances and furniture that make moving less of an ordeal. Before you buy something, consider how you'd pack it, move it, ship it, or store it -- if you can't come up with answers, you may end up selling your TV or junking it instead of taking it with you.

Don't sacrifice too many features

Think about quality as well as quantity

It's surprisingly easy to find a TV approaching 100 inches for under $2,000, maybe even as little as $1,000. At those prices, though, you're likely to be stuck with an LCD/QLED screen instead of OLED or mini-LED, and other limitations to boot. The $1,000 model I'm thinking only supports HDR10 -- not HDR10+ or Dolby Vision -- and is capped at a 60Hz refresh rate at a time when many TVs are transitioning to 120 or 144Hz panels with VRR ( variable refresh rate) technology. It's also based on Amazon's Fire TV platform, usually considered inferior to Roku OS or Google TV.

Some people are willing to sacrifice specs for size, but sacrificing the wrong ones can have a serious impact on your viewing. HDR10, for example, doesn't support dynamic metadata, so some scenes could end up too bright or too dark. If you're a gamer, a TV with VRR is practically a must, since games often have wildly varying framerates, and a mismatch with refresh rates can result in visual artifacts like tearing. Both VRR and a major audio technology, eARC, are only available with HDMI 2.1 or later -- so if the ports on your TV are stuck at 2.0, you've inadvertently kneecapped your hardware options.

Speaking of HDR, you'll only get the full experience of that with OLED or mini-LED sets, which provide more contrast due to the way their lighting works. If you enjoy punchy, vibrant images, you may well get more value out of a smaller $2,000 OLED TV than an LCD model that fills your wall and nothing more.