How to Buy a TV Online: South Africa’s Best Brands

One great thing we can take away from the global pandemic is that more people became familiar – and far more comfortable – with online shopping. Super-quick deliveries of our favourite desserts, a few essential groceries, and reservations for dinner and a show for date night all became easier and more common. Still, if you’re planning to buy a TV online in South Africa, it can be a labyrinthine task in your mind.

However, it doesn’t need to be, as long as you know how to stay safe and shop smart.

South Africa boasts some of the world’s leading brands and advanced technology. There is every reason to feel confident about exploring the lowdown on FHD, LED, OLED, QLED, ULED, UHD, 4K NanoCell and Plasma TV screens before you hop online to select brands and suppliers.

We will enter the maze armed with the knowledge that the monikers used to describe TV screens have everything to do with the size, picture definition, and resolution, as influenced by pixels, the backlight, and even the colour.

If you’re looking for Plasma TV’s for sale, let us make it easier for you: check out the following…

Factors To Consider When Buying a TV Online In SA

You’re going to be confronted with endless options online. To avoid ending up on a wild goose chase or down the rabbit hole, here are four key questions to sort out before you start looking:

1. Location: where do you want your TV placed?
2. Lighting: what are the ambient lighting conditions of your desired location?
3. Content: for home viewing, commercial viewing, or gaming purposes?
4. Size: what is the correct size for your chosen location? 

Once you have the answers to these questions you can eliminate everything that’s not right and explore the rest of your TV options in depth.

Manufacturers offer recommended screen sizes depending on the size of your room. Here’s a quick guide:

SCREEN SIZE	RECOMMENDED VIEWING DISTANCE
55″ (139cm)	1.7 m
65″ (165cm)	2.0 m
75″ (190cm)	2.3 m

Before You Buy Online: The Differences Between Smart TV Screen Displays 

We understand how difficult it is to decipher the technical terms and make your online purchase experience a pleasant one. Not that anyone is complaining about the advances in digital technology that are bringing better image quality for our entertainment pleasure – it can just be difficult to understand at times.

Starting with the more familiar and taking you into the latest technology will equip you to make smart choices in 2022.

Clearing Mystery on Plasma, FHD, UHD & 4K TV Screens 

Plasma screens consist of thousands of microscopic pixel dots or squares on a grid that has been injected with neon and xenon gasses. Luminescent red, blue and green phosphors give off light when struck by radiation as needed.

That’s all just heavy tech-talk for great picture quality plus visually fluid movement perception. Sports lovers and action movie addicts love the speed and clarity of a plasma screen TV. The fact that plasma screens are able to display wide angles of images makes them ideal for crowds to watch together.

Plasma TV screens most often go under the new UHD (Ultra High Definition) or FHD (Full High Definition) description, all three superseding the old HD (High Definition) resolution descriptions. Obviously, the higher the resolution, the better your picture quality is.

These are the numbers:

• HD has 1,366 x 768 pixels, 
• FHD has 1,920 x 1,080 pixels 
• UHD has 3,840 x 2,160 pixels
• 4K alludes to the horizontal pixel count of 4,096 (being roughly four thousand) by 2,160. That happens to be four times the earlier standard of 2K ( 2,048 by 1,080) and now there is 8K. 

You get the picture?

What About LED TV Screens?

LED (Light-Emitting Diodes) are the offshoot of the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens still used for your laptop for example. LED light rather than fluorescent light is used to illuminate the screen.

The benefit of LED screens is that they are more energy-efficient, brighter, slimmer options than LCD screens and work well in ambient surround light.

What Are OLED, ULED, QLED & QNED TV Screens?

Now that you’ve got a grip on LED, you’re in a better position to fathom QLED, OLED and ULED. 

QLED

QLED also uses LCD panels with LED backlighting with the additional factor being that they make use of a quantum dot layer. The advantage there lies in the wide range of colours possible. You’ll notice companies such as Samsung label their TVs as QLED. And don’t tear your hair out if you spot QNED (Quantum NanoCell Emitting Diode) on LG’s products too. 

Both LG and Samsung are leading the pack with developing technologies and it’s all about patenting their discoveries. Android Authority explains that; “LG is backing its QNED format, while Samsung is peddling Neo QLED as the next best thing. Both boast improved colours, peak brightness, and contrast ratios for HDR content, and come in 4K and 8K resolutions.”

LG is also responsible for the NanoCell technology that makes use of a built-in filter layer that absorbs specific light wavelengths. This has assisted them to produce incredible quality images without the costs of other options.

OLED

OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes) TV screens are a different animal altogether. OLED’s brilliant performance lies in the fact that each pixel not only emits its own light, but each has its own red, green and blue OLEDs – no backlighting required!

That translates into a few notable advantages:

• Energy-efficiency 
• Faster refresh speed
• Higher contrast
• Flexibility – and may we note here that LG is shipping bendable, foldable displays and the world’s first rollable TV!

ULED

ULED (Ultra LED) TVs are always 4K displays. But since it’s Hisense’s patent, we’ll let them explain it for you.

“ULED, or Ultra LED, is the term Hisense uses for a collection of 20 different patents around four key areas: Ultra Wide Colour Gamut, Ultra Local Dimming, Ultra 4K Resolution and Ultra Smooth Motion Rate. As the name suggests, this is an LED TV technology, but those propriety patents all work to enhance the viewing experience at home.”

The Cheapest 4K TV To Buy In South Africa

The cheapest 4K TV in SA will change on a daily basis and if you’re the bargain-hunter type, you’ll be checking out the figures on the day you shop online for your smart TV.

There is everything to be said for making your purchase from a reputable dealer with whom you can have a service relationship. Here is a list of brands and specs to look out for:

Hisense 127cm (50″ ) 4K UHD Smart TV, 50A6G, which could come in at R7 999.99

Hisense 147cm (58″ ) 4K UHD Smart TV, 58A6G, which could come in at R9 999.99

Samsung 109cm (43″) 4K Smart TV UA43AU7000KXXA coming in at R8 199.99

What’s The Best Month To Buy A TV In SA?

We know from experience that post-season months are always the best time to buy a smart TV. The majority of retailers will have estimated season sales and ordered more than enough to meet those estimates. 

January through March lie between two peak seasons and it makes sense to buy your TV online anytime during that trimester.

How To Buy Your TV Safely Online

We trust you understand how to fill in the required fields when you add goods to your cart from an online store and head for the checkout. Most first-time online shoppers worry about how secure it is to give out their bank information. After all, isn’t it ‘going out there’ on the World Wide Web? Well, yes and no. 

We spoke earlier of the benefits of purchasing from sites belonging to well-known companies. The security aspect, your privacy protection, is one of the reasons. Reputable companies run sites that have strict protocols in place to ensure customer information protection. How do we know?

Do You Know The Difference Between HTTP and HTTPS?

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. You see this at the top of your browser when you go to a webpage, and it’s all part of the business of web transactions. But, do you know what the additional ‘S’ stands for? Secure! Now you’ll never forget it. One letter makes all the difference. Here you are protected against hijacking, hacking, spoofing, and phishing. Only buy your TV online in SA when you see https, got it?

Suffice to say that with more and more time spent at home (thanks to the Big C), having a smart 4K TV in more than one room is starting to make sense. Therefore, when you gear up to buy your TV online in South Africa or anywhere in the world, remember that the kids will want one for gaming, others will want to watch sport and the rest will be divided between reality shows and Netflix. Happy shopping!

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