lcd screen size calculator brands

A lot goes into determining the best viewing distance, and there are several different criteria you can use. Aside from size, things like resolution and even how strong your eyesight is can affect how you see the screen. Because everyone"s eyesight is different, this is less an exact science and more of a general guide based on scientific principles of vision and resolution.

That doesn"t mean you should be sitting a foot away from your TV. Having the largest screen possible isn"t always ideal. The human visual system has a total horizontal field of view of about 200 degrees, although a portion of that is peripheral vision. While it makes some sense to get as large a TV as you can for movies, not all content is made to fill the entire field of view. This becomes very apparent if you try to watch sports from up close while fixating on a single part of the screen, which quickly starts to feel nauseating.

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers recommends sitting at a distance where the screen fills up a minimum of 30° of your field of vision for a good experience.

This is generally good guidance, but people who use their TVs mostly for watching movies might benefit from sitting a bit closer to get a more theater-like experience. The SMPTE "reference" position for movie theaters and the THX recommendation is about 40°. The minimum angle of vision works well for most usages, though, and sitting at a distance where the screen fills 30° of your horizontal field of view should be comfortable for most people.

Our size and distance tool above is based on the 30° guideline that is suitable for mixed usage, but you can find distances for a variety of sizes at 40° here.Learn more about the human visual field.

For instance, sitting close to a 1080p TV can look almost like watching through a screen door because you can see the individual pixels, even if it"s playing a high-quality 1080p HD movie. Increasing your distance to the TV also increases the density of details, producing a better image. Since 4k TVs have such a large density of pixels, it"s much more difficult for this issue to arise. You need to be quite close to a fairly large TV for the pixels to be noticeably distracting.

With 8k TVs, that density increases further, making it even harder to notice flaws with the resolution unless you"re sitting extremely close. However, this also decreases the point at which the perceived difference in picture quality becomes noticeable. Because the pixels are more densely packed with an 8k resolution, you need to sit closer to actually resolve those details. For that reason—content aside—8k only really makes sense if you want a really big screen and plan on sitting close to it. Learn more about the difference between 4k and 8k.

This chart shows the point at which an upgrade in resolution becomes worth it depending on size and distance to the TV. Each line represents the optimal viewing distance for each resolution, but any TV that falls within the range of that color will be suitable to notice a difference in picture quality. So, for example, if you have a 65 inch TV, the viewing distance at which the eye can actually process the details of 4k content is about 4 feet. However, any distance between 4 and about 8.5 feet will be enough to appreciate the difference between 4k and 1080p on a 65 inch TV. Go too far, and the image will look identical to 1080p HD.

The chart suggests that at a certain point, 4k UHD may not be worth the upgrade—if you"re sitting more than 7 feet away and have a 55" TV, for instance. Really, though, this chart is just a guide, and as 4k TVs have become the standard, the question of whether it"s worth it or not is a moot point. While your eyes may not be able to tell the difference at a certain point, your next TV will more than likely be a 4k TV anyway. Knowing the optimal viewing distance for the resolution can help you determine a living room setup that takes full advantage of your TV"s resolution, but since angular resolution is almost a non-issue with UHD content, we recommend using our calculator tool at the top of the page, which is based on the optimal field of vision.

You"re probably thinking something along the lines of "My couch is 10" away from my TV, which according to the chart means I need a 75 inch TV. This is insane!" It"s true that if you want to take full advantage of higher resolutions, that"s the ideal size you should get. That said, this may not be possible for everyone, which brings us to budget.

The price of a TV is usually exponential to its size. Size isn"t the only factor though, as resolution, panel type, and features all play into it as well. Looking at 65 inch TVs, for instance, an OLED like the LG CX OLED is inevitably going to cost more than a budget LED TV like the Hisense H8G, and both of these will seem downright cheap compared to an 8k TV like the Samsung Q900TS 8k QLED. Fortunately, though, as technology improves and the availability of higher resolution TVs expands, larger TVs have become more common and therefore more affordable. Feel free to compare the prices of our picks for the best 65 inch TVs, the best 70 to 75 inch TVs, and the best 80 to 85 inch TVs to really see the difference that size makes.

We recommend a field of vision of about 30 degrees for mixed usage. In general, we also recommend getting a 4k TV since lower resolution TVs are becoming harder to find. To easily find out what size you should buy, you can divide your TV viewing distance (in inches) by 1.6 (or use our TV size calculator above) which roughly equals a 30-degree angle. If the best size is outside your budget, just get the biggest TV you can afford. These are guidelines, after all, and since most TVs nowadays are 4k, you can"t really go wrong with the size that works for you, especially since picture quality also depends a lot on the content and viewing conditions. Ideally, you would optimize the capacity of your TV by getting one that"s large enough for you to notice all the visual detail that 4k has to offer, but ultimately, you should watch however feels most comfortable to you, whatever the size and distance may be.

away from the screen or wall, the image will get bigger, and as you push the projector closer to the screen or wall the image will be smaller. To properly

The cost of TVs depends heavily on their size, with larger ones being progressively more expensive. I examine this relationship by aggregating TV price data over a range of sizes and brands. In addition, I clarify how to calculate TV screen area, height, and width. Though TV screens are universally described by the length of their diagonal, I argue that area is a more intuitive parameter for comparing their sizes.

To collect data for this investigation, I consulted The TV section of Walmart’s Canadian website. Here I found 138 TVs listed with screen diagonals ranging from 19” to 75”. I recorded the size and cost of each, summarized in the graph below.

As expected, price increases with TV size. However, size alone isn’t a tremendous predictor. For instance, there were two 32” screen TVs available which were more expensive than many of the 65” screens. We can account for this through the many features which TV models differ in, beyond size. For instance, some have curved screens, some are smart TVs, and others provide 4K ultra HD. Looking at this graph, the distribution of TV models across size is also interesting. Screen diagonals of 50”, 55”, and 65” are by far most abundant. Nevertheless, the confounding factors make it is hard to isolate the contribution of physical size to TV prices from these data. In particular, we’d require the assumption that expensive TV features are equally represented across the sizes.

To tease out the relationship between TV size and price, we must compare TVs which are identical in every way except size. Fortunately, it is possible to do this: some companies sell series of TV models which offer the same features at multiple screen sizes. Although this greatly limits the data available, it does conveniently remove the confounding factors. I selected four TV series: two by Samsung (NU6900 and Tizen Smart LED) and two by LG (UK6090 and UK6300).

Each series follows a consistent trend, but direct comparison of them is challenging since they have different intrinsic values. In the interest of fully covering the range of screen sizes, it was necessary to combine the data. I normalized the prices within each series to facilitate direct comparison. Each set contained a 50” screen, so I normalized the prices by scaling the 50” option to a value of ‘1’. For instance, The LG UK6300 series costed $448 (43”), $548 (50”), $648 (55”), and $998 (65”). I normalized these prices to 0.82, 1.00, 1.18, and 1.82, respectively. This approach was successful in making each series comparable.

Here a clear relationship emerges between cost and TV screen diagonal length. Interestingly, this relationship is not linear, note the curvature of the apparent trend. As TV screen diagonal is increased, further improvements in size become increasingly costly. We can explain this nonlinearity, to do so we must review how screen diagonal is related to its area.

The size and shape of TV screens are specified by the length of the diagonal across the screen and the aspect ratio. Despite this, I believe that screen area is a much more intuitive unit for comparing TV sizes. The screen of a TV is rectangular, so we can find its area by multiplying the length of its height (H) and width (W).

Importantly, this equation reveals that screen area (A) increases with the square of screen diagonal (D). The area is also modified by aspect ratio, with maximum area at a 1:1 ratio. Since most modern TVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9, we can alternatively write:

The relationship between screen area and diagonal length helps account for the nonlinearity between diagonal length and cost. The quantity of materials required for manufacturing scales with area rather than diagonal length, so it is sensible that screen area and cost may be proportional. This turns out to be an accurate assumption, as seen by replotting the normalized Samsung and LG series data against screen area.

There is a strong linear correlation between cost and screen area (R^2=0.97). For comparison, correlating cost with screen diagonal gave an inferior fit (R^2=0.88). A notable exception to this trend is the outlier at 75” diagonal length (red data point). The deviation at this large size is likely due to current manufacturing limitations, driving up the cost. According to the vice president of TV product marketing at Samsung, there are very few fabrication plants currently operating that are optimized for producing LCD panels of this size.

Having established the relationship between TV screen area and cost using controlled data, we can return to the total data set to gain more insights about TV prices. There was a large range of prices at each TV size, mostly due to the presence or absence of various features in the different models. If the availability of such features is fairly equal across TV sizes, averaging the prices at each size may largely cancel out this variability. I tried this, and it afforded a surprisingly strong linear correlation with screen area.

​Given that these data are from averaging all of the TVs sold by Walmart, this is an impressive fit (R^2=0.89). Conversely, these data were less strongly correlated with screen diagonal (R^2=0.79). There are several implications of this. Firstly, it suggests my earlier observation that TV price is proportional to screen area is broadly applicable. In addition, it implies that expensive TV features are near equally represented across the range of sizes. Lastly, the 75” TVs are an outlier from this trend (red data point), reinforcing that this size of TV is disproportionally expensive in the current market.

Overall, the cost of TVs is proportional to screen area. TV prices are therefore “fair,” you pay the same cost per square centimeter of screen you get. The only exception to this is the largest screens (75” and above). These are disproportionately expensive, probably due to limitations of the current manufacturing practices. It is also interesting to consider pixels in light of this. For instance, a smaller 4K TV has the same pixel count as a larger one. Here the cost per pixel is higher for the larger TV, an understandable consequence of each pixel having to be made bigger.

The fairness of these prices may come as a surprise to many consumers, since each additional increase in diagonal length appears progressively more expensive. I have shown that this is merely a consequence of the relationship between diagonal length and area. Though geometrically straightforward, some consumers may not have considered this point. It is unfortunate that screen area is not widely used for comparing TV sizes. In addition to being more intuitive, it also simplifies comparing TVs of different aspect ratios. Though most modern TVs have a 16:9 aspect ratio, older TVs usually had a 4:3 ratio. In such cases comparison of diagonal lengths is particularly misleading.

Currently, there are two main types of TV – an LED and an OLED TV. You might be surprised to know that these TV types are available in very different screen sizes.

Some of the numbers presented here are based on the excellent work by Carlton Bale. If you like working with spreadsheets, you might want to download his home theater spreadsheet calculator.

Therefore, a 26° FOV is the furthest distance from the screen they recommend – but, ideally, the best distance would be a field of view of 36° or closer.

Here is a calculator for working out the recommended viewing distance for a 16:9 screen based on the field of view. Just select your screen size to see the results.

As stated previously, there is no absolute right or wrong here. It will often come down to personal taste, your eyesight or how you use the screen in your room.

One popular rule-of-thumb is to simply use one foot of viewing distance for each 10-inches of diagonal screen size. This might sound more complicated than it is:

So, for example, if you know the viewing distance in your room will be about 10 feet (or 120-inches), you can work out that a good TV size will be in the range of:

Now, that still gives you quite a bit of choice, but at least you can rule out screens below 48-inches, and you have a better idea of where to start looking.

The simple answer is that the brand of your TV doesn’t matter. Regardless of who makes it, they all have the same essential specifications – screen size and resolution.

If you mainly watch high-definition or 4K Ultra HD images, a larger screen will allow you to appreciate the extra detail – and it will also look great if you sit very close.

If you mostly watch movies, sports and documentaries – anything where you sit down for an extended period and concentrate – then a larger screen is perfect for appreciating the action and detail.

On the other hand, if much of your TV viewing is for shorter programs that require less attention – or your TV is on ‘in the background’ much of the time – a bigger screen may be too overwhelming in the room.

Due to the size of the wall – and because the screen appears more ‘removed’ from the room – it can often make a bigger TV appear smaller and less noticeable.

A large shop floor with many other TVs around can make it difficult to judge the size of a screen. If possible, try and see a similar-sized screen in someone’s home where you will get a better perspective on the size.

Get a feel for a good viewing distance by working it out from your screen size – then consider how you will be using the TV and the type of things you will watch.

After that, you need to consider things like the type of images you will be watching on the TV, how you will be using the screen and the location in the room you will be installing it.

One way to work out what size TV to buy for a specific viewing distance is to use the field of view. If you multiply your viewing distance (in feet) by 6.5, you will get a diagonal screen size (in inches). This will be the minimum screen size you should look for, according to the THX maximum viewing distance of a 26° field of view. Alternatively, use a calculator to get the best TV size for the room.

The best way to calculate the optimal viewing distance for a TV is to use the field of view (FOV). THX recommends a viewing distance that gives a FOV of 36°. The ideal distance will vary depending on the size of your TV. The easiest way to calculate this is to use a TV distance calculator.

It is usually best to calculate the viewing distance from the field of view to the screen. Using the typical field of view numbers of 26° and 36°, the ideal screen size for a 12-foot distance is between 78 and 108-inches.

If you ask TV and theatrical industry groups, they"ll tell you to measure your seating distance to determine the ideal screen size. The farther away you sit, obviously, the smaller your TV appears. The ideal is to have a screen that fills a certain amount of your field of view, though how much is "ideal" is up for debate.

The other major factor to consider is something I"ll call "room domination." How big does a TV have to be before that looming black rectangular slab seems to be the only thing in the room? This factor is definitely subjective. As someone who"s had a 12-foot-wide projection screen in his house for over a decade, and has also reviewed large TVs, I"ll take the big projection screen over a TV any day (not least because when the "TV" is off, a projector"s screen is white or gray, a TV is glossy black). An 80-plus inch TV can easily just dominate a space. Wall mounting can help a bit, but your TV room risks becoming the TV"s room.

I"ll be honest, I don"t subscribe to any of the established "rules" for viewing distance and screen size. I think the SMPTE and the lesser THX numbers are too TV-biased. I think they vastly underestimate what"s easily possible with modern technology, for those who want more.

I sit nine feet from a 102-inch screen. That"s just the 16x9 portion. The full screen is 2.35:1 and 128 inches diagonal. I can just barely make out pixels when I expand a 1080p projector to the full width of the screen, but in standard 16x9 viewing, I can"t. 4K looks amazing.

Do you want to go that big? Well, that"s a different question. I find larger screen sizes easier on the eyes, as more of your field of view is taken up with the roughly uniform brightness of the screen. In an otherwise dark room, your pupils are more naturally closed to the amount of light thanks to the big screen.

Conversely, I find watching a small screen in a dark room more fatiguing, as your pupils are more open (because of the dark room) with this one annoying pinprick of bright light (the TV). Many people complain about headaches when they watch TV in a dark room. One possible cause is the

The ultimate decision is one of personal preference. My goal here was to point out a rough idea of what"s possible or recommended. For me, I would always err on the side of "too big." An old boss of mine used to say that no one regretted buying a TV they thought might be "too big." My opinion is that a 50-inch TV is too small for most rooms. That"s not to say I think everyone should get a 102-inch screen, but the reality is a 50-inch flat panel is really not that much larger than the 36-inch CRTs of the old days. Since 65- and even 75-inch TVs

Choosing the correct screen size is an important part of getting the best out of your home theater experience. Too close and you will be able to see the construction of the TV screen (the actual pixels), too far and you"ll lose the impact of the programs you"re watching.

In this section of the calculator you should enter the screen size (measured diagnally) into the box on the left and the calculator will provide you with the proper view distance on the right.

In this section of the calculator you can find the optimum TV size for your viewing area. Measure the distance from your viewing location to where you will place the TV and round off to the nearest foot. Enter that distance in the box on the left and the calculator will suggest an optimum TV size on the right.