Media Release:
With a massive flood of new TV options hitting shelves in 2026, a product expert is urging shoppers to consider some underrated hacks as benchmarks for picture quality.
Size and resolution are often the first considerations that come to mind when purchasing a new TV. However, other features are equally important to weigh up for your home entertainment solution, says Patrick Chen, Product Training Specialist at TCL Electronics Australia.
According to Chen, a key step consumers can take is to check the colour accuracy of skin tones and whether deep blacks remain consistent across the entire screen. With contrast and colour levels often boosted in-store to demonstrate picture quality in landscape scenes, ensuring people’s skin looks as intended is a small but easy way to ensure correct colour reproduction.
“TVs in-store are normally tuned to be as eye-catching as possible to impress potential customers,” Chen explains. “Often bright hues such as reds, greens, and blues can make a person on-screen look unrealistically bright or artificial, so ensuring skin tones still look natural is key. I always encourage consumers to look at vibrant scenes that feature both bright backdrops and people to see if skin tones are being accurately depicted.
You should ideally be able to look at the bright blue sky or strong orange stripes of a tiger during a movie scene and still see someone’s skin tone remain as you would expect in real life, just as the director intended it to look. As a product trainer, this is one of the first things I would look out for myself and consumers who keep this small detail in mind can ensure they’re getting the best television possible.”
Alongside skin tones, Chen recommends checking for accurate black reproduction in darker scenes, which also leads to a more immersive viewing experience. As he explains, if deep blacks are becoming more washed out to the edge of the television, this is a sign of lower picture quality that could hamper the viewing experience.
The impact of multi-axis viewing – watching the screen from a position other than dead centre – is another subtle differentiator when purchasing a new TV, Chen notes.
By positioning themselves in-store at different viewing angles, consumers can check whether the picture quality holds up when the screen is later adjusted at home on its axis or wall-mounted.
“Depending on the screen technology, watching the TV side-on can cause the picture quality to change or degrade,” Chen concludes. “The screen’s colour and tone should remain consistent regardless of where the viewer is positioned, be it in the middle of a couch or from a kitchen island off to the side.
When in the store, don’t just stand directly in front of the screen. Step five or so paces in either direction and look at the TV from an angle to check for any potential contrast discrepancies – it’s much better to discover any issues in-store than after the TV’s been set up at home.”
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