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Yes, it’s true – I hadn’t heard of the so-called 4K Ultra HD televisions until yesterday, even though they made their debut in early 2013. After quite a bit of research, I’m learning that these suckers can be quite pricey – although you can find a 4K TV for less than $1,000 these days because the prices are dropping (on selected models), as they grow more popular.
The “4K” means that the TV must sport at least around 4,000 pixels in width – or 3,840 pixels to be exact – and a minimum of 2,160 pixels in height.
After hearing about how supposedly awesome certain 4K UHD TVs can be for viewing normal programming, I couldn’t help but ask myself…
Are 4K TVs good for gaming?
Turns out that’s such a common question that Google began to suggest it in the third position as soon as I typed “Are 4K TVs…” into the search engine. People want to know if 4K gaming is worth the hefty price tag, so I went on a little mission that led me to a Best Buy store to find out for myself.
Here’s what I discovered:
A guy on GameSpot had written that a guy in Best Buy compared a game on 4K to 1080p and the game supposedly looked way better on the 4K TV – with the upscaling features. From his forum comment, it seemed like the customer was just going by word of mouth, so I drove on over to my local Best Buy to see if I could get a gander at some of these 4K TVs with a gaming display to compare the big difference.
After standing around marveling over the amazing quality of the 4K televisions, especially the Samsung Curved UHD with a curved sound bar, I asked a couple of Best Buy guys about the gaming video displays.
Both the PS4 and Xbox One are 4K compatible, so they’ll look much better in comparison to a 1080p, one employee told me, noting that there’s so little 4K content out there at the moment.
Unfortunately, my local Best Buy didn’t have any gaming consoles hooked up to a 4K TV, so I couldn’t get a side-by-side comparison of the beautiful display with Destiny, GTA V, FIFA 15 or any video game. Hopefully that’ll be on the way soon, because you’d best believe if folks are going to drop a grand or two on a 4K TV, they’ll want to rely on more than word-of-mouth about improved gaming displays.
I asked questions about GPUs, verifying that’s only something needed with 4K monitors, not 4K TVs, and it appears that’s correct.
The most important thing, I was told, is the HDMI cable that will be used with these fancy-schmancy new 4K TVs. You don’t necessarily want to spend a ton of money on a TV and then grab an Insignia HDMI cheap $29 cable nor even a Monster Cable for $99. That’s when I was led into that special “experience” room and shown that you’d want to splurge on the kind of AudioQuest Chocolate HDMI cables that have a $289.98 price tag to get the most out of your 4K TV.
“I have a $500 HDMI cable,” the knowledgeable worker told me. I’m sold.