List of recommended TVs for emulation

General
#20

In your earlier comparison of OLED vs. LCD, you failed to distinguish between non-QLED LCD and QLED. Lumping QLED into the same category with regular LCDs when comparing QLED’s performance to OLED shows that you either aren’t aware of the significant performance differences between the two, or you’re dishonestly trying to make it seem like QLED has the same limitations as non QLED displays because they both fall under the general umbrella of LCD technology. Knowing how the technology works and being informed of the performance differences between QLED and non-QLED LCD are different things.

This is a misleading statement. The specs alone speak for themselves. There are significant performance improvements compared to the best LED-lit LCDs. That little addition of the quantum dots is a much bigger improvement than you seem to realize. Just compare test results at RTings.com. The high-end QLEDs are very nearly reaching OLED black levels while having MUCH higher sustained brightness levels and lower input latency to boot. It puts them in a whole different category than ordinary LED-lit LCDs. The distinction is 100% justified.

Okay, sure. Just seemed like a false equivalence fallacy to me and/or equivocation, intentional or not.

Some key points: When it comes to sustained SDR brightness, (which is essential for using BFI and CRT effects in emulators) my 6 year old LED-lit LCD is on par with LG OLED displays.

Literally the only advantage OLED has over QLED when it comes to CRT emulation is the superior viewing angle, which is negligible for gamers who sit directly in front of the display.

#21

Well you guys have been having fun. I too dream of the consumer flat panel that totally replaces the need of a good CRT (let alone a high end one). Sadly, we are still far from it. Neither OLED nor QLED will cut it, but right now I’ll side with Nesguy in that QLED is closer (though still not good enough).

I think it’ll be helpful to separate the discussion into (still) picture performance and motion performance.

Still picture:

  • The OLED will handily beat the QLED simply because the former has a much better picture. So, if you play games with little to no fast motion (some arcade games, adventure games, RPGs, strategy games, etc.) then definitely go with an OLED. If you don’t care for scanlines then absolutely go with the OLED (though this falls outside of the “emulating CRTs” parameter). That said, it is true that OLEDs offer blacks like nothing else, including CRT. I used to think my CRT gave me real blacks and then I put an OLED next to it and it’s not even a comparison.

Motion:

  • The OLED sucks. I own a C8 and tried everything available to be happy with it either via emulation or real hardware with an OSSC. Motion sucks, and due to two separate issues that Nesguy has discussed:
  1. “Persistence blur” AKA sample-and-hold blur (distinct from “motion blur” made famous by LCD) on fast moving objects and scenes. The only solution is BFI which has the brightness downside already discussed. It’s a dealbreaker. There is a way to almost eliminate ABL if your panel is calibrated (or you make it think it’s calibrated), but the BFI still saps too much brightness to be satisfying. Forget about frame interpolation as another solution.
  2. Stutter. A lot of LCDs have this problem, some even more than LG OLEDs, some less (a few, not at all) due to varying frame hold times (not to be confused with sample-and-hold) for 60fps content. See: https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/motion/stutter This affects slow scrolling/panning elements and scenes. Next time you watch a movie look at the credits scrolling on that beautiful inky black and you’ll get it immediately. Sounds like the QLEDs are not that much better than the OLEDs in this regard. Again, people tell you to use frame interpolation to work around this, but that’s no good at all especially for CRT emulation.

So it turns out motion is a big deal in gaming, both retro and modern. If you have the setup to do so, try a 720p or 1080p game on a compatible CRT and after a few minutes you’ll want to both smile and cry. You’ll want a QLED for games with fast motion, but it won’t be like a CRT at all. Even the ideal BFI setting will only get you halfway to the motion clarity of a CRT. It’s pathetic.

Lesson: let’s keep dreaming of the future while we keep putting up with our goddamn CRTs. Otherwise, if you have to have something else right now, get either a QLED or an OLED depending on the types of games you play most. Most likely you’ll want the QLED.

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#22

Always! It’s a 24/7 party around here. :smiley:

There are QLED TVs that are matching the color accuracy of OLED, and with excellent black levels that surpass a CRT’s. I think emissive displays do tend to look better in general, though, for reasons that are difficult to pinpoint. OLED clearly has the upper hand when it comes to viewing angle; there’s no loss of image quality at all when viewed at an angle.

From what I’ve seen, the frame-hold time at 60fps is much lower on QLED vs. OLED, so the stutter shouldn’t be as bad. I’ve also noticed that hardware-based strobing methods tend to make this problem worse, while software-based BFI tends to make it better, but I’m not sure why.

In a side by side comparison with my actual CRT monitor vs my LCD with BFI enabled, the LCD actually looks like it has greater motion clarity, but that might be down to screen size and the phosphor persistence on the CRT. I use “soft eyes” a lot when playing retro games (particularly shoot em ups), and motion blur reduction is most beneficial when eye-tracking an individual object, so individual play style tactics and the type of game also come into play, here. Someone who plays a lot of FPS games as a sniper, for example, will see greater benefit in reducing motion blur even more than what 120Hz + BFI is capable of.

The ideal would be 240Hz with ON:OFF:OFF:OFF cadence for 60fps content, but that’s a 75% reduction in brightness, and I’m not sure there are any 240Hz displays that have sufficient brightness to compensate for this and CRT emulation.

That’s a fair summary.

I have a CRT on my desk and 3 more in my closet; they’re fantastic displays but they’re getting old and all of them need a bit of work. It’s actually getting hard to find a good CRT monitor these days that doesn’t need a bit of work. Craigslist has pretty much completely dried up where I live. I can clean and recap the monitors, but eventually one of the components is just going to fail entirely, and sourcing a replacement could be difficult and expensive, if not impossible. I’m encouraged by the progress being made by modern displays, and I’m optimistic that with a few more years of R&D into quantum dots, we’ll have displays that do everything we need for a true CRT replacement. We’re getting very close with current displays, though!

#23

Update:

Added the LG SM9500 to the list, making it the only non-QLED display to make the cut.

#24

Update:

It’s worth pointing out that there is still not a SINGLE TV available on the market that is bright enough to do scanlines, black frame insertion, AND mask emulation. You’d need about 2,000 cd/m2 sustained SDR brightness (full-screen).

It’s looking increasingly doubtful that there will ever be a modern TV capable of fully replacing the CRT in all areas of performance. There are a few displays intended for outdoor use that might be able to get bright enough, but none of them have the low input lag needed for next-frame response at 60fps.

So, hang out to those CRTs and learn how to repair them.

EDIT: I should clarify that when I’m talking about mask emulation, I mean setting the mask strength to 100%. If you’re willing to compromise on the mask strength a bit, it’s possible to get a very acceptable result when using mask + scanlines + BFI.

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#25

100 nits is a specification of SDR TV’s so I doubt you will see one get into HDR luminance territory. In my opinion, the best course of action is to use a HDR TV specced at 2000 nits and use a fitting inverse function to preserve tonality.

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#26

Can you elaborate on this a bit?

What we’re interested in is the sustained SDR brightness of an HDR TV since an emulator running in RA is SDR content. I’ve seen several that reach 2000 nits with HDR content, but 500-600 nits seems to be the max for SDR content, even among the new ultra-bright QLED TVs.

Also, what does this mean? “a fitting inverse function to preserve tonality”

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#27

I don’t own an HDR TV, you say that SDR plays on HDR TVs at 600 nits max? Couldn’t you just fake SDR content as HDR by applying an inverse function transform (and matching color space transforms) ?

If the TV applies a constant tonemapper (PQ, HLG), use the inverse of the tonemapper, this is usually an exponential function. I just don’t know by what terms an HDR TV says what is HDR and what is SDR content, or if retroarch glsl/slang has HDR support.

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#28

It depends on the TV, but yeah that’s about as bright as they get with SDR content, and it’s only the QLED TVs that get that bright (OLED has ABL that prevents you from doing this).

It’s my understanding that it doesn’t, sadly :frowning:

This is way over my head; can you run this by someone who knows about this stuff? @hunterk

If we can fake SDR content as HDR, that would be a godsend for CRT emulation.

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#29

I’m speculating, first and foremost I don’t know if the HDR transfer functions can be reverted, PQ is non linear but I recall reading on pages about converting SDR content to HDR.

Then the inverse function has to overshoot so not to cancel perfectly and reach display max nits (2000), that means a parametric inverse function and not a LUT.

And third, I guess retroarch should be HDR aware and signal that to the display.

All speculation and far fetched, but just wanted to let you know in case I might also learn something out of it.

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Please show off what crt shaders can do!
#30

Take a look at this TV and see if it warrants your attention and consideration.

You can take a look at this one as well:

Here’s one more to check out:

This is a nice review for comparisons:

And here’s one of the newer brighter OLED TVs

Take a look at this thread @Digitech. It might help you to make a more informed decision when it comes to purchasing a new TV.

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#31

Thanks a lot!, going to check em all and see if they are available in mexico.

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#32

Just thought I’d do a small update of a much needed thread.

https://youtube.com/shorts/bJJoAiZSvc0?si=PlrFpTNJoKvJQRPd

https://www.youtube.com/live/Dp1OjdbvCsk?si=dEGqAG-1XlUQjsgI

https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-claims-to-have-solved-the-blue-PHOLED-puzzle-with-a-new-tandem-OLED-display-technology.880278.0.html

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#33

Just wanted to follow up from my previous post.

The TCL QM751G has proven itself to be an emulation powerhouse. There is no perfect TV though so the one thing I noticed that might be a bit distracting is the backlight lag and so far I’ve only noticed this in one particular scene in one game with large rapidly scrolling red text on a black background.

I haven’t seen any other instance of this, which bodes well for the tech. Most other miniLED TVs from other manufacturers perform a lot worse in this very important metric so I would say that the TCL QM751G, QM851G, Sony Bravia 7, Sony Bravia 9 would represent the baseline for miniLED models which I might choose for emulation.

I think I’d also include 2023’s TCL QM850G as its a very similar TV to the QM851G.

Fast forward to 2025 and TCL has announced Zero Delay backlight technology, higher precision dimming zone control, which rivals the tech used in the 2024 Bravia 7 and 9 and most welcomed, wide viewing angle tech.

All of which are supposed to be available in the TCL QM7K and up soooo, miniLEDs in 2025 are shaping up to be really game changing tech for emulation.

I didn’t even mention the brightness, colour saturation and blooming performance improvements.

Last year, we got exceptional value with the extremely capable 55" QM751G coming in at as low as US$477 during sales!

Let’s hope this year won’t be spoiled by things which we have no control over. It would be nice to see similar value but it’s very possible that 2024 might prove to be the golden year for value or the last time to get in on the value train before things become very different for a while.

Last thing I would mention about the QM751G is that it does really well with its built-in BFI/Backlight Strobing even at 60Hz refresh rate.

I find it suitable for retro emulation content, however there is a lot of noticeable flicker at least to me on any static, progressive content which lacks scanlines. So for folks like me that makes it incompatible with things like overlays unless you don’t mind or aren’t distracted by the flicker.

What I would say about BFI and the improved motion is that it’s nice to have but it shouldn’t be a deal breaker if you’re not a purist and are not already used to it.

I used to be curious before but running at 60Hz with no BFI was still a very enjoyable experience for me.

https://www.youtube.com/live/vBghsjobYUw?si=jco4HPwIF8mothAP

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CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs
#34

2025 miniLED TVs are here! Excellent for CRT Emulation!

https://www.gizmochina.com/2025/03/10/tcl-q10l-qd-mini-led-tv-series-launch-specs-price/

https://www.gizmochina.com/2025/03/09/hisense-launches-e8q-pro-tvs-specs-price/

https://www.tcl.com/us/en/press-releases/tcl-qm7k-launch

This is what’s next:

Is Sony scared of TCL, Samsung and Hisense? They have all announced similar technology on the horizon.

@Nesguy would love this. Now if only they would switch the subpixel layout to RGB from BGR.

Must mention these 2:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/s/8dODITqWrq

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/s/DVDQ2WIdt1

This is probably one of the best TVs you can buy for emulation right now:

  • Precise Dimming Series Up to 5184 Zones
  • · HDR 5800 nits (Peak Brightness)
  • · CrystGlow WHVA Panel (excellent native contrast ratio, black levels and wide viewing angle technology)
  • · 144Hz Native Refresh Rate

Also, based on the reviews of the QM8K which also uses a Crystal Glow WHVA panel, it should have an RGB subpixel layout!

This is the future though:

https://www.youtube.com/live/gMnXc3WfSWs?si=D-mwHjICJ7K0eCX0

I recently learned that the display in the iPad Pro M4 uses tandem OLED but doesn’t have a white sublayout

According to this the TCL QM851G is brighter than the TCL QM8K making it one of the best TVs for CRT Emulation given its other strengths, however the TCL QM8K is still very bright and it sports better viewing angles and a more CRT-like R-G-B subpixel layout.

What a hard choice.

Hopefully 2026’s offerings or possibly the QM9K will be better than the QM851G in every possible metric. One thing though is that it will always be tough for the newer models to beat the QM851G one price/performance as they’re mostly more expensive.

https://www.youtube.com/live/_14yVGa73k8?si=1r49b2TQyidpJxFC

https://www.gizmochina.com/2025/09/17/tcl-sqd-mini-led-tech-explained/

https://www.gizmochina.com/2025/09/15/tcl-x11l-sqd-mini-led-tvs-launched-specs-price/

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#35

Thank you very much for your insightful posts. So, @Cyber and @Nesguy, which TV would you buy today if you wanted the best experience emulating and using shaders? If you could contemplate budget, mid-range and expensive options separately, it would be great.

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#36

You’re welcome.

For me it would be a range that I would consider with pros and cons of different options. I think I have already listed what I think might be good options but I’ll try again.

For OLED LG G5, Panasonic Z95B with the caveat that the subpixel layout may not match currently available CRT shader Mask Layouts so some updating and catching up might be required. I think it should be as simple as swapping the subpixel order from the old WOLED layout to the new one but that would probably provide the best overall experience using the very few Mask Layouts that would be supported by those TVs.

LG G4, G3. Those have the advantage of being compatible with current WOLED Mask Layout options while being bright as well.

OLED TVs do suffer from burn-in and ABL does kick in and dim your screen during gaming, especially if you like leaving the TV in the options menu while listening to video game music.

miniLED TVs - Extremely Bright miniLED TVs also provide the best experience but in different ways to OLED and in ways that OLED TVs probably can’t match yet. They’re generally much more flexible in terms of the Mask Layouts and CRT TVLs that they can competently emulate and their brightness is second to none, which is very important for CRT emulation, especially when motion clarity enhancing techniques are used. The downsides are mainly in the poorer viewing angles and blooming which can be noticed in less than ideal viewing conditions, for example off axis viewing and in dark environments.

TCL QM9K, TCL QM8K - Among the brightest TVs ever made, Wide viewing angle technology and R-G-B subpixel layout.

TCL QM851G - One of the brightest TVs ever made. Better specifications and performance than the very good TCL QM751G. I would have a hard time choosing the TCL QM8K over this because it is brighter than the QM8K. That additional brightness headroom can be useful when trying to improve motion clarity by the use of BFI or the CRT-Beam Simulator. I like that the QM8K has the R-G-B layout though, that’s cool.

Sony Bravia 9, TCL QM751G, TCL QM7K, Sony Bravia 7 - The Sony Bravia 9 is among the most accurate TVs in existence and I have the TCL QM751G so I know it can pass the test. The QM7K is actually slightly dimmer though and it also has less (albeit higher precision) dimming zones.

The Sony Bravia 7 should be a decent alternative to the TCL QM751G/QM7K but it has less dimming zones and I don’t think it’s brighter than either of them either.

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#37

It depends on how realistic you want to get with shaders. For fully accurate mask emulation, you want 100% mask strength, which can reduce brightness by more than 90% in some cases. This means you need brightness, lots of brightness.

The DisplayHDR 1000 spec is what you should be looking for. This is pretty much exclusive to MiniLED. (It’s on a few FALD LCDs but you want MiniLED- it’s basically the same thing with more dimming zones and the current tech)

If you can afford it - DisplayHDR 1000 True Black. This is only possible with the latest OLED tech and currently only found on a few high-end small screen devices (laptops, tablets).

https://displayhdr.org/certified-products/#tab-1000

I’m currently running a KTC M27P20P.

It doesn’t have the greatest build quality, and quality control on this brand is abysmal, but it has the DisplayHDR 1000 spec, and it’s affordable.

DSE is very bad on these. I had to play the panel lottery several times - out of 8 displays they sent me, only 2 were acceptable in terms of backlight uniformity. So be prepared for that. I bought this last year, so there are likely better options, now.

Shaders on this monitor absolutely blow away anything else I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing this stuff for about 15 years.

Black level with local dimming off is a bummer, I’ll admit. But HDR1000 True Black will be affordable soon, give it 5 years.

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#38

Once again, thank you very much, @Cyber and @Nesguy! I think all the bases are covered with your posts. I’ll let you know once I buy something, and I will post pictures here too, in order to help others to decide.

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#39

Here are some renditions from my TCL QM751.