SerpApi.Org
2026 is quite the momentous year: not only is What Hi-Fi? celebrating its 50th birthday, but it's also 100 years since the TV was first invented by John Logie Baird in 1926.
The way TV technology (along with broadcast, film and smart features) has progressed over the past century is nothing short of astonishing: chunky CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs gave way to slimmer LCDs and then even slimmer OLEDs, while screen resolution has gone from cosy standard definition to widespread 4K to futuristic 8K.
We have seen the birth and death of plasma TV, while in 2001, What Hi-Fi? entered a new era of Sound and Vision to expand our coverage to TV/home cinema alongside hi-fi and audio. The 2000s also marked a historic time in broadcast TV as the UK switched from analogue to digital, and the introduction of Full HD resolution was a turning point in TV screen technology that paved the way for constant innovation and advancement in the 21st century.
The What Hi-Fi? review team has been at the forefront of all these technologies, and we've sifted through our magazine archives from the 2000s to today to find the very first instances of when a new TV format of the 21st century – Full HD, OLED, 3D, 4K, 8K and beyond – entered our test rooms to get the full review treatment.
They may not have been the best examples of each TV tech, but they were the very first of their kind to show off just what a new screen technology, format and resolution could offer.
NOTE: To read the full-size text of the magazine images below, click on the arrow sign on the bottom-left corner, and in some cases, further click on 'view original' at the bottom-right corner.
LCD 1080p: Sharp LC-45GD1E (2005)
In today's fast-paced world of constant cutting-edge technology, it's hard to imagine just how big a deal the advent of Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution was.
Standard TV broadcast was a mere 720 x 576 resolution, and we were perfectly happy with that on the 25-/32-inch CRTs and widescreen LCD tellies that were popular throughout the 90s. Freeview's digital terrestrial service started in 2002 in the UK, while the first "high-definition" BBC HD and Sky HD channels launched in May 2006.
For the best part of the 2000s, most LCD and plasma TVs were 'HD-Ready'. These TVs' native resolution was 1280 x 720 (or 768), but they were able to accept 1080i/1080p videos, and would simply downscale the picture to fit the lower resolution screen.
The first flatscreen LCD TV we encountered with a native 1080p Full HD resolution was this Sharp LC-45GD1E in 2005. We said the picture looked "stunning" when fed Full HD video from a home cinema PC, and that it displayed "an extraordinary absence of noise and motion-smearing."
It was less successful when upscaling standard definition content – a contrast to how advanced upscaling tech has become when dealing with 8K TVs (see below) – and we said cheaper, smaller 42-inch plasma TVs coped better here.
The Sharp's higher resolution came at a premium – £5500 for a 45-inch LCD TV! – so we deemed it more for the "connoisseur" rather than an "everyday TV." Besides, it really needed Full HD content to look its best, and that was hard to come by at the time.
Plasma 1080p: Pioneer PDP-5000EX (2006)
In the 2000s, plasma versus LCD was about as heated as, well, OLED versus LCD is today. Fujitsu launched the first commercial plasma TV in 1997, but it was the legendary Pioneer Kuro sets that everyone still remembers fondly as the peak of plasma screen technology.
Back in 2006, Pioneer was also the first to provide us with a plasma screen that finally did native Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution. Despite us having already experienced Full HD resolution in LCD TVs, this Pioneer PDP-5000EX was the first set to offer "full 1080p compatibility... with the appropriate input interference" to accept Blu-ray and HD-DVD picture.
Our praise was effusive: "staggering picture quality", "this is the best plasma ever made", "this is what the telly looks like in heaven" – we weren't kidding when we said Full HD resolution wowed us in a way that we never thought possible.
With over two million pixels on screen, we found the definition "extraordinary". When fed 1080p content, the picture was "bright, sharp, colourful and consistently lustrous" and it also coped well with standard-def broadcasts.
Anyone wanting this premium new tech would have to cough up £7000 (a trend for every new TV technology, as we'll see below), but it showed just how revolutionary this new Full HD resolution was to the future of TV as we know it.
OLED: Sony XEL-1 (2008)
LCD and plasma TVs were widespread at the dawn of the new millennium, but a new panel technology – one that was close in spirit to the beloved plasma – was about to change the course of TVs forever.
Like plasma, OLED panels don't need a backlight. Instead, they use self-emissive organic light-emitting diodes that generate their own (white) light, which is put through a colour filter.
The advantage is that when an OLED pixel is turned off, it is truly off and therefore pitch-black. This results in perfect blacks without any hint of backlight bleeding through the image, superior contrast, and richer, punchier colours. Not needing an extra backlight panel meant OLED screens could be much thinner than LCD TVs, too.
The downsides are that the pixels have a limited shelf life due to their organic nature, they can't go quite as bright as LCDs, and at the beginning, larger screens weren't possible to produce due to the difficult nature of manufacturing these panels.
The Sony XEL-1 was the world's first OLED TV. It launched in 2007, with a screen size of just 11 inches and a depth of just 3mm. It boasted a high contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, while the display resolution was a paltry 960 x 540.
We covered its launch news in the May 2008 issue, which looked at the next-gen TVs entering the market. In 2009, in "the next big thing" TV feature (fifth slide in gallery above), we learned of 21- and 27-inch prototypes of the Sony OLED, while the XEL-1 got even skinnier at just 0.9mm!
Sadly, we haven't been able to find any other coverage or review of this Sony XEL-1 in our magazine archives. It would be a good few years yet before a full-size, full-production OLED TV hit our test rooms, while Sony finally entered the OLED market proper with the stunning A1 (KD-55A1) OLED TV in 2017.
3D TV: Samsung UE40C7000 (2010)
3D wasn't a new technology by any means in 2010. Cinemagoers had been experiencing it since before the television was even invented, with 1922's silent feature The Power Of Love widely considered to be the first commercially released 3D film, shown at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles.
Why would anyone want to watch 3D films at home, while wearing bulky glasses that needed charging? Was it headache-inducing or was it an immersive experience for films and gaming? The jury was split when we tested Samsung's UE40C7000, the first 3D TV to hit the What Hi-Fi? test rooms.
You needed a 3D disc and a Blu-ray player compatible with the format to make the picture (Samsung's own BD-C6900 3D player and a 3D Blu-ray of Monsters vs Aliens, in this case), but it did offer a genuine "depth of field" that was suitably three-dimensional.
If you didn't care about 3D at all, however, then the Samsung UE40C7000 was also a very fine TV in its own right. Across terrestrial TV, DVD and Blu-ray, this 40-inch LCD TV delivered "epic levels of detail", with a subtle colour palette that handled skin tones particularly well. Motion handling was impressively smooth, and the edge-lit LED backlighting balanced black levels, highlights and details well.
An "overall impression of unshakeable solidity" is high praise indeed for this five-star 3D TV.
Read the full review: Samsung UE40C7000
4K LCD TV: Toshiba 55ZL2 (2012)
The Toshiba 55ZL2 made headlines for being the first glasses-free 3D TV – that is, you wouldn't need to wear bulky active or passive 3D glasses to see the picture in three dimensions; the Toshiba's integrated camera and lens technology would track your eye movements and do the hard work for you!
It worked, but with caveats. The subtle depth of field was nice, it was less fatiguing on the eyes, and the picture didn't experience a drop in brightness as it did with 3D glasses. But the tech did require you to sit completely still; any fidgeting or movement would lead to a drop-off in focus, definition and 3D effect, which was less than ideal.
But who cares about 3D? Because the Toshiba 55ZL2 was also the very first 4K TV screen we tested, back when the new reality of "four times the resolution of Full HD/1080p" was still in its earliest stages.
There was no mainstream 4K content yet (and wouldn't be for a long, long time), but Toshiba's 4K picture hinted at what was to come. Fed some demo content of flowers, landscapes, and cityscapes from a hard drive, we said: "native 3840 x 2160 images look, frankly, astonishing. Detail levels are absolutely sky-high, and the most complex patterns remain steady and stable with the sort of casual efficiency that’s the mark of a properly effective device."
With Blu-ray and DVD films, the Toshiba TV's colour balance was "expertly judged", and we praised its black depth for being "excellent by the prevailing standards of LED-backlit LCD screens."
Costing £7000, the cutting-edge 55ZL2 was considerably more expensive than your standard Full HD 55-inch TV at the time, but nowhere near as expensive as the £25,000 84-inch Sony 4K and LG 4K LCD TVs that would hit the market later that same year.
For actual 4K content, we had to wait for another three years: in August 2015, BT Sport Ultra HD launched as the UK's first 4K channel, while the first few 4K Blu-ray discs hit the market in 2016.
Read the full review: Toshiba 55ZL2
Curved OLED: Samsung KE55S9C (2013)
Curved OLED TVs were a short-lived fad, not helped by the fact that you couldn't wall-mount them, viewing angles weren't great for anyone not sitting dead centre of the screen, and the early models quickly became outdated as they didn't support the upcoming 4K resolution.
But the Samsung KE55S9C is notable not for its curved screen, but because it was actually our first time seeing the OLED panel technology on a large screen beyond a mere 11 inches.
As with 3D, the test team argued about the curved screen continuously. Some found it a "distracting gimmick" as the picture distorted according to the curvature when viewing it from the side, while others (those sitting dead centre) found the curve led to greater immersion.
The frame surrounding the 55-inch screen also served as a (rather large) stand, and it was more curved than the screen itself, adding to the illusion. "That curve" was listed as both a Pro and a Con in our review.
What we all agreed on, though, was that OLED looked stunning, handling contrast far better than any LCD TV we had seen. "Dark scenes are some of the deepest and blackest we’ve seen, genuinely resembling the absence of light," we enthused, even if we would have liked subtler shading and variation in the extremes. Colours were rich and vibrant, while the picture was also crisp and clear.
Did we recommend it? Its "prohibitively expensive" £7000 price tag was three times that of our favourite 55-inch plasma at the time, and we can't imagine most people beyond early adopters took the plunge.
We didn't "really understand why we’re seeing curved OLED sets before flat ones" either, but it did point to an exciting future for OLED TVs.
Read the full review: Samsung KE55S9C
4K OLED: LG 55EG960V (2015)
We never tested the £10,000 LG 55EM970V OLED that first arrived in the UK in 2013, but in 2015 we did finally get to test a TV that combined two picture technologies we had been waiting on for years: 4K Ultra HD resolution and OLED.
And the LG 55EG960V was "everything we hoped it would be", delivering the two new technologies with "spectacular results" in a living room-friendly 55-inch screen size. The intensely pitch-dark blacks contrast brilliantly against bright whites, while the 8.3 million pixels on screen were delivered with crystal-clear and precise detail.
"The depth of colours is breathtaking. They aren’t just richer, there are simply more precise shades of them on the screen, giving a wonderfully vivid feel to the picture," we said. There were more subtleties revealed in the deep blacks than before, and while upscaling standard definition content was a little fuzzy around the edges, it was still a punchy picture.
Yes, it was also gently curved (but you could wall-mount it), it did convincing 3D, and its thin screen with floating effect looked rather "gorgeous", too. It was still more expensive than equivalent LCD sets, so we couldn't yet definitely say that OLED was better and better-value.
We can now, though, as OLED has gone from strength to strength and become more affordable in the past decade, delivering even more impressive picture quality with greater subtlety and accuracy alongside unrivalled deep blacks and punchy contrast – from the wildly popular and affordable LG C5 to our TV & AV Editor Tom Parsons' current favourite, the Sony Bravia 8 II.
Read the full review: LG 55EG960V
8K: Samsung QE85Q900R 8K QLED (2018)
Unlike the world of hi-fi, TV manufacturers are in a constant state of innovation and of pushing the boundaries of screen technology. It took ages for 4K UHD broadcasts, streams and discs to become a reality since the first time the screen tech was proposed, but it wasn't long after that 8K was being touted as "the next big thing."
Samsung got there first, with the QE85Q900R 8K QLED hitting our test rooms in 2018. The LED-backlit quantum dot screen (Samsung was still staunchly against using OLED then) had a mind-blowing 33 million pixels to 4K's eight, with this mammoth 85-inch set offering "the same pixel density (104ppi) as a 43-inch 4K model".
4K has pretty high resolution, but if you sit too close to the screen, you can start to see the individual pixels. The advantage of 8K was that you could sit as close to the screen as you want – we sat even a foot away – and still not see any pixels. With native 8K content provided by Samsung, it looked fabulous.
"Predictably, it’s all about sharpness and detail. The image is unbelievably lifelike, and draws you in to an extent that 4K simply can’t match. Naturally, it’s helped by the sheer scale of the 85-inch display – this is cinematic and then some."
The AI-based upscaling technology was almost as impressive, as it had to effectively "make up" so much of the picture on screen when watching 4K, Full HD or DVD content, which was sharp and detailed with no discernible "artefacts, shimmer or noise".
The problems? It's 85-bloody-inches massive, and black levels simply weren't deep enough, with backlight blooming issues pervading the screen.
Also, there was no actual 8K content and, eight years on, there still isn't any. 8K resolution remains an impressive technical feat, but without the practical availability of broadcasts or films (the sheer size of the file/disc needed to accommodate those 33 million pixels doesn't bear thinking), it's unlikely to overtake 4K resolution in the home in the foreseeable future.
Read the full review: Samsung QE85Q900R 8K QLED
Micro LED: Samsung 75-inch Micro LED 4K TV (2019)
While arch-rival LG was leading the way with OLED during the 2010s, Samsung was staunchly working on advancing LED-backlit LCD panel technology, such as its Quantum Dot Mini LED display.
In 2018, though, the brand veered away from LCD in spectacular fashion, with Micro LED, which made its debut at CES in Las Vegas that January.
Micro LED uses tiny, non-organic self-emitting diodes for each pixel, so it's capable of producing the perfect blacks we love from OLED, while also theoretically delivering brighter images, greater colour control, and a longer lifespan of 100,000 hours (just over 11 years of constant use).
Thanks to its modular architecture (each Micro LED screen is constructed using a number of small modules arranged in a grid pattern), these early Micro LED TVs could span huge sizes. They could be even thinner than OLED, too, and their inorganic nature meant they could be left on permanently – great for commercial purposes.
Since then, non-modular, more typical TV-style Micro LED screens have been produced by Samsung, but prices have remained staunchly sky-high – the 146-inch 4K version of Samsung's The Wall Micro LED TV will set you back an eye-watering £199,999 in the UK. Needless to say, both production and adoption of Micro LED haven't been widespread beyond B2B applications.
We did get to see a 75-inch Samsung 4K Micro LED model in 2019, and it gave us an insight into the complexity of its manufacturing process, as well as a taste of its potential picture quality.
The demo footage we saw gave us an impression of "stunningly punchy and vibrant image with truly exceptional colours. Everything looks real and life-like to an extent we've genuinely not experienced before."
"Perfect" bright whites contrast against "perfect" black backgrounds, while there is subtlety amongst the colours too, and viewing angles remain consistent no matter where we were in the room.
Micro LED TVs might well be the true successor to OLED, but even now, they're hard to get hold of at any sensible size, and they're well beyond the means of most people who aren't Premier League footballers.
Read the full hands-on review: Samsung 75-inch Micro LED 4K TV
RGB Mini LED: Hisense UR9 (2026)
With Micro LED parked, TV manufacturers have focused on advancing the backlight quality of LCD TVs, and so RGB Mini LED is the current TV technology du jour.
Unlike conventional Mini LED TVs that use a white backlight shining through a colour filter layer, RGB Mini LED uses independent red, green and blue Mini LEDs to generate colour directly. The result? Brighter pictures and more accurate colour reproduction.
Does that make RGB Mini LED an OLED-killer?
Not quite, at least not yet. Hisense led the charge here, with the Hisense UR9 (65UR9STUK) being the first RGB Mini LED we tested earlier this year, ahead of Sony's recent Bravia 9 II effort. The Hisense UR9 showcases a stable, consistent and controlled picture, with none of the flickering or shifting behaviour we find distracting on traditional backlit TVs. Subtle blooming effects are nicely controlled, too.
We praised the Hisense RBG Mini LED TV's ability to display "consistently strong" black depth, noting "impressive richness and stability to colours", while extra-bright HDR content is delivered with dazzling intensity.
It's impressive stuff for an LCD TV, but it still doesn't quite achieve the three-dimensional quality and solidity of a price-equivalent OLED screen. Deep black levels, subtle colour gradations and even the perception of bright whites against inky blacks are better reproduced on Sony's current best OLED TV.
"Despite its impressive local-dimming system," we said, "the Hisense simply cannot match the pixel-level contrast control of the Sony Bravia 8 II."
Read the full review: Hisense UR9 (65UR9STUK)
Over a decade on, and OLED still rules the roost when it comes to picture technology. Brands have also looked to advance OLED panel technology, with LG Display producing ever-brighter W-OLED panels and Samsung Display firing back with also-ever-brighter versions of its competing QD-OLED technology.
Considering how revolutionary Full HD felt in the 2000s – which was four times the resolution of standard def, which is the same jump in resolution between Full HD and 4K – it has been an astonishing rate of advancement for screen technology.
What will the next 50 years of TV look like? Considering the stunning picture quality available to us these days, it should look pretty darn spectacular.
MORE:
The best TVs of What Hi-Fi?'s lifetime
Our guide to the best TVs of 2026: flagship OLEDs and budget Mini LED sets tried and tested
22 of the best film scenes to test picture quality
How to optimise your 4K TV settings for Blu-ray, DVD and TV viewing
Like this article? For more stories like this, follow us on MSN by clicking the +Follow button at the top of this page.
