The truth is that TVs are cheaper than ever if you look at their capabilities. You can get a budget TV these days that outperform or match premium models from just a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean a new TV is cheap in absolute terms.
Which is why the used TV market is a great place to look for hidden gems. TVs lose their value fast, so you can often find a really nice set with years of life left in it for less than half of its new cost. However, these following types of TV should have you walking by without making eye contact.
Plasma TVs
I still have very fond memories of my 720p 51-inch Samsung plasma TV, which got me through the entire 1080p LCD TV era. I just could not abide how ugly and washed out LCDs were and not even 1080p could sway me. So I jumped directly from a 720p plasma to a 4K HDR LCD—which was quite a leap!
Plasmas were the OLEDs of their day, with amazing vibrant color, perfect blacks, and extremely fast response times. I’m constantly tempted by old 50 to 65 inch units that show up on sites like Facebook Marketplace for prices like $75 or $100. It’s very tempting. I keep thinking about how these TVs would be perfect for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games, or 1080p Blu-ray movies, which don’t have HDR and therefore aren’t affected by the lack of HDR in these plasma TVs.
The thing is, the last plasma TVs were manufactured in 2015, which means that the newest model you could get would be a decade old, and likely older than that. Plasma TVs are heavy, prone to burn-in, use a lot of power that mostly gets dumped as heat, and fade with use over time. Which means the used plasma you buy today won’t really give you the same experience. I guess if you found a mint unit that doesn’t have a lot of hours on it and is burn-in free it might be worth it for the uses I’ve mentioned, but 99% of the time I’d steer clear unless you’re a retro display nerd.
First-Generation 4K TVs
The first 4K UHD TVs became available to the public around 2013, which is not a long time ago. It’s not strange for people to keep a TV for a decade before selling it, so you may see quite a few of these TVs from the early years of 4K UHD for sale on the used market.
The problem here is that these TVs might seem quite modern because they offer 4K resolution, but not only do you have to deal with the awful LCD and LCD backlight technology of the era, but also a dearth of modern features. These TVs might not have smart features, and even if they did it probably doesn’t work anymore. That can be seen as a positive, of course, but it’s worth mentioning.
A bigger issue is a lack of HDR support, and even if it is an early HDR model, the HDR performance is probably horrendous. Even a high-end 4K TV from 2013 is going to be obliterated by cheap modern miniLEDs
I still have my first 4K HDR TV from 2016, and it looks awful now. I use it as a picture frame above our bar, or for guests to watch if we have people over. I was so impressed with it when it was new, but by modern standards it’s not worth it unless someone is giving it away for free.
Old “Smart” TVs
I’ve sort of touched on this already, but old smart TVs that don’t get software updates anymore and can’t support the latest versions of streaming apps are probably to be avoided. Now, I make a point of never using built-in smart apps if I can help it, and I’d rather use an OTT box like the Apple TV.
If you also prefer to use an OTT streaming box, then this is perhaps not the dealbreaker is appears to be, but if a TV is old enough to be outside of its support cycle it’s probably not a great TV anyway.
TVs With Known Burn-In Issues (Especially OLED)
OLEDs are much cheaper these days than in the past, and I think most people on mid-range budgets will probably have no issue affording, for example, a B-series LG OLED.
Still, I myself have looked at OLED TVs on the used market at excellent prices and have been tempted to grab one for use as a gaming monitor or a bedroom TV. Now, I’m not actually going to say not to ever buy a used OLED, because there are some good bargains out there, but you should never buy an OLED TV sight-unseen.
Go see the TV in person, and either take a test pattern video on a flash drive, or load up a burn-in test YouTube video to check that the screen is uniform, has no burn-in, and no dead pixels.
Even if an older OLED model seems fine, remember that burn-in risk goes up with older models. Newer OLEDs are much more resistant since this is a key area that each generation tries to improve. So while that used OLED might not have burn-in, it could develop it pretty quickly if it’s a much older model and you don’t take special precautions.
Off-Brand or Store-Brand Models
Believe me, I understand that sometimes we need to buy the cheapest thing that works, and there’s nothing wrong with buying a “house brand” TV brand new from the store if that’s what you need in a pinch. However, buying one of these low-end TVs new means you at least have some sort of warranty and recourse if something goes wrong.
These TVs are cheap for a reason, and it’s not just that they have sub-par performance, but that the quality control isn’t as good as more expensive TVs. So buying a no-name or store-brand TV used gives you all the downsides that come with these cheap TVs, with none of the upsides.
TVs Without HDR Support
It’s rare to find a TV these days that won’t take an HDR signal, though plenty of cheaper TVs don’t actually produce a true HDR image. Either way, a TV that doesn’t support HDR in any form is usually something to avoid. People think that the move to 4K was the biggest visual upgrade, but actually HDR had a much larger impact. It’s just that 4K and HDR almost always go together, so people associate them with one another.
HDR TVs, even ones that don’t meet the criteria for true HDR standards, offer better color and contrast than old SDR flat panels. Besides, if a TV doesn’t have HDR support, it’s probably old enough to have other issues like old LCD technology with poor image quality. So give it a skip.
Very Small TV Sizes
While I’ve wished that small TVs would come back, the truth is that anything under 32-inches is effectively off the market, and I think 32-inch models are pretty rare now as well, with 42–48-inch TVs qualifying as “small” these days.
This means that if you’re looking at a TV of 32-inches or smaller on the used market, it’s probably so old that the picture will be awful, even if it was a high-end model at the time. In general, these small TVs also happened to be budget models though, which meant they were bad even when they were new. If you really need something in that size, you might be better off buying an old computer monitor and connecting a TV streaming box or a computer to it.
TVs With Physical Damage or Repairs
I see this a lot on used goods sites. TVs that the seller says are perfectly good, but there’s a line down one side of the screen, or the TV sometimes turns itself off, or there’s some other “minor” issue with it.
Look, sometimes a TV really has a cheap and easy fault that can be fixed. My father-in-law’s 65-inch Samsung plasma TV just needed a new power supply and it’s still trucking. However. if the fix really is that cheap and easy, the seller would have done it already.
In particular, if there’s something wrong with the panel itself, that means the panel has to be replaced. That’s the biggest and most expensive part of the TV. When my 75-inch Samsung TV’s panel died literally a month out of warranty (thanks Samsung) the cost of replacing it was almost as much as a new TV, so I just bought a new TV instead. So save yourself the trouble and only buy TVs in good working order, unless you’re a TV repair expert of course.
Buying a new TV is already a minefield, so you can imagine the extra pitfalls on the used market don’t make things any easier. However, if you have reasonsable expectations, and do your research, you’ll probably walk away with a good TV that will serve you for years to come.