TVs Might Be Getting Too Bright Now

The arrival of HDR was a revelation, and for a long time TVs struggled to reach the brightness needed to make this new video standard shine, but now thanks to a relentless brightness war, even entry-level TVs can reach heights only high-end sets could dream of before.

In fact, thanks to the latest innovations in backlight technology and improvements to OLED brightness by stacking OLED panels on top of each other, the brightest TVs you can buy are very bright. We’re talking 3,000 to 5,000 nits! To top it all off, in 2025 there have been several TVs announced with a claimed peak brightness of 10,000 nits (via Wired). So is this progress, or is it madness?

The Brightness Arms Race

For years, TV makers have been locked in a heated battle to literally outshine each other. Contrast is one of the key factors in perceived image quality, and you can improve it by lowering black levels, raising brightness, or both. This is why, historically, OLEDs have been able to get away with relatively low brightness levels, because they can achieve perfect black levels by virtue of how the technology works.

A beautiful 4K HDR TV hanging in a living room.

Peak brightness on a TV was never really a big deal until HDR (High Dynamic Range) came into the picture. This raises the target peak brightness for elements in the scene significantly over SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) and so HDR content is mastered at certain target levels. Typically, this is 1,000 nits, or 4,000 nits. However, the format does allow for mastering at up to 10,000 nits.

Remember that this doesn’t mean the entire screen is that bright, but just that elements on the screen such as flames or laser blasts can get there.

Peak brightness is a number TV makers love to put front and center, because we’ve been trained to think that a brighter TV is a better TV, but the truth is more complicated than that, and there is such as a thing as being too bright!

HDR Done Right vs. HDR Overkill

A TV and a color wheel in the center with the HDR10+ symbol.

HDR was never meant to turn your living room into a tanning booth. Proper HDR uses brightness selectively—to add sparkle to highlights, draw your eye to specular details, and create a sense of depth. It’s the contrast between light and dark that gives HDR its power.

So first and foremost, a TV that touts a higher brightness level as a selling point might be achieving that number at the cost of image quality. What’s the use of better overall brightness measured by a solid white box on a screen when your whites are blown out, shadows are crushed, and colors take a hit? As more TVs start to come out with more nits than the content we have is even mastered for, it’s clear we need a better way to assess and think about TV brightness.

Eye Strain and Comfort

The TCL C6K showing a nature documentary.

Both of my current TVs (one OLED and one mini-LED) have peak brightness levels close to 1,000 nits. Like most people, I tend to watch shows and movies in the evening in a dark room, and when watching HDR content, 1,000 nits peak brightness is already more than enough to make me squint and strain my eyes. Watching content mastered for 3-4K nits is undoubtedly breathtaking on a TV that can match those numbers, but it’s also pretty tiring.

If I’m being honest, even on my two humble sets, I tend to turn the brightness way down at night, and I’ve never had an issue with normal daytime lighting and image visibility. So that does make me wonder what the point of a 5,000 or 10,000 nit TV would be for the vast majority of us, especially given that there is no virtually content mastered for it. Even if it were, would my eyes enjoy looking at a white-hot 10K nits spot on a screen? Somehow I doubt that, though I fully intend to subject my eyeballs to it the first chance I get. For science, of course.

Power Consumption and Heat

My LG CS OLED happily eats 150W as I watch a movie, with all the power-saving stuff turned off, which mainly works by reducing your brightness anyway. This is for a 55-inch set, which is small by modern standards. The biggest power hog in a TV is the production of photons, and I can only imagine a 5,000 nits TV working to its full potential putting a significant dent in your power bill.

Not only that, but a certain percentage of your TV’s power turns into heat instead of light, although modern TVs of all types are pretty efficient in this regard. However, as the peak brightness goes up, so does that base level of heat. We might get back to the days of plasma TVs, where I loved leaving my plasma on all day in winter, because it heated up our apartment nicely.

When Brightness Actually Matters

I have recently discovered that some of my North American colleagues actually use TVs outdoors, such as on a covered porch next to the pool. While I can’t discount that I was told this as some sort of prank, if you want to watch TV outside or (more likely) in a brightly-lit room, then TV brightness does make a big difference. I’m not sure if you need 5,000 nits, but the typical 1000-nit OLED or LCD TV would probably struggle in truly bright conditions.

The Balance Problem

In isolation, it’s not that big of a deal that the latest TVs are pushing such high brightness numbers, even if, in the end, you can’t comfortably use that brightness to its full potential in practical terms, or find content that’s mastered for it. However, good picture quality comes from a balance between contrast, color, tone mapping, and image processing.

A well-calibrated TV at moderate brightness can look more natural and pleasing than the “brightest” one on the shelf. Sadly, manufacturers know that “2,000 nits” sells better than “well-balanced brightness tracking,” so the spec sheet wars continue as it has in so many other product categories. Remember when consoles were marketed based on how many “bits” they had?

Diminishing Returns

Brightness will always matter to some degree, especially as HDR evolves. But like megapixels in cameras or gigahertz in CPUs, there’s a point where more doesn’t necessarily mean better. Personally, I think we’re already hitting that point with TVs—where the technical capability of these sets exceeds what’s practical or even pleasant to look at with human eyes.

Just like 8K doesn’t give enough of a return on image quality to make it worth it, pushing brightness, especially peak brightness measured in a tiny window in an artificial test, will only go so far before it becomes effectively meaningless.