Everybody loves a bargain, but a cheaper TV doesn't always turn out to be a better deal.

That's what we found in our analysis of three years of Consumer Reports TV ratings. Our crack team of statisticians looked at average prices and CR test results from 2014 through 2016 for major TV brands sold in the United States. The results are shown in several charts below, broken out by screen size, the first factor consumers usually consider when shopping for a television.

As you can see, TVs from Samsung, LG, and Sony earned top scores in our testing across just about every size range. And generally, sets from these companies cost more than their competitors' TVs.

From there, prices and average brand scores tend to drop off in step with each other, according to our analysis. Some brands, notably Haier and Westinghouse, tended to trail the others in both quality and price.

The takeaway: While it’s tempting to get a much cheaper TV from a lesser-known brand, especially during big sales events, you could be accepting a steep trade-off in quality.

What's Behind These Charts

First, we evaluated overall brand performance, which is how many consumers make buying decisions. But performance can vary by series and even model within a single brand. It pays to consult our ratings for the particular set you’re thinking of buying.

Additionally, companies evolve over time. For instance, Panasonic scored well in the bigger screen sizes in the earlier years of our analysis, largely due to plasma sets that the company has since stopped making. Some lower-price TV makers, notably TCL, have improved in our testing recently.

Here’s one more conclusion: There’s often little need to settle for poor performance just because you're on a budget, especially if you’re looking for a smaller TV. In some size categories there are only small price differences between the highest- and lowest-performing brands.

32-Inch TVs

As you can see in the chart below, LG and Samsung lead the pack, in terms of both price and performance, with Haier and TCL trailing other brands. The brands in the middle—Vizio, Toshiba, and Sharp—appear to offer a nice balance of price and performance, but you may not have to pay much more for an LG, which scored better. Samsung's average price is considerably higher.

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39- to 43-Inch TVs

There's a pretty big spread in both price and performance in this screen size. Perhaps the lesson is that you don't always get what you pay for. While there aren't a lot of surprises—Sony, LG, and Samsung offer the best performance—we do see a few brands, including Hisense and TCL, move closer to the middle of the pack.

You could argue that Insignia offers the best bang for the buck in this size category if you don't demand top picture quality. The brand performs about as well as some better-known labels, such as Vizio, JVC, and Sharp, but its TVs cost considerably less.



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