Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. Products

Best Products of 2015: Home Theater

LG's 4K OLED casts inky shadows so black, they simply swallow the competition

By
best products of year home theater 2015 dt bestof lg ef9500
Image used with permission by copyright holder

best-of-2015-home-theaterWinner
LG EF9500 4K Ultra HD OLED TV

Each year, we get to review the best TVs from all of the top manufacturers. Usually, picking the “best” is an arduous task – the competition is fierce and plentiful – but making a call this year was a piece of cake. Frankly, LG’s first flat 4K Ultra HD OLED TV is everything we were hoping to get in 2015 … and then some.

Contrast is perhaps the most important aspect of a TV’s picture quality, and when it comes to contrast, OLED technology reigns supreme. Since OLED pixels are self-emitting (they make their own light) they are able to go completely black when turned off. True black is the basis for the best possible contrast, and, ultimately, picture quality.

Recommended Videos

The brightest LCD TVs in the world may dazzle with their brilliance on the short term, but OLED’s deep blacks and a complete absence of halo effect and other backlight anomalies wins out on the long term.

There is no television that can do what the LG EF9500 can do

Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic all deserve recognition for redefining what LED televisions can, do. But OLED remains vastly superior, and now a 55-inch or 65-inch OLED isn’t much more expensive than a competing flagship LED TV.

With LG’s best OLED yet, expect those perfect blacks, brilliant and luscious colors, and one of the thinnest TVs you’ve ever seen. It makes everything you watch look its absolute best. You’ll also get a slick motion-controlled remote control and our favorite smart TV interface, WebOS.

Bottom line: There is no television that can do what the LG EF9500 can do.  Own this TV, and you’ll be the envy of everyone on the block … at least until LG comes out with its next OLED TV.

Runners up

Sennheiser Orpheus

Sennheiser-Orpheus
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Don’t get hung up on the $55,000 price – yes, we know it’s more than your car – Sennheiser’s Orpheus headphone system gave us the most moving, life-altering sonic experience we’ve ever had. Imagine being placed on an emotional roller coaster where the soundtrack is the ride. More importantly, though, all the next-gen tech at work here will change headphones in the future, and that gets us really excited.

Sprout by PS Audio

Sprout-by-PS-Audio
Image used with permission by copyright holder

No audio device introduced in 2015 makes as much sense as the PS Audio Sprout. This handsome all-in-wonder is a phono preamp, headphone amp, DAC, Bluetooth receiver, and speaker amplifier, all housed in a super-handsome, compact chassis. After using it daily for six months, we’re convinced we can’t live without it.

Check out more Best Products of the Year
Topics
Caleb Denison
Caleb Denison
Editor at Large
Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison is a sought-after writer, speaker, and television correspondent with unmatched…
You have until June 9 to save $500 off an 85-inch Samsung The Frame TV
A painting being displayed on a Samsung The Frame QLED.

Looking for great TV deals? You still have time to save $500 on the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV when you head over to Samsung. It usually costs $4,300, but right now the popular and stylish TV is down to $3,800, making it more affordable than before. If you’re keen to invest in a large TV but love to save money too, this is a good opportunity. Here’s what you need to know about the TV before you decide to buy.

Why you should buy the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV
One of the best QLED TVs around, the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV is a delight in so many ways. At its core, it’s a fantastic QLED TV with 100% Color Volume with Quantum Dot technology saturating the screen with a billion colors. QLED adds a layer of quantum dots to a TV’s LED backlight with these dots, once exposed to light, emitting their own light with a high level of efficiency to provide great picture quality.

Read more
It’s your last chance to get up to $1,900 off a Samsung OLED TV
The Samsung S90C in a living room environment.

There’s still a little time left to snap up one of the best TV deals available today, with Samsung still selling the 83-inch S90C OLED TV for $3,500 instead of $5,400. The $1,900 discount is a pretty vast one and one that you certainly don’t want to skip. If you’re looking for a great new TV for your large living space, you’re going to love this deal. Let’s take a look at how great the Samsung S90C OLED TV is.

Why you should buy the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV
Samsung makes some of the best TVs around and we’re huge fans of the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV. It has an OLED panel so you get self-lit pixels which can light up independently of each other. That means that you can enjoy the deepest blacks and the brightest colors all on the same scene, ensuring you never miss a detail. The Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV uses a Neural Quantum Processor with 4K upscaling so its AI-powered processor can transform whatever you’re watching. There’s also HDR OLED which uses AI deep learning to analyze each scene, detecting areas that need to brighter, darker, or simply richer in color.

Read more
This Sonos Bluetooth speaker has a discount in time for beach weather
Sonos Roam SL in black on a rainy rock outdoors.

A day out at the beach. Cooking outside using a discounted grill or smoker. Pool party madness. What do they all three have in common? A lot of fun, but also a great chance to get any sound equipment ruined by a sudden downpour or a splash of inevitable water. That's why there are models of waterproof Bluetooth speakers, of which the Sonos Roam SL is one. And the good news is that you can get yours at a discounted rate before summer officially gets here. Right now, the Sonos Roam SL is just $127, which is $33 down from its typical price of $160. To get yours, all you need to do is tap the button below. Consider also reading below, as we examine the speaker and see why it is considered an easy pick up.

Why you should buy the Sonos Roam SL
The Sonos Roam SL is an easy-to-use, compact speaker for wherever you roam. Connect to it easily over Wi-Fi at home or Bluetooth on the go, giving you easy options to control the sound in a way that makes sense for you and your location. If you're at home and connected to your Wi-Fi system and have other Sonos speakers, you can even get the Sonos multi-room experience, which syncs everything in a nice way. So, you can keep the Sonos Roam SL out on the patio (where it might get rained upon) and keep the best Sonos speakers indoors and have a really cool, worry-free party experience that not many others will be able to replicate.

Read more