If money really is an issue, but you still want a large TV that can handle your PC games, the NU7100 series from Samsung is your savior. You can pick it up for less than $400 for the 50" model, and you can save even more money on smaller versions, but the performance you get is well above average. With game mode enabled, this TV manages a 120Hz refresh rate with a 15ms response time, which is very much the average for TVs that are double the price of this one. So, you're getting excellent performance for what you pay.

The HDR and 4K pictures are good too, although not as mind-blowing as you'd get from an OLED or QLED. Then again, you're paying roughly a quarter of the price. You get all Samsung's smart features built into this TV too, such as the mobile app, Bluetooth sharing, a universal TV guide, and all that kind of stuff. What's more, the NU7100 also has Steamlink, which is super handy for PC gaming, and the panel itself is fast enough to keep up with the majority of games.

While this TV won't wow guests, or have the best viewing angles for parties or whole-household use, it's a great one to replace a gaming monitor, or to host a smaller PC built into a living room set-up. You wouldn't pair it with a $2500+ gaming PC, but it's amazing value for anyone looking to have it as part of a second-TV set-up or a less powerful PC display.

How we test gaming TVs

In assessing all of the main TVs around for their gaming capabilities, we focused on four main performance elements.

First, input lag: how long a screen takes to render image data received at its inputs. This is critically important to gamers. Input lag was checked with HDR, SDR, 4K and HD game feeds to check there were no major anomalies between different sources (there weren’t with any of our selected TVs).

We checked input lag in two ways: using a Leo Bodnar input lag measuring device, and photographically, where we split a video feed of a running timer into the TV we’re testing and a reference BenQ gaming monitor, take a photo, and then see how far the time reading on the TV was behind the reading on the reference monitor.

The photographic method enables us to spot potential moment to moment variations in input lag that some TVs suffer with, and which the Bodnar device doesn’t provide.

Next, we considered contrast. How well a display is able to reproduce the darkest and brightest parts of a gaming image is essential to a truly satisfying game experience. Especially now many games are supporting the expanded brightness range associated with HDR. As part of the contrast assessment, we also looked for issues such as flickering brightness levels and backlight ‘blooming’ around bright objects.

As part of the contrast testing, we measured each TV’s peak light output using an X-Rite i1 Display Pro light meter. This lets us know how far a set can go towards achieving the sort of extreme brightness levels HDR gaming is capable of.

Colour performance was also carefully scrutinized, paying attention to the richness, balance, consistency, freedom from striping noise and authenticity of the tones being shown. Pretty much all HDR material also carries a wider colour range than the old standard dynamic range format we’ve been stuck with for so many years. This can have a transformative effect on game graphics, making them look both more lifelike and more dramatic/three dimensional.

Finally, we looked a motion and sharpness. We mention these together as to some extent they’re related. If a TV suffers badly with judder or blurring when you’re panning around in Fortnite or hurtling into the scenery in Forza Horizon 3, that’s going to affect the picture’s sense of sharpness significantly. We also studied ultra-detailed but relatively static 4K game graphics looking for signs of softness, shimmering noise, ever-enthusiastic edge-enhancements, grain or any lack of depth and three-dimensionality that might be caused by a TV being unable to deliver enough color finesse to ‘match’ the number of pixels in the screen.