OLED TV Prices Continue to Fall

[ThrobProng]

65 inch Samsung OLED at Best Buy for $1000:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung...?skuId=6536964

65 inches is on the small side (that's what she said), but that's a good deal. I'm sure larger models will follow suit before long.

[htismaqe]

All screens are dropping. Shit, Walmart is selling 55" sets for $138.

[ThrobProng]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

All screens are dropping. Shit, Walmart is selling 55" sets for $138.

Yeah, it's crazy. I've been watching OLED prices for a while now, waiting for 75-85 inch models to drop to a price I don't mind paying. They're getting close.

[Mecca]

TV's are literally the one item in our society that has dropped in price, you can go look at all the graphs and it's literally the one product that has become more affordable.

[ThrobProng]

Originally Posted by Mecca

TV's are literally the one item in our society that has dropped in price, you can go look at all the graphs and it's literally the one product that has become more affordable.

I'm sure there's an eggheaded economic reason for that, but it's interesting.

[lawrenceRaider]

Originally Posted by ThrobProng

I'm sure there's an eggheaded economic reason for that, but it's interesting.

Product life cycle.

[tredadda]

I wasn’t even aware that Samsung made OLEDs. I thought they had their QLED which was supposed to be close to an OLED. $1000 for that TV is not a bad price at all.

[arrowheadnation]

I bought the top of the line 83" LG OLED at best buy for $3000 about 2 years ago for my mancave. It was the best one they had in the store (I already had a Samsung QLED in my family room). About 6 months ago I was working from home in my basement and had the TV on in the background. For the first time ever living in this house, the basement family room breaker flipped (and it's never flipped since). I flipped it back and everything but the TV came back on. Sure enough, the "warranty" ran out ONE WEEK prior to this happening. I had a geek squad guy come by to fix it and he was cool. He told me, "look man, it's either the power board or the full on logic board. If it's the power board, it will be about $300 to fix. If it's the latter, $1500." He then told me if it were him, he'd try swapping out the powerboard first by following a youtube video. I bought a board off of ebay for $90. Had a buddy help me tip the TV over. We swapped it out in about 30 min and it worked like a charm. That being said, I'm still done with LG. I had always been a samsung guy but figured I'd try the LG because all of my techy buddies recommended it. All that being said, those cheap TV's they sell on black friday are specially built with cheap/inferior parts specifically for Black Friday. They get the job done. I bought a 55 inch one 5 years ago and have been using it as my computer monitor ever since.

[jd1020]

Went to Best Buy to see on the off chance if they still had one of these on the floor. They did not. However, they had one 55" S95C tucked in between a bunch of current model S90/95D models with a tag on it for $760. I nearly pulled the trigger on that because that is an absolute STUPID deal. Ultimately I didn't end up doing it because of the connection issues that have been reported with the oneconnect box. If you are looking for a TV, might want to closely look at the boxes in the Samsung aisle.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by arrowheadnation

I bought the top of the line 83" LG OLED at best buy for $3000 about 2 years ago for my mancave. It was the best one they had in the store (I already had a Samsung QLED in my family room). About 6 months ago I was working from home in my basement and had the TV on in the background. For the first time ever living in this house, the basement family room breaker flipped (and it's never flipped since). I flipped it back and everything but the TV came back on. Sure enough, the "warranty" ran out ONE WEEK prior to this happening. I had a geek squad guy come by to fix it and he was cool. He told me, "look man, it's either the power board or the full on logic board. If it's the power board, it will be about $300 to fix. If it's the latter, $1500." He then told me if it were him, he'd try swapping out the powerboard first by following a youtube video. I bought a board off of ebay for $90. Had a buddy help me tip the TV over. We swapped it out in about 30 min and it worked like a charm. That being said, I'm still done with LG. I had always been a samsung guy but figured I'd try the LG because all of my techy buddies recommended it. All that being said, those cheap TV's they sell on black friday are specially built with cheap/inferior parts specifically for Black Friday. They get the job done. I bought a 55 inch one 5 years ago and have been using it as my computer monitor ever since.

I was going to say - given what happened I would have bet money it was the power board. Depending on the size of the TV and the power draw, they can be pretty cheap to replace. Just replaced on on TCL 75" for $169.

[ThrobProng]

I think it's time to pull the trigger, if I don't find any red flags online:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung...?skuId=6595650

ETA: Nope, it's a WOLED panel and is inferior to the S90C.

[Stryker]

I saw this and wept. I paid $2000 for our OLED back in summer of 2021. Oh well. Great TV and we love it.

[frozenchief]

Originally Posted by ThrobProng

I'm sure there's an eggheaded economic reason for that, but it's interesting.

Just off the top of my head, I'd say:

low taxes on TVs
No government subsidies
Few government regulations and those largely relate to safety
Cut throat competition

Generally a pretty good recipe to get better quality and lower prices. I mean, look at computers or jeans or many other goods. We've seen this pattern throughout history in products such as air conditioning or household appliances. Adjust for inflation but compare what you can get in a stove today compared to the stove of 1980. World of different in quality and options and yet they are cheaper. Pocket calculators came out in 1972. They cost hundreds of dollars. Now? They're an app that comes with your cell phone.

Anybody remember getting a phone from the old Bell store? You couldn't buy them. You had to rent them. They had about 8 models. FCC loosens regulations and now who even has a landline? Or airline flights. There are undoubtedly still issues with airlines but Carter de-regulated air travel and the cost of flights started dropping like a stone. Airlines are indeed heavily regulated for safety but not for cost of flights and airlines have a lot more flexibility in setting routes and schedules.

Interesting overview on inflation over the last 50 years documenting how prices in real terms have dropped:

https://www.aarp.org/money/budgeting...years-ago.html

It's getting time for me to update our TV but we run ours through a receiver and the receiver is not built for 4K (It's a Denon so it's got great sound but it's also about 15ish years old). So I will have to get not only a new TV but also a receiver. And I don't really want to spent that money on that right now.