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Seven Years Later, I Finally Made That Big Purchase Today

November 27, 2017 by Lazy Man 8 Comments

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m obsessed with a television. How obsessed? Let me explain and maybe you can tell me if you’ve felt the same way (perhaps about something different.)

I’m going to be switching persons from “I” to “we” even more than usual in this article. As the technology person, I am usually the buyer of new technology.

The beginning of my obsession started back in 2010. I had been extremely interested in a top-of-the-line Samsung. This television had all the important things I knew I needed in a television. It was 240hz and even supported 3-D. I was going to get that Avatar experience in my home. However, I missed the bargain price of $2000. Rather than spend $2500, the new price, I went with a $750 WalMart brand one. As I wrote back then, “It isn’t 240hz. It isn’t 3D. It isn’t LED LCD.” Ha!!

I got it with the intention of having to replace it in a few years. I decided to look at it as the price per year that we’re paying for the television. For example, let’s just say my budget for a television was $250 a year. At $2500, I’d be committing to the Samsung for 10 years. At $750, I’d be committing to the WalMart one for 3. At the time I wrote, “My budget for a television, in more than four years from now, already has over $1200 in it.” (The difference between what I wanted to spend $2000 and what I actually spent, $750.)

We’re still watching that Wal-Mart television. Since it is more than seven years later, we’ve ended up paying close to $100 a year for it. As my wife likes to say when I throw out a sock with a hole in it, “It doesn’t owe us anything more.”

However, I still haven’t gotten started on my obsession…

Budgeting for the Next Television Revolution

Back in 2006 or so, I saw the most amazing piece of technology I’ve ever seen. I’ll never forget it. I was one of the old Sony Style stores and they had a television. I think the screen was only 13-inch, but it was jaw-dropping. The price was $2,500. It was the first television I’ve ever seen using OLED technology. You can watch a 2008 video of it here. That doesn’t do it justice, but it was a bigger difference than comparing high definition to standard definition.

It would be quite a few years before OLED was commercially viable.

In September 2014, I wrote about budgeting for the next television revolution. That revolution was 4K OLED television. Specifically, I wrote, “I’m holding out for the 4K version. It looks like that is coming this month and it will be 65 inches for $7,000. It will probably 2-3 years before that television gets to the $2,500 price point. This is perfect. It gives the industry time to upgrade their video streams to 4K. Not only that, but it gives me time to put some money aside each month as the technology gets cheaper.”

Back then I also mentioned the following about my current television, “… in three more years, I’ll have paid around $100 per year and feel in a position to upgrade.”

Fast forward, to October 2015, I wrote Buying a Television? Read this first…. In that article, I covered the historical pricing OLED televisions. I noted that a 55-inch 1080P OLED screen was $15,000 in August 2013. By waiting 2 years, you could get a 55-inch OLED for $3,000. The price dropped $5000 and the product got much better. I included this chart of OLED prices:

DateResolutionSizePricePricing Source
August 20131080P (HD)55"$15,000NBC News
September 20141080P (HD)55"$3,000Lazy Man
September 20144K65"$7,000Lazy Man
October 20151080P55"$1800Amazon
October 20154K55"$3,000Amazon
October 20154K65"$5,000Amazon

However, I realized that most people weren’t really looking to $3000 or more on these televisions. Thus my main focus of the article was to warn people not to pay for 4K in a 55-inch television because most people’s eyes couldn’t detect the difference from a reasonable distance. It makes more sense in bigger televisions such as 70-inch ones. Even then, it wasn’t clear which movies you’d be able to watch in 4K. I noted that experts were predicting that HDR technology was looking more revolutionary.

In October 2016, I even set up a budget with Dobot where a little money got taken out of my account every few days:

“I created a simple goal, ‘OLED 65’, ‘November 2017’, ‘$2500.’ The most difficult part was trying to figure out what the cost of the television will be when I think it is a good value to buy. I’m not sure if the good value is $2500 as I like to find a rare bargain. I think that there might be a Black Friday deal next year with that rare bargain.”

Sound the trumpets!

LG 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV

This all brings us to the present day, November 2017.

My price prediction for the 65-inch OLED from 2014 and 2016 were both $2500. There are numerous Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals for it around $2100-$2250. Though it’s still a lot of money, it’s actually a great price. As CNET says, now is the time to buy.

However, the military online exchange has a Cyber Monday deal with the coveted LG OLED 65″ 4K televsion for a penny under $2000. If you aren’t military, there are a lot of deals for the same television for around $2200. Amazon, as one example, has the LG 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV at $2269 as I write this.

(I believe the deal is still active if you are military.)

This checks off all the boxes for me. It’s cheaper than I thought it would be. I actually have a rare opportunity to get a better deal (thanks to my active duty wife). There’s a concensus that this is the right time to buy…

… but my current television still works.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

It’s been hard to break to up with the WalMart TV. It still does the job… more or less*.

Then again, a 2000 Honda Civic may still do the job, but sometimes it’s worth moving on.

In this case, we’ve moved to a new house. The room is larger, which means that the picture appears smaller. When watching something like football, it matters because you are trying to read the numbers on players shirts that are significantly zoomed out.

Also, when we go over to our parents’ houses it’s obvious how much better their televisions are. My wife’s father’s Samsung caught both my wife and my attention and he said it was from 2013.

Finally, we are looking to mount the television to the wall. I’m not particularly handy, so I’m going to outsource the job to a handyman. I’d rather not have it done twice in a year or two. While I could probably buy a bracket that would hold my old TV and the new one, they are different enough in size and weight that I’d rather not risk it. This allows us to move forward and do it once, and do it right. Mounting the television on the wall opens up a lot of space and allows us to do some different things with the room.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a good place for the old WalMart TV. Fortunately, it looks like it might be worth as much as $250 on Craigslist. If we can give it a new home and lower our out-of-pocket price on the new television that’s a win-win.

So What Do You Think?

Buying technology is always tricky. Everyone knows it is going to be obsolete at some point, sometimes even soon. However, you can just sit on the sidelines forever. I try to look for quantum gains of improvement at a reasonable price. In this case, I got OLED, bigger size, HDR, and 4K. Whether the price is reasonable is subjective. It feels reasonable in comparison with where the prices have been. It may not be reasonable if you were just looking for any 65 inch television with 4K and HDR.

Filed Under: Spending Tagged With: OLED

Looking for a TV? Get this deal, now! (Today Only!)

August 30, 2016 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

I very rarely write an article about good deals, but today I’m making an exception. (Also, this will give me a little more time to work on the EpiPen article that had been trying to get finished last week.)

Amazon’s Deal of the Day is on this LG 55-Inch Curved Smart OLED TV. I’m going to make a case that many people looking for a television should jump on this.

For those who aren’t tech junkies, OLED is new television technology that has critics raving that it’s the best picture they have ever seen. What makes it so special? It has the ability to turn off pixels completely, so blacks are… well black. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you see it in person it can make a big difference. It seems to cause the other colors to “pop.”

Back in 2013, an equivalent version of this was $15,000! Today it is $1100. I’m going to let that sink in for a bit.

I’ve been watching the prices on these and it has never gotten this low. It was around $1300 a few months ago, which was a fantastic price then. It’s probably not going to get much cheaper. This seems to be them clearing out the older stock. It might be the last time you can any kind of OLED for ANYWHERE near $1000… as they’ve moved to even higher end televisions in recent years.

I’ve been wanting an OLED TV for about 3 years now. A few months ago, I wrote about how I’m starting an OLED TV fund. Today that fund has around $200. Hmmm…

There are some caveats to consider. First, it’s “only” 55 inches. Second, it’s 1080p, not 4K. Those are probably deal-breakers for some people. However, because the television picture itself is “smaller”, you might not be able to tell it’s not 4K… especially if you are sitting far enough away. Also, this television is curved. I’ve been reading that the curve is so subtle that you don’t notice it. It’s worth reading the reviews if that’s a concern of yours.

The OLED television I had my eyes on was 65-inches and 4K. That television is $3000. This one is $1100. Is it worth the sacrifice to save $1900? Let me know in the comments.

Naturally, by “Deal of the Day”, the deal is for today only. This is perfect timing for showing off to your friends who come by to watch football games on Sunday, right? Tell them to bring the pizza and beer and you might even save money with this deal. (Okay, maybe that last one is a stretch.)

Filed Under: Spending Tagged With: OLED, television

Buying a Television? Read this first…

October 21, 2015 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

Happy Back to the Future Day. For those who haven’t read the news in the last week, this is the day that Marty McFly traveled into the future in Back to the Future II.

Back to the Future Day
Back to the Future Day

There might be some theaters showing the movie around the United States, but chances are if you are going to watch it, you’ll watch it on a television. You can stream it, but I’ve found the best quality is usually the Blu-Ray version. It just doesn’t seem as compressed.

And that brings us around to watching the best quality television. In 1985, I was only 9, but I seem to recall my father buying a 36-ish” Fisher television. It was awesome because it was big. We might not have hoverboards, but television technology has come a long way, right?

In just the last year or two, televisions have taken another jump. Not only have they gone from HD to 4K, but technology like Quantum Dots and OLED are making pictures better than ever. One of these alone would be revolutionary, but two at the same time is something else.* I was hoping this would revolution would happen faster as I bought a bargain Element television in 2010 with the idea of saving money for this new technology.

I was a few years early, but in the last year, things have changed dramatically. It was just last September when I wrote that I was, budgeting for the next television revolution (4K OLED). Here is how the pricing has dropped on OLED televisions in the last 3 years:

DateResolutionSizePricePricing Source
August 20131080P (HD)55"$15,000NBC News
September 20141080P (HD)55"$3,000Lazy Man
September 20144K65"$7,000Lazy Man
October 20151080P55"$1800Amazon
October 20154K55"$3,000Amazon
October 20154K65"$5,000Amazon

Two years ago, you could have spent $15,000 for a television that was smaller with worse resolution than what $5,000 will buy you today. Of course $5,000 for a television is still a lot of money. However, this has pushed the price of the 55-inch 4K down to $3000. Even better… a 55-inch 1080P OLED screen that was $15,000 is now a relatively reasonable $1,800.

(Side note: These are all LG televisions. LG is not paying me any money for this, it’s just that they are the only company to bring the jaw-dropping OLED technology to the masses.)

Let’s assume you have some spare money and wanted to buy one of these televisions. You almost need a web-based calculator or a personal advisor to figure out which is likely to be the best for you. I’ve covered this before: Getting a Television on Black Friday? Read This First, but here’s an abbreviated version of that.

The first thing to consider is room size. If you have a big room, you are going to want a larger television. This is simply a factor of sitting further away. Even an average size room should have a fairly large television according to experts. So you may be tempted to cross the 55-inch off your list. I think that’s a little weird, because I have a 55-inch television now and it’s fine. It is all relative to what you are accustomed to.

The difference between 4K and 1080P on small screens isn’t that noticeable. The differences in the technology is more obvious as screens get bigger because good eyes can differentiate the pixels better. If you have poor vision, the 4K and thee 1080P may look exactly the same to you… so why spend more money?

Furthermore, there’s not a lot of 4K content available. Netflix and Amazon has some content, but cable and satellite providers are behind. And not much content is shot in 4K. Not even sports which would really take advantage of it.

At some point 4K will come, but it might be a few years. In the meantime, prices will continue to drop, so it may be worth waiting to take advantage of that.

Usually, when I see such great price drops, I think, “It’s time to take advantage. This is the sweet spot, where I’m early, but not paying top, top dollar.” My finances don’t allow for a $5,000 television, so the 65-inch isn’t in the cards. A $3,000 television is still stretching the budget, but I’m not sure if I want to stretch it for something at 55-inches and a feature (4K), which isn’t rolled out yet. Finally, the $1800 television is still on the high-end of the budget, but would probably be the best value right now. If my television broke today, this would be what I’d buy.

It looks like I’m going to be waiting another year or two for the price drops to level off. However, your situation may be different. I can definitely see the case to jump in and buy these now.

* A third technology, HDR, is new this year and also looks to be revolutionary. I don’t have the space to get into this, but many of these televisions feature HDR as well.

Filed Under: Spending Tagged With: 4K, OLED, television

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