The best 55-inch TVs provide what is perhaps the happiest medium for people who want as a big a screen as possible, but are either short on space or simply want to furnish a smaller room.
What makes a 55-inch TV particularly great is that they provide a screen big enough to show off the benefits of 4K resolution, advanced HDR tech and super-smooth gaming features.
The best 55-inch TVs in Australia for 2025
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Best 55-inch TV for most people
Buy it if:
✅ You want a great TV for movies: The C5 is fantastic when it comes to blacks, brightness and contrast, and when fed HDR content, it becomes a sensational choice for movie fans.
✅ You want a great TV for gaming: With 4 HDMI 2.1 ports that support 4K 120Hz (and up to 144Hz for PC gaming), the C5 is an excellent gaming TV.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want the brightest TV you can buy: While the C5 does serve up excellent brightness levels for an OLED TV, the fact remains that many mini-LED TVs can go brighter.
❌You don’t have a huge budget: Despite being in a smaller guise, the LG C5 can still be a pricey TV compared to many others on this list.
The LG C5 is a jack-of-all-trades TV, and in its 55-inch guise it can seamlessly integrate into a home cinema, bedroom or gaming setup. It delivers a superb picture that suits both movies and gaming, supports a fantastic suite of gaming features, an intuitive smart TV platform and more.
Picture quality, as already alluded to, is the C5’s highlight, with vibrant colours, superb contrast, and excellent detail thanks to its Alpha 9 Gen 8 AI processor. LG has also managed to give the C5 a further boost in brightness compared to its predecessor, although admittedly it is relatively minor.
Gamers will find little to fault in the C5, thanks to it sporting four HDMI 2.1 ports that all support 144Hz refresh rate, VRR (including Nvidia GSync and AMD FreeSync), ALLM, HGiG, and Dolby Vision Gaming. It also benefits from LG’s Game Optimiser, designed to adjust settings easily during gameplay. At 55 inches, the C5 is a great size for both living room and bedroom gaming.
While the C5 doesn’t have the best built-in audio and doesn’t support HDR10+, it does nearly everything else right, including having a sleek design and user-friendly smart TV platform.
The best budget 55-inch TV
Buy it if:
✅ You want a great value TV: The TCL C6K offers a great suite of features and mini-LED picture quality for a budget-friendly price.
✅ You want an affordable TV for gaming: The C6K’s biggest strength is in its gaming features and performance, and the price is cheap for what you get.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want a perfect picture: The C6K does suffer from some screen uniformity issues and some black crush can occur in darker scenes in movies.
❌ You want to watch from an angle: When viewed off-centre, the C6K’s contrast fades and blooming becomes more visible.
If your budget is limited or you simply want a cost-effective TV for a second room, the TCL C6K is a fantastic choice. TCL has had a pretty successful 2025, with its C-series screens proving to be genuine alternatives to more expensive flagships. The C6K in particular offers plenty of features at a truly affordable price and while not totally perfect, it does more right, than wrong.
Picture quality is good for the price, and we found it delivered a higher fullscreen brightness than its price would suggest, in both Filmmaker and Standard modes. The result is a picture that’s full of vibrancy and punch. In fact, as we noted in our review, “colour is one of the C6K’s strong suits. A Disney Plus stream of Elemental, viewed in Dolby Vision Dark picture mode, demonstrated vibrant, punchy colours, particularly when Ember does glass-making.”
Black levels are also great for TV in the C6K’s price bracket, especially when it’s fed high-quality 4K content. Some black crush can creep in during particularly dark scenes, but it’s something to be expected at this price level. Viewing angles aren’t amazing either, so take this into consideration if you know you’re going to have a large group of people crowding around at one time.
It’s also worth noting that the C6K’s feet are set wide apart no matter the screen size, so make sure your media unit will be able to accommodate it if you don’t go down the wall-mount route.
Gaming is a strong suit, with 4K 144Hz, VRR (AMD FreeSync Premium included), Dolby Vision gaming and ALLM support. Lag time is decent, and the dedicated Game Master mode is effective. Just note there are only two HDMI 2.1 ports.
Read our full TCL C6K review
Best mid-range 55-inch TV
Buy it if:
✅ You want a colourful, contrast-rich picture: The C7K delivers a colourful picture with surprisingly rich contrast for a mini-LED TV in its price range.
✅ You want value for your money: The C7K has an impressive list of features and delivers great picture quality for a very competitive price.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want the very best sound quality: For day-to-day viewing, the C7K’s built-in sound is good. But if you’re looking for a complete cinematic experience, you’re better off adding a soundbar.
We told you TCL has had a successful year, as its C7K TV, one step up from the C6K, also gains a spot on this list of the best 55-inch TVs in Australia. It’s a solid mini-LED TV, offering plenty of features for an affordable price, making it a great option for anyone with a limited budget, but who wants to maximise their investment. It may not be top in its class, but it does a lot right.
Picture quality on the C7K is mostly good, with vivid colours and surprisingly deep black levels. Its motion handling is also impressive, although it does require a bit of tweaking to get the best results. Fans of black and white movies will have to put up with a screen uniformity issue that adds a brown tone to the edges of the screen, but this is our only real complaint with the C7K’s picture, which is in many ways, high praise.
Gamers looking for a budget gaming TV should pay particularly close attention to the C7K, as it supports 4K 144Hz, VRR (AMD FreeSync Premium Pro), ALLM and Dolby Vision gaming. Not only that, but its performance is smooth even during the most intense gaming sequences, thanks to its respectable 13.5ms input lag time.
It’s not all perfect, mind you, and the C7K does fall down in some areas, namely its built-in sound, but it’s hard to argue against its value – plus, we nearly always recommend you add a soundbar to improve the audio performance of your chosen screen. The level of features and the quality it delivers for the price mean it’s an easy budget buy recommendation.
Read our full TCL C7K review
The best premium 55-inch TV
Buy it if:
✅ You watch TV in a bright room: The Glare Free 2.0 screen here eliminates reflections, perfect if you might want to put it in light, bright spaces.
✅ You love a colorful picture: The color display here is stunning, especially with HDR sources. Along with high brightness, the picture experience of the S95F is truly fantastic.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You can’t afford high-end: This is a flagship OLED TV, so it’s no surprise it comes with a premium price tag. It’s worth it, but it’ll outstretch most budgets.
❌ You want a perfect picture out of the box: A minor complaint, but you do need to tweak Filmmaker Mode in bright viewing conditions.
The Samsung S95F is the brand’s latest flagship OLED TV, delivering a premium set of features with the top performance to match. It also manages to push brightness to impressive new highs, making it our top premium 55-inch OLED.
The S95F introduces a second-gen version of Samsung’s OLED Glare Free screen technology, improving on the original from the S95D that came before it by combining glare reduction with even better picture contrast in bright rooms. With its next-gen QD-OLED panel, the S95F delivers richer brightness, superb black levels and realistic details and textures that give movies and TV shows incredible depth.
The One Connect box keeps external connections tidy while making the TV’s razor thin design possible. The updated Tizen smart interface feels slicker than ever, now with a Samsung Art Store subscription option too. Gamers get plenty of features, 4K at 165Hz, VRR with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, ALLM and HDR10+ gaming across four HDMI 2.1 ports, plus an ultra-low 9.5ms input lag. There’s also Samsung’s Game Hub for cloud gaming, as well as plenty of AI features that promise to fine-tune picture and sound.
Built-in audio is punchy and accurate with a strong level of bass for a slim set. Design-wise, the S95F is stunning, it’s sharp, sleek and undeniably premium. It’s not flawless. Black levels aren’t perfect and the high price will put it out of reach to many people. But the Samsung S95F is still an outstanding OLED and certainly deserves its place as our top premium pick.
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Read our full Samsung S95F review
The best budget 55-inch OLED TV
Buy it if:
✅ You want great picture quality: Expect contrast-rich images, vibrant colors and realistic textures. It looks more premium than the budget price suggests.
✅ You want a solid gaming TV: A full suite of gaming features and impressively responsive performance make it a strong choice for gamers.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You want to watch in bright rooms: Brightness is only middling and the screen can be reflective, so it performs best in dimmer conditions.
❌ You’d prefer solid built-in sound: The audio isn’t terrible but it doesn’t live up to the picture quality. You’ll need a soundbar for the best experience.
LG’s B5 is one of the cheapest OLED TVs you can buy, yet it still delivers impressive picture quality and excellent gaming support, making it our top budget pick.
In our LG B5 review, we found its pictures to be crisp and contrast-rich, with vibrant colours and realistic textures that look more premium than its entry-level status would suggest. Detail levels are strong and although it’s not the brightest TV around, it can still produce a cinematic image, as long as the conditions are right. The trade-off comes in bright rooms, where its middling brightness and reflective screen can make darker scenes lose their impact. It’s best watching it in dimly lit environments instead.
The B5 is well stocked with gaming features, carrying four HDMI 2.1 ports that support 4K 120Hz, VRR (AMD FreeSync Premium, Nvidia G-Sync), ALLM and Dolby Vision gaming. It also runs on LG’s latest webOS 25 smart platform, which adds new AI tools like AI search, AI Concierge and an improved AI chatbot, while keeping navigation fast and user-friendly.
The B5 doesn’t bring big changes over last year’s B4, and its built-in audio doesn’t live up to the picture, so a soundbar is recommended. But with its mix of OLED picture quality, gaming specs and new smart AI features at this price, the LG B5 is the best budget OLED TV you can buy.
Read our full LG B5 review
The best 55-inch TV for wall-mounting
Buy it if:
✅ You want a TV for wall-mounting: With a slim, wall-hugging design, the G5 is designed for wall-mounting and it comes with a specially designed bracket in-box.
✅ You like to watch in bright rooms: The G5’s peak brightness rivals mini-LED TVs, and its anti-glare screen and Filmmaker Ambient Light Mode both help improve picture quality in brighter rooms.
Don’t buy it if:
❌ You don’t want a soundbar: The G5’s 4.2-channel speakers deliver good sound, but bass is limited and there’s no DTS support.
❌You want to save money: LG’s mid-range C5 series OLED TVs aren’t as bright, but they cost less while providing excellent overall picture quality and features.
The LG G5 raises the bar for OLED TV brightness, delivering a substantially brighter picture than its LG G4 predecessor. LG managed this by using a Primary RGB Tandem structure OLED display panel in the G5, a new design that employs individual red, green, and blue layers to produce light. Not only is LG’s flagship G5 brighter, but it also has better colour detail and improved screen glare rejection for viewing in bright rooms.
A new feature found in the G5 is Filmmaker Ambient Light Mode, which uses the TV’s built-in sensor to adjust brightness based on room lighting without sacrificing picture accuracy. LG’s latest Alpha 11 AI processor Gen 2 brings with it a range of AI enhancements for picture and sound, and the new webOS smart TV interface provides deeper levels of customization, including voice recognition for tailoring picture and sound settings along with content recommendations, for each user in your household.
The best thing about the G5’s picture is that it looks great across a range of lighting conditions, including bright rooms – a new frontier for OLED TVs. This makes it a great option for watching sports, but darker content like movies also looks good when viewed in brighter rooms, and with the lights dimmed, the picture has a powerful, almost 3D-like quality. As we noted in our LG G5 review: “The refined shadow detail gave the picture a powerful sense of depth that, for me, really drove home the point of why you would spend top dollar for a premium OLED TV like the G5.”
LG also made a point of bringing the best gaming features to the G5, including four HDMI 2.1 ports with 4K 165Hz, FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync support. The G5’s super-slim, wall-hugging design is the main reason we’ve selected it here as our best TV for wall-mounting (a wall-mount is included), but LG’s extra-cost pedestal stand gives you the option to also install it on a TV stand.
Read our full LG G5 review
How to choose the best 55-inch TV
What is the best 55-inch smart TV?
Right now, the best 55-inch TV available, that sits at the top of our list, is the LG C5. It’s such a fantastic combination of high-end picture quality with effectively every feature you could need, but for a more mid-range price. It’s a future-proof set that will last you for years.
How much should you pay for a 55-inch TV?
55-inch TVs can be very cheap, with some budget LCD models costing well under AU$1,000. You can spend a lot more, of course, although thanks to the smaller screen size, even a top-performing 55-inch TV shouldn’t make too much of a dent in your back pocket.
Is a 55-inch smart TV big enough?
That all depends on the size of the room you want to put it in and what you want to use it for. For many, a 55-inch TV is going to be ideal, especially in bedrooms and smaller rooms. If you have a large space, then you may be better served by the best 65-inch TVs or best 75-inch TVs instead.
A bigger screen means more detail that’s more easily visible at a larger distance, and a better sense of immersion. Keep in mind, though, that picture defects are also more visible at larger sizes, so you should make sure that you’re getting a TV good enough to warrant a step-up in screen size.
What should I look for in a 55-inch TV?
At this ample size, you should absolutely be looking for some good features – lest you get stuck with a large screen that simply blows up artefacts and visual defects.
OLED or mini-LED screens are well worth getting at this size, without the truly extravagant price points of larger models – 55 inch TVs offer a smart, well-judged entry point to premium TV tech. For LCD models, you want to make sure you’re getting direct full array lighting rather than the edge lighting still found on some budget sets, which limits the consistency of brightness across the screen.
Otherwise, 4K HDR is a given, and you may want to check that HDMI 2.1 is included if you’re partial to gaming, with the VRR (variable refresh rate) and ALLM (auto low latency mode) support usually thrown in.
What’s the difference between an OLED 55-inch TV and an LED one?
There are several major differences between OLED and LED TVs. The main examples? Brightness, black levels, response times while playing video games and the potential risk of burn-in, in the case of the former TV tech.
Overall, we consider OLEDs to be superior to LED sets. If you’re on a tight budget though, LED TVs are definitely still worth considering, as they can normally be found at a lesser price.
Why do we prefer OLED TVs? Their picture quality is just a whole lot better than the average LED set in key areas. While the best LED TVs are generally brighter than traditional OLED panels, this gap has shortened considerably over the past couple of years. Thanks to the advent of the likes of Samsung’s QD-OLEDs (quantum dot technology) and LG Primary RGB panels, the brightness gap has decreased.
That being said, WOLED TVs generally don’t get as bright as LED televisions. One such example is the LG C5 we rate as the best 55-inch TV for most people. It does benefit from LG’s evo brightness-boosting tech, but a mini-LED TV can go brighter still.
The biggest advantage OLEDs have up their sleeve is unquestionably their superb contrast, which is achieved thanks to their perfect black levels. As OLED TVs can turn off every single one of their on-screen pixels, you’re left with effortlessly inky blacks, which make them ideal for viewing movies at night in a dark room. By contrast, LED TVs have to rely on dimming zones in darker areas of on-screen content, and quite simply, these never fully convince as true black.
Finally, If you’re a gamer, OLED usually has the edge on LED, as often the best OLED TVs have slighter faster response times than LED sets. In turn, this makes playing video games feel a little more responsive to play.
What should I look for in a 55-inch TV for gaming?
As we’ve just touched on, response times are the most key element when it comes to picking up a 55-inch TV if you’re a big gamer. The majority of modern TVs have dedicated Game Modes that slash input lag, making your favourite PS5 or Xbox Series X titles feel buttery smooth.
In general, LG makes the best gaming TVs thanks to the firm’s proprietary ‘Game Optimizer’. Easily accessed via its dedicated dashboard, it helps further reduce input lag via sliders that make in-game actions on a controller feel more smoother.
LG’s gaming-focused optimiser also sports features such as VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), ALLM (Automatic Low Latency Mode), Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium – all of which further smooth out gameplay. Though it’s worth noting these features are also available in TVs from the likes of Samsung and Sony, too.
VRR helps make frame rate dips less noticeable, leading to in-game experiences that feel more consistent. G-Sync and FreeSync essentially perform the same function by, you guessed it, ‘syncing’ a game’s frames per seconds (FPS) to match your TV’s refresh rate.
How we test the best 55-inch TVs
We use the same methods to test the best 55-inch TVs as we do across all our other TV buying guides. This testing criteria is broken down by picture quality (looking at particular elements such as contrast, colour and so on), audio quality of built-in speakers, gaming features, smart TV platform, ease of use, design and value for money. We base our testing on subjective opinion and objective measurements of the picture quality, which we take using specialised equipment.
Firstly, we’ll run in the TVs across various types of AV sources, such as broadcast, streaming and 4K Blu-ray. During this time, we’ll cycle through the different picture presets found on each set, such as Standard, Movie and Sport, to establish what we see as the most accurate for that set. We then watch the same movies, TV shows and so on again, making notes of how they compare to each other.
When analysing picture quality, we’ll use a mixture of sources such as 4K Blu-ray and streaming to look at colour reproduction and accuracy, contrast and black levels, and textures. We’ll then use lower-resolution sources such as broadcast TV and DVD to test a TV’s upscaling effectiveness.
We’ll also look at how a TV handles black uniformity (how well it can display dark tones across the screen evenly), especially on LCD based models. This is when we consider how effective the backlight is and if it suffers from any backlight blooming. We’ll also test motion, not just for 24fps movies but also for sports viewing, looking out for judder and blur – and seeing how effective a TVs motion settings are for reducing this.
After we’ve conducted subjective tests surrounding picture quality, smart TV platform, sound quality and so on, we move onto objective tests using specialised equipment to measure color accuracy, brightness, grayscale and more, recording results through Portrait Displays’ Calman calibration software.
The first area we will usually test is brightness. We use a test pattern generator and colorimeter to measure a TV’s brightness levels across a variety of window sizes, from 1% all the way to 100% (full screen brightness). The more significant window sizes include 10%, which will usually tell you what a TV’s peak brightness is and how HDR highlights will look, and 100%, which will indicate the TV’s full screen brightness and how it can handle longer periods of brightness across the whole screen (which is often important when viewing sports). Full screen brightness generally also tells us how effective a TV will be at handling reflections. We do these tests to not only test a TV’s backlight, but also to measure our results against any figures claimed by the manufacturer. Brightness tests are conducted in light controlled rooms to prevent any external light sources affecting results.
Colour reproduction, in both SDR and HDR, is also tested as we look at each TV’s accuracy to its source and how wide a color gamut it can display on screen. We won’t just look at colour though, we also look at grayscale to test how accurately a TV can display black tones and just how effective its contrast is as well.
When it comes to gaming tests, we use the Leo Bodnar 4K HDMI input lag tester to test the latency time that a TV’s processing adds when displaying video games. We’ll also test the effectiveness of a TV’s Game Mode (if it has one), which is often used to adjust the TV’s settings to its most optimum when gaming. We also look out for a number of features such as how many HDMI 2.1 ports a TV has and whether it supports VRR, 4K 120Hz, ALLM and more.
When conducting these tests, we aim to keep everything as consistent as possible in our TV testing lab but it’s worth noting that some reviewers will work in different environments with different setups. In those instances, we always make sure that our reviewers have the same level of equipment and conduct the same tests.
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