Is There Any Point In Buying An 8K TV When There's No 8K Content?

What Hi-Fi? UK's TV and AV Editor, Tom Parsons, thinks the new Samsung QN900D makes a compelling case that there is

- Tom Parsons

“Is there any point in buying an 8K TV?” is a question that I’m asked regularly. And with very good reason: we have been reviewing 8K TVs since 2018 (the first was the 85in Samsung Q900R, if you’re interested) and yet, seven years on, there is still essentially no native 8K content available.

Sure, you can watch some lovely 8K demo content on YouTube (though watch out for the videos that play in 8K but are really just upscaled 4K), and there is a dedicated 8K TV channel in Japan, but those aside, there’s essentially nothing to watch in native 8K. What’s more, there is still no sign of a current or new streaming service going 8K, nor any hint of an 8K disc format ever appearing. While the worthwhile introduction of 8K one day seems inevitable, it barely seems closer now than it did in 2018.

So, is there any point in buying an 8K TV now? Very many people say ‘no’, including some of my colleagues here at What Hi-Fi?. TV and AV staff writer Lewis Empson has told me that he has no interest until proper 8K streams or discs materialise, and our esteemed editor in chief, Alastair Stevenson, has cited that same issue, as well as a couple more (including a lack of David Attenborough), as barriers to him going 8K.

My personal take on all of this is a little less definite. I have flip-flopped slightly in my opinion on 8K over the years, but the new Samsung QN900D is comfortably the strongest case yet for buying an 8K TV in a non-8K world. Does that mean I would buy one? Probably not, but let’s come back to that.