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It wasn’t all that long ago that owning a 75-inch flatscreen felt like a realistic ceiling for panel size and display technology. Nowadays, a 75-inch TV is actually one of the smaller size options if you’re shopping for a gargantuan 4K LED or OLED. Brands like Samsung, LG, Hisense, and a few other manufacturers now offer TVs that are 100 inches or larger. If you have a big enough stand or wall space to work with, a 100-inch TV to call your own might sound pretty good.
Researching and investing in a brand-new TV is the kind of living room upgrade you’ll be reminded of day to day. That said, it can be easy to make mistakes when shopping for a new TV, especially if you’re focused on one or two calling card features (e.g., screen size, Alexa and Google Home compatibility, etc.) instead of the whole package. A 100-inch Samsung TV may look nice at the store, but getting it home and setting it up, only to be wholly disappointed, is buyer’s remorse we all want to avoid.
To that end, we came up with a list of four of the most common disadvantages of a 100-inch TV you should know about. As the weeks and months fly by, we expect 100-inch TVs to improve in more ways than one, so some of the drawbacks we discuss today may end up being null and void.
The many hidden costs of going big
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Over the last few years, monolithic TVs have gotten a little cheaper, but buying one is still going to set you back more than $1,000. The expenditures may only begin with the TV, though, as such a large screen often requires finding the right stand size or wall mount to accommodate it. Even if you’re upgrading from a 65- to 75-inch model, there’s a decent chance that your entertainment center may not be sturdy or wide enough to take on the added heft and footprint. Wall mounts can be a bit more forgiving when it comes to supported sizes and weights, but you may end up needing a larger bracket if your 100-inch TV has an unsupported VESA mounting pattern.
While TVs continue to become more energy-efficient, a big, bright Mini LED is going to consume more electricity than a set with a smaller screen and chassis. Households that log a lot of screen hours may end up with pricier utility bills, especially if you use picture presets like Dynamic or Vivid to make your TV as bright as possible. Let’s just say if you’ve never used energy-saving settings on a TV before, a power-hungry 100-inch model may convince you to.
A humongous TV may also entail additional delivery and labor costs if you’re having it professionally installed, as well as extra shipping and return fees if you decide it’s not a good fit for your home or business. Buyer’s remorse is a real phenomenon, and ironing out logistics and projected total cost can prevent these types of headaches down the line.
Movability and expandability may prove troublesome
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It should go without saying that a 100-inch TV is heavy and awkward to handle. If you’re taking the DIY route for transport and installation, you’ll need one or two friends or family members to assist. You’ll also need to make sure you have a vehicle that’s large enough to fit a 100-inch TV box. Many retailers offer a basic delivery service that’ll get the 100-inch unit dropped off at your house, but you’ll still need companions to help you bring it inside on delivery day.
If you thought your old 65-inch OLED was a living room attention-grabber, just wait until an eight-foot screen arrives. Giant TVs demand a lot of real estate, so you may be forced to relocate furniture and decor to accommodate your newer, bigger flagship. Over time, you may also find it difficult to upgrade and expand your home theater setup when working with such a large display. Adding a soundbar or running an extra HDMI cable may turn into a two- or three-person ordeal, especially if you need to unmount and remount your 100-inch TV.
If you’re a frequent upgrader and want a massive, cinematic screen to call your own, replacing your TV with a projector setup may prove more beneficial in the long run. Most projectors can easily deliver a 100- to 150-inch picture, and products like retractable or stowaway-easel screens can be stowed away when not in use, so your theater space feels less cluttered.
Picture quality gets more complicated
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A massive LED or OLED isn’t an automatic premium picture guarantee. 100-inch or larger TVs with advanced features like Mini LED lighting, local dimming, and fast refresh rates usually cost more than entry-level and midrange sets, and from one year to the next, you’ll find several enormous TVs that prioritize screen size over picture quality. On the one hand, this keeps pricing competitive, but pulling back on picture tech could leave you in the lurch, at least as far as visuals go.
A 100-inch TV that offers 4K resolution has the same total pixel count (3,840 horizontal pixels, and 2,160 vertical) as a 65-inch 4K TV. The difference is that, on the 100-inch panel, the pixels are stretched across a larger display, so end up larger and less packed in with other pixels. This can make picture imperfections easier to notice, especially if you sit close to the screen.
Features like AI-powered upscaling and digital frame insertion can help to clean up a rough-looking stream or older DVD, but your TV’s picture tech can only do so much to improve a lower-quality source. If you don’t want to constantly see compression artifacts, color banding, light bloom, and other image abnormalities, it might be time to invest in a 4K Blu-ray player or to sign up for Netflix’s 4K streaming plan.
Eye strain can become more noticeable
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We need happy, healthy eyes to watch TV. Generally speaking, our eyes have far less scanning and observing to do when the canvas is a 55- or 65-inch display. But doubling the screen footprint also doubles the work your eyes will be tasked with, which could result in increased fatigue. We should also mention that fast-moving content (e.g., sports, action movies, video games) may further compound eyestrain.
If you do a lot of TV watching after midnight, brightness controls become all the more integral. Even the most basic 100-inch TVs can deliver powerful backlighting, especially when watching or playing HDR content. A little intense illumination here and there isn’t such a big deal, but a rapid-fire FPS shooter that doesn’t relent on explosions is a ton of visual information for eyeballs to process in the dead of night.
It’s also important to sit at a safe viewing distance from a huge display. Pick a seat too close to the screen, and your eyes will need to refocus on different parts of the panel more frequently, which can become uncomfortable quicker than you’d think. We should also mention that most TVs tend to dip in picture quality when you’re not sitting centered with the screen. While a 100-inch panel gives you more opportunities to sit centered, fading colors and contrast may still impact your experience if you’re outside of the sweet spot.
