There was once an argument that 8K made sense and would future-proof your pricey TV purchase for years to come. After all, when 4K (3,840 × 2,160 pixel resolution) TVs became more mainstream in 2016-2018, people said the same thing. At the time, there wasn’t much 4K content available, but streaming services, physical media, and game consoles have since caught up in a big way.
Pretty much every major streaming platform supports 4K, 2K/4K gaming is common on consoles, and UHD Blu-rays of most major movies and TV shows are available. In my case, the Xbox One X and its 4K checkerboarding, dynamic resolution, and HDR10 convinced me to pull the trigger on a 4K HDR10 TV back in 2016.
With 8K TVs (7,680 × 4,320 pixels), the same thing just hasn’t happened. 2021-2022 was arguably the peak of the 8K hype cycle. At the time, lofty promises were made about content natively designed for the resolution, but for the most part, they never materialized. Remember when the PS5 was advertised as an 8K console designed to push the resolution to mass adoption? That definitely didn’t happen.
The PS5 can only deliver 8K over HDMI 2.1 Display Stream Compression (DSC), making it incompatible with some 8K TVs. 8K/60hz at 4:4:4 10-bit color exceeds HDMI 2.1’s 48Gbps bandwidth, too. None of this matters, though, because no 8K PS5 games have ever been released.
Streaming services don’t support the resolution, at least in part because the bandwidth requirements would be wild, and there’s no 8K physical media standard. I remember exploring the CES floor in 2019, and every major TV manufacturer was touting 8K as the future of TVs. The industry has changed a lot since then, and at CES 2026, I didn’t see a single mention of an 8K TV, even from the industry’s biggest players.
You can find a few high-quality 8K demos on YouTube, but that’s pretty much it for content. And generally, upscaling high-quality 4K TV shows and movies to 8K often looks worse, or, in some cases, the improvement is barely noticeable, with diminishing returns becoming a major factor.
Every few years, TV manufacturers try to figure out the next big thing to draw buyers into the next upgrade cycle. In the past, we’ve seen 4K, HDR, then HDR10/Dolby Vision, and more recently, HDMI 2.1/120Hz refresh rate. With each of these upgrades, there’s a practical, notable benefit for the TV buyer, whether it’s deeper blacks and brighter colors, or smoother motion when gaming. With 8K, there’s just no real reason to upgrade because you can’t really see the extra pixels. On the other hand, the jump from 1080p to 4K is clear and noticeable (2K to 4K gaming is another story).
Now that most of the industry’s major TV manufacturers have ditched 8K, the focus can return to investing in technology with a more practical impact…
When you look at bigger TVs in the 80-inch to 100-inch range, you’d need to be 6.6ft to 9.9ft away to experience the clarity benefits of the higher resolution, which while more reasonable, is a very specific situation and massive TV size (which pushes up the cost considerably). Reliable TV review-focused publication RTINGS has also shared similar results from its own independent tests. I’ve seen 8K TVs in person, and the difference is so negligible I need to squint to notice the nonexistent improvements.
What does this mean for the future of TVs?
8K tried to solve a problem most consumers didn’t have
Now that the majority of the industry’s major TV manufacturers have ditched 8K, the focus can return to investing in technology with a more practical impact, including brighter OLED panels, the rise of Micro RGB LED technology that utilizes clusters of red, green, and blue backlights, instead of just blue LEDs, the growing popularity of mini-LED panels in the upper mid-range TV space — and of course, knock-off Samsung The Frame-style lifestyle TVs with not great-looking matte LED panels (I’m not a fan, but they’re extremely popular).
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Are any of these upgrades a notable enough shift to convince the average consumer to upgrade their TV? Probably not, but at least they aren’t as useless as 8K.
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