The TV market is vast and filled with options, when trying to buy one - it quickly becomes a real hassle.
I've gathered a few easy to follow tips to make the best decision possible!
Pick your budget - This is the first and most important tip, you first need to decide what is the highest amount of money you're willing to invest, keeping in mind that this TV will probably serve you for the next 4 or more years! You might revisit this tip later on after doing your first TV survey, try to keep an open mind.
Size up your TV area - Based on your room situation, regardless of the TV resolution, the optimal viewing angle for comfortable viewing is between the minimum of 30 degrees to a maximum of 40 degrees. Now, before you takeout your calculator, see the following graph to save you the trouble:
Example: If you have a living room with a distance of 2.5 meters to the TV, The minimum TV size would be 40" and the maximum would be 70" for comfortable viewing experience.
Top resolution isn't a must - Once you've picked a TV size according to the distance, the resolution doesn't have to be the best of the best, because depending on the distance and TV resolution - the human eye wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So, rting.com did a nice graph describing the recommended resolution:
Example: If you have a living room with a distance of 2.5 meters to the TV, The minimum TV size would be 40" and the maximum would be 70" for comfortable viewing experience - The minimum resolution would be 1080p at 40" and the highest of 4K (Ultra HD) at 70".
See it with your own eyes - This is by far the best advice I have for you - don't only read reviews or see spec sheets, see the picture with your own eyes at a local store. Having said that, electronic stores tend to play the stock manufacturer "Sell you the TV" clips with high resolution and higher than usual contrast which tends to make the picture POP more than it should, so it would catch your eye quicker. The best tip ever: So my suggestion, come prepared to the store! Bring along a thumb drive with 1 or 2 movies on it, ones you know how it looks on your current TV, and just play them on the TV you're interested in - most TVs today can handle most of the movie file types directly from the thumb drive. The picture you'll see would be a great example of what you should expect after taking the TV home.
Pick a known manufacturer - I struggled if to put this tip or not, as I support the little companies in order to bring some competition to the market. Having said that, most unknown TV manufacturers use low quality materials such as low grade LED panels. Resolution might be high, but picture quality will be pretty bad. Furthermore, if something would break or malfunction on the TV, spare parts for unknown companies are scarce and you wouldn't be able to fix it. Therefore, I would stick with some of the big companies (in this particular order): LG, Sony, Visio, Samsung, Panasonic and last - Xiaomi (Cheap but got some good reviews).