Is professional TV calibration worth it? Read this first

Whether you’ve carefully considered budget-friendly TV options or decided on one of the best TVs money can buy, you might be tempted to spend more money on a professional calibration – especially if you’re a picture purist are. For a hefty fee, a professional calibrator will come to your home, use some fancy equipment, and adjust your TV’s settings until the image is as accurate as possible.

It’s a fairly simple process, but deciding whether to do it or not is not always easy. I’ve been testing and calibrating TVs for over a decade and even I don’t have a clear answer. But I may help you weigh the pros and cons. Here’s everything you need to know about professional TV calibrations.

What does a professional TV calibrator do?

Your TV is crammed with picture settings. There’s a good chance you’ve opened your TV’s settings menu and your eyes have glazed over at the sight of words like “gamma,” “motion interpolation,” and “color space.”

If you’re feeling adventurous, you might want to make changes here and there and then do an eye test to see what looks best for you. If you have a pretty good understanding of what these settings actually do, you’ll probably feel confident making major changes to the image.

However, without special equipment, your eyes and instinct can only go so far. Just as our TV testers allow us to thoroughly test a TV’s performance, they also allow us to take advantage of some of a TV’s most in-depth and precise imaging tools.

Think of it this way: anyone can adjust whatever image-related settings they see fit, but without the right equipment to provide the necessary feedback, it’s not clear whether the image will be more or less accurate or not. Making the most of a television’s many picture settings requires the expertise and equipment of a professional calibrator.

(Image credit: K-10A colorimeter. Image credit: Klein Instruments)

A colorimeter – like the one pictured above – is capable of measuring the precise nature of reds, greens and blues

For example, a colorimeter – like the one shown above – is capable of measuring the precise nature of reds, greens, and blues (among other aspects of a television image). When used with a laptop running high-quality calibration software, a professional calibrator can tweak red, green and blue levels across a TV’s settings – while providing real-time feedback on how these tiny changes affect color accuracy . Without it, you’re just left guessing which values need to be adjusted.

Samsung QN900C UHDA-P3 test results

(Image credit: Tom’s Guide)

A professional calibrator is also equipped with a so-called signal generator to produce the colors and patterns necessary to make measurements in the first place.

This involves expensive, highly specialized hardware. We’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars here. You can make deep, wide-ranging adjustments to settings like contrast and brightness on a gut level, but if you want to adjust everything with extreme precision, you need the right equipment. This is where a professional calibrator comes into play.

How can I determine if a professional calibration for my TV is worth it?

For entry-level TVs, it’s not really worth hiring a professional calibrator.

If you bought an entry-level TV (between about $200 and $600), there’s a very good chance that it lacks the settings that rely on the expensive equipment described above. In this case, it’s not really worth hiring a professional calibrator. For this scenario, there are ways you can keep your TV looking its best using the basic settings you’ve been given.

Mid-range TVs (between about $600 and $1,000) will most likely come with a relatively long list of picture settings, many of which are aimed at professional calibration. The Hisense U7N, for example, offers both 2- and 20-point white balance settings, which a calibrator can put to good use.

From a cost perspective, it might make sense for you to carry out a professional calibration for such a television. Many people buy a mid-range TV instead of a higher-end TV so that they can invest the money saved in professional calibration. Your U7N’s performance may not be at the highest possible level, but it is possible will looks absolutely good.

For high-end TVs (around $1,000 and up), the calculation is a little more complicated. People shopping in this price range tend to care more about image quality (and accuracy in particular), but they are also shopping in a price range where most options offer excellent accuracy out of the box.

It’s an interesting conundrum: The people who care most about professional calibration are also more likely to spend money on a TV when they need one less. This brings me to my final point, which is perhaps the most important insight of all.

In most cases, new TVs are fairly accurate out of the box

As long as you choose a precise picture mode and turn off the power saving settings, you’re already well on your way to making your TV look as accurate as possible. This applies to everything from budget TVs to expensive flagships.

On the other hand, if you want to save energy and prefer displaying less precise picture modes (like Vivid or Dynamic), you can also roll with these settings. They won’t provide the most accurate picture, but what ultimately matters is your opinion on it.

What does a professional TV calibrator do?

Recent Posts