Watch football in high quality: the best devices

Foot­ball fans have been look­ing for­ward to the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which is tak­ing place in 11 Russ­ian cities. True, not every­one has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be present at the sta­di­ums in per­son to sup­port our team. But there is no rea­son to be upset, because all match­es will be broad­cast in 4K HDR for­mat with immer­sive sound.

Instead of look­ing at the fig­ures of foot­ball play­ers from the stands, it is much more log­i­cal to gath­er friends at home, behind a big TV, and not miss a sin­gle goal. High-def­i­n­i­tion tele­vi­sion cam­eras will cap­ture the most epic moments of clash­es between the nation­al teams from all angles, and believe me, you will not see this at the sta­di­um.

So that you can watch foot­ball at home and with max­i­mum com­fort, we have com­piled a selec­tion of the best TVs, mobile devices and pro­jec­tors that will allow you to trans­fer emo­tions from the stands straight to your apart­ment. Those who want a tru­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ence should be aware that some games will be avail­able to watch in vir­tu­al real­i­ty and as 360-degree videos. Stock up on pop­corn — the show is about to begin.

UHD 4K HDR TVs

A mod­ern TV should dis­play high-qual­i­ty tele­vi­sion and Blu-ray con­tent with nat­ur­al col­ors, as well as pro­vide a wide view­ing angle. Equal­ly impor­tant is good sound. Our com­par­i­son tables will help you choose the best TV.

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Editor’s Choice: Sony OLED KD-65AF8/KD-55AF8

The new Sony BRAVIA AF8 series (55 and 65 inch­es) based on OLED matri­ces show per­fect shades, includ­ing deep blacks. The vir­tu­al­ly bezel-less design and smart­phone-like thick­ness make it easy to fit the TV into your sur­round­ings with­out tak­ing up much space. As such, there are no speak­ers on the TV: the acoustic ele­ment has become … an OLED screen that acts as a mem­brane through which sound pass­es.

Tiny speak­ers, locat­ed in the cen­ter of the back of the TV, are equipped with motor dri­ves that cause vibra­tions and ampli­fy the sound. Through these vibra­tions, the sound pass­es through the entire sur­face of the TV pan­el, as if through the mem­brane of a large speak­er, and cre­ates a sur­round sound effect that seems to come straight from the image on the screen. The sub­woofer is locat­ed at the bot­tom.

Bargain purchase: Samsung QE49Q7CAM

If you turn your atten­tion to Sam­sung QLED TVs, you can also get a free three-month sub­scrip­tion to foot­ball chan­nels. Quan­tum dot tech­nol­o­gy was devel­oped to over­come the short­com­ings of OLED. Quan­tum Dot screens use mate­ri­als of inor­gan­ic ori­gin, which have a sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer life.

In addi­tion to quan­tum dots, Sam­sung TVs use sev­er­al oth­er impor­tant image enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies such as Ultra Black, which min­i­mizes glare on the screen by reduc­ing the reflec­tion of exter­nal light and increas­es con­trast. As a result, the view­er can enjoy excel­lent black depth when watch­ing TV even dur­ing the day in a well-lit room.

Sam­sung’s new QLED TVs impress with col­or repro­duc­tion, high con­trast ratios and very beau­ti­ful HDR repro­duc­tion.

Smartphones and tablets

Mobile gad­gets have long turned into high-per­for­mance mini-com­put­ers. Large dis­plays pro­vide com­fort­able view­ing, pow­er­ful proces­sor — good per­for­mance.

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Top Product: Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus

Sam­sung con­tin­ues to focus on improv­ing not only smart­phones, but also the Dex dock­ing sta­tion. With this gad­get, the Galaxy S9 con­nects to an exter­nal mon­i­tor, allow­ing you to broad­cast an image from your smart­phone to it: for exam­ple, foot­ball match­es.

The Galaxy S9 Plus itself is water­proof, sup­ports wire­less charg­ing tech­nol­o­gy, works-
No in LTE net­works at speeds up to 1.2 Gbps, equipped with Blue­tooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac mod­ules. The man­u­fac­tur­er did not refuse from the slot for mem­o­ry cards microSD, in which you can install a sec­ond SIM-card.

Top Product: Apple iPad Pro 10.5 LTE 512GB

Apple not only increased the diag­o­nal of the dis­play, but also com­plete­ly changed the tech­ni­cal “stuff­ing”. In par­tic­u­lar, the res­o­lu­tion was raised to 2224x1688 pix­els (265 ppi), and the screen was able to dynam­i­cal­ly increase the refresh rate to 120 Hz (instead of 60 Hz).

And although it is dif­fi­cult to catch the dif­fer­ence at first glance, when watch­ing sports video broad­casts, the image remains clear­er. At a time when a high refresh rate is not need­ed, this fig­ure drops to 48 or 24 Hz to save bat­tery pow­er.

Projectors

4K UHD res­o­lu­tion has also reached pro­jec­tors. How­ev­er, as our “Best Prod­uct” proves, you can still get amaz­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty with Full HD.

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Top Product: Acer VL7860

At just 310mm high, the Acer VL7860 is one of the small­est UHD pro­jec­tors test­ed. The VL7860 uses a laser lamp that lasts up to 20 times longer than con­ven­tion­al UHP mod­els. Acer itself lists 30,000 hours as its lifes­pan. The laser lamp pro­vides a max­i­mum light out­put of 1764 lumens, so the pro­jec­tor gives an excel­lent pic­ture even in bright­ly lit rooms.

By the way, the offi­cial spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the Acer VL7860 should not con­fuse you. Although the pro­jec­tor ini­tial­ly adver­tis­es a rather low res­o­lu­tion of 2716×1528 pix­els, thanks to intel­li­gent XPR switch­ing tech­nol­o­gy, full-fledged 4K pro­jec­tions are also real. To do this, each image is pro­ject­ed twice: once unchanged and once shift­ed by 0.5 pix­els diag­o­nal­ly. Thus, not only can the UHD for­mat be played loss­less­ly, but low res­o­lu­tion video is also scaled very well. Spec­i­fi­ca­tions are also pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.

The price of just under 300,000 rubles, of course, is not very encour­ag­ing, but accept­able for such a high-end pro­jec­tor as the Acer VL7860.

Pho­to: man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies; mdbildes, Alex, jarma/Fotolia.com