TV Model Numbers Explained: What They Mean, and How to Know If You're Getting a Good Deal (2024)

Several times a year, electronics retailers slash prices on products as part of seasonal and holiday sales. Super Bowl weekend, President's Day, Amazon Prime Day, and, of course, Black Friday offer sizable discounts on big-ticket electronics like TVs. You might be able to find a great television for an amazing price during these sales. You might also wind up with a mediocre model you ultimately paid too much for, because product names and labels are confusing.

When you're shopping for a TV, the brand name can be a factor in features, design, and general quality. It's far from the biggest factor, however, because every TV manufacturer makes multiple lines of products.

There are budget-friendly TVs with low price tags and unambitious performance. There are midrange models with modest prices and performance to match. And there are high-end televisions with impressive performance and sky-high prices. And, after testing many of them, we’ve found that there are also budget TVs with great picture quality and pricey panels that aren’t up to snuff. If you simply follow a sale and buy a "Samsung TV" or a "Sony TV" or any other TV just because it has a discount, you'll have no idea exactly what kind of TV you're buying, or how good it is.

This is where stock-keeping units, or SKUs, come in. In retail, SKUs are identifiers for specific versions of products. They identify the individual model of a given item, like a TV. Think of them as labels that let you figure out exactly what you’re buying when an ad or even the product box isn't completely clear on it.

Television SKUs are long and complex strings of letters and numbers that define a variety of aspects of each model. They can show the product line, screen size, and even individual retailer variants of TVs, and they're the key to decoding just how good a TV on sale is. They're also wildly different for each TV manufacturer.

With that in mind, here's a handy guide to decoding the SKUs of different TV manufacturers. It's a complicated system, but once you break down each label to its parts, it becomes much easier to navigate.

The Parts of the Number

Every television SKU can be broken down into individual components. Once you can identify these components, you can figure out things like screen size, tier/quality level, and even retailer exclusivity. Depending on the manufacturer, TV SKUs have three to five parts, including:

• Screen Size:A number indicating how big the TV is.

• Product Line:A set of letters or numbers indicating what product series the model is in.

• Generation:A set of letters or numbers indicating what year the TV was made.

• Retailer Sub-Model:A number indicating a specific model is intended to be sold at a specific retailer.

• Other Variations:A set of letters or numbers indicating the TV is of a specific variety outside of its product series. Hisense, for example, designates Android TVs with an H and Roku TVs with an R, and LG specifically calls out OLED TVs with the OLED designation.

• Fluff:Additional numbers or letters that indicate the sales region or other broad categorizations that are similar or identical across all TVs available from the manufacturer in your market.

Now that you know the basics, let's break it down by specific manufacturers.

Hisense

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Example:Hisense 55U8N, the 55-inch version of a high-end 2024 Hisense TV.

• The 55 at the beginning shows that Hisense puts screen sizes at the start of the product number.

• The U (or A) indicates that it's an Android TV. If it were a Roku TV, it would have an R instead.

• The 8 after the U means it's on the high end of Hisense's lines. Lower-end TVs include the U7.

• The N means it's a 2024 model.

• Note: The ULED moniker on the box and product listings means it's in the upper half of Hisense's TVs (and basically a QLED). Non-ULED Hisense TVs include the year-old A65K.

LG (LED TVs)

(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; A Dharma Prasetya, Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock)

Example:LG 65QNED80TUC, a 65-inch QNED (LG's name for QLED) TV.

• The 65 at the beginning indicates the screen size.

• The QNED is the tier designation, showing that it's a higher-end TV. Lower-end LED TVs would have UT, like the 65UT7570PUB. QNED also means it's only two or three years old; before that, LG called their higher-end LED TVs NanoCell and used NANO in the model number.

• The 80 shows the tier of TV within the QNED category. This number ranges from 75 to 90, so 80 indicates a relatively low tier.

• The TUC indicates it's a 2024 model, and the latter two letters are fluff. This gets confusing, because in previous years this section was also a three-letter string, but it started with A or U, and none of the letters gave a specific indication on precisely what generation the TV model was.

LG (OLED TVs)

(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; A Dharma Prasetya, Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock)

Example:LG OLED65G4SUB, or LG Evo G4, a 65-inch OLED TV. LG's naming structure for OLED TVs is significantly different from LED TV names.

• The OLED at the beginning shows it's an OLED TV.

• The 65 indicates the screen size.

• The G shows the product line, with higher letters generally indicating higher-tier versions with sleeker designs or more features. G, for example, has a fancier "gallery" design than the slightly lower-end C.

• The 4 is the generational designation and indicates a 2024 model. 2023 models are 3.

• The SUB is fluff and can be ignored. In fact, larger G4 models have WUA instead of SUB, and C4 TVs use AUA.

Samsung

(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; A Dharma Prasetya, Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock)

Example:Samsung QN65QN90DAFXZA, or QN90D, the 65-inch model of Samsung's high-end 4K QLED TV.

• The first QN is fluff and can be ignored. It refers to QLED, Samsung's term for its wide-color LCD panel technology, and was previously used to describe only higher-end Samsung TVs. However, all current Samsung TVs are now considered QLED and have the QN prefix, while the UN prefix indicates it's at least a generation old.

• The 65 is the screen size.

• The QN indicates it's a Neo QLED TV, a higher-end LED TV compared with Samsung’s broader range of QLED TVs (which are identified with just a Q).

• The 90 shows it's a flagship or near-flagship 4K TV. Lower numbers indicate lower tiers, from 60 to 90. Three digits (like 900) would indicate an 8K TV.

• The D shows it's a 2024 model. C indicates a 2023 model and B a 2022 model.

• The AFXZA is fluff and can be ignored.

Sony

(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; A Dharma Prasetya, Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock)

Example:Sony XR-65X93L, a 2023 Sony LED TV.

• The XR indicates that the TV is one of Sony’s higher-end models (and can also say XBR), but it doesn’t show the specific product line. KD and KDL indicate lower-end Sony TVs.

• The 65 shows the screen size.

• The X shows that the TV is an LED. Sony X- and Z-series TVs are LED, while its A-series are OLED.

• The 93 indicates the position of the TV at the top of Sony's product lines. Higher numbers mean higher tiers, though a single digit specifically means it's an 8K TV.

• The L at the end indicates that the TV is a 2023 model. A K indicates a 2022 TV, while a J indicates a 2021 TV.

TCL

(Credit: RaShawn Dixon; A Dharma Prasetya, Smile Studio AP/Shutterstock)

Example:TCL 75Q750G, the 75-inch model in TCL's 2023 Q7-series of higher-end TVs.

• The 75 is the screen size.

• The Q indicates it's a lower-end QLED. QM means higher-end QLED TVs with mini-LED backlight systems, and R and S mean non-QLED TVs.

• The second 7 is the tier. Specifically, 7 means it's a higher-end midrange TV

• The 5 makes it a bit confusing. TCL has some variations within tiers of its TVs, and in that case the higher that second digit is at the end of the SKU, the higher-end it is. The Q7 line doesn't have different versions, but the QM8 series is split between 5 (QM851) and 9 (QM891), where QM891 is only available in 115 inches as the 115QM891G and has some picture enhancements the 851 models don't have.

• The 0 is usually the model year. A 1, like the 115QM891G, would mean a 2024 model.

• The G is fluff.

Vizio

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Example:Vizio M65QXM-K01, the 65-inch model of Vizio's 2022 LED M-series.

• The M indicates the overall product line and that it's Quantum, a high-midrange QLED model. V is the simple 4K HDR budget-priced line, and VQP is the flagship Quantum Pro QLED series.

• The 65 once again shows the screen size.

• The QXM used to mean it was a QLED TV, but Vizio has since made all of its M-series TVs QLED. So it's basically fluff.

• The K01 is also fluff.

This seems very simple, but Vizio can be quite vague in its TV labeling and often markets its TVs without widely showing the SKU in the first place. Since Vizio has been acquired by Walmart, the SKU structures could also change significantly in the future.

Finding the Best TV

With all of this in mind, you can't go wrong with any of the picks on our list of thebest TVs. Just make sure you're buying the right model!

If you're looking for something more specific, we also have lists for the best cheap TVs, the best 65-inch TVs, the best 75-inch (and up) TVs, and the best TVs for gaming.

If you're trying to figure out what size TV you need, check out our handy tips. And once you find the perfect model, read up on our five simple tweaks to get the best picture.