If you bought a 65-inch TV in 2023 for what felt like a reasonable $900, congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a very large, very expensive reminder that patience is a financial strategy.
The same panel that cost you a mortgage payment is now hanging on a Best Buy wall for $398, and it comes with a free soundbar that you also paid extra for.
Panel manufacturing capacity in Asia keeps growing, competition between brands is a knife fight, and retailers have figured out that a cheap TV is the modern equivalent of a rotisserie chicken — a loss leader designed to get you in the door so you'll leave with a $60 HDMI cable and a five-year warranty you will never use.
Economists will tell you this is "deflation in consumer electronics," which is a fancy way of saying your stuff is worthless the second you carry it to the car.
The 55-inch that was $1,200 in 2019 goes for $268 on a Tuesday.
The 75-inch that required two people and a prayer is now an impulse buy next to the checkout lane, like gum, but with more existential dread.
The dirty secret is that TV makers don't really want to sell you a TV anymore.
They want to sell you the stuff that shows up on it.
Ad-supported streaming tiers, preinstalled apps, data collection on what you watch and when you pause — that's the actual business model.
You're the inventory, and the TV is the fence.
First, oversupply — factories kept building panels even after the pandemic binge ended.
Second, the brands figured out that a race to the bottom is fine as long as everyone drowns together.
Third, and this is the fun one, nobody actually needs a new TV.
The one you bought five years ago still works.
It's just slightly less bright than the one your neighbor just bragged about.
Which brings us to the real American problem: we don't buy TVs because we need them.
We buy them because the old one feels sad, or because a football game looks better in 4K, or because there's a deal that expires at midnight and our brains interpret that as a personal challenge.
That's why the "was $1,299" tag is never coming back, but the "$499 today only" sign has been up since March.
The smart move, if you can call anything about this smart, is to buy the previous year's model right when the new one drops.
You get 95% of the picture quality for 60% of the price, and you only feel mildly humiliated when it's $80 cheaper six weeks later.
The house always wins, but at least the house is now the size of a wall. **The Take:** TV prices aren't crashing out of kindness — they're crashing because the money moved from the box to the ads inside the box.
Buy the cheap one, mute the autoplay trailer, and never, ever buy the extended warranty.
Final Thoughts
If it dies in two years, the replacement will cost less than the warranty did.