Shopping for a new TV always comes with a twinge of guilt, as it means that it’s time to retire a screen that you’ve been watching for years. Sometimes you’re upgrading because you’re replacing an old CRT TV that you bought back in the ’90s…and other times, frustratingly, it’s to replace a TV that you just bought a few years ago — and that made me wonder, how long should a TV really last?
To answer that question, I scoured the internet for hard data and sprinkled in some knowledge from my decade-plus of covering the best TVs as a journalist.
What I found out is that most people choose to upgrade their TV every 5 to 10 years, whenever a new technology becomes the standard. According to data from NPD, the average age that a TV gets replaced is 6.6 years.
That being said, however, some enthusiasts (myself included) may upgrade slightly faster than the average TV watcher in…
