9 Feet Is the Ideal TV Viewing Distance
For a 55-inch TV, 9 feet is the ideal viewing distance1.
Too close or too far, and problems arise:
What goes wrong too close
When I compare 8 feet and 9 feet, the latter is more relaxed and cinematic2. Faces are slightly too big at 8, and natural at 9.
When I move closer to 7 feet, it gets worse: faces are too big and unnatural, like having a conversation with someone an inch away. I can see pores in their faces. In some shots, I see a pattern of dots3 that moves as the character moves his head. Because faces are too big, the balance between the person and the room is lost — the person dominates my view. There's slightly more stutter when the camera pans, which is to say that movement looks jerky in comparison with how it looks at 9 feet.
When I move even closer to 6 and 5 feet, the above problems remain, and in addition, too much ISO noise is visible that isn't at longer viewing distances.
When I move back to the ideal distance of 9 feet, all these problems went away. It’s comfortable to watch and cinematic.
What goes wrong too far
When I move 10 feet away from the screen, beyond the optimal 9, it no longer feels immersive or cinematic. It feels flat. I find myself caring less about what happened to the characters. The bridge of the Enterprise seems like an ordinary room rather than a place of immense power and technology, a crowning glory of humankind.
What TV size to buy
If you’re buying a TV, don’t buy a bigger one than 55 inches, unless you have more than 8 feet room4.
Don’t buy smaller than 55 inches, because it’s not cinematic; it’s almost like watching a movie on a computer monitor.
Measured from the TV Sony A95L to the back of my sofa.
If you want to measure it from the TV to the back of my head, subtract 5.5 inches.
I tested by watching Star Trek: First Contact, in HDR UHD. The file size is 9 GB. I played the movie from my Mac using Movist to the TV over HDMI. Needless to say, I watched at night.
I moved my sofa close to the TV, and kept moving it back, and replaying the same sequence each time, from 3 min 50 sec (Picard wakes up from his nightmare) to 9 min 26 seconds (The Enterprise goes to warp).
Probably because rather than fighting the discomfort, I’m relaxed and so able to appreciate the artistry more.
Probably video compression artifacts.
Even if you do today, buying a bigger TV will prevent you from downsizing. Don’t fall into the vicious cycle of having a big room, so you upsize, so when you move, it has to be to a bigger place, and so you upsize again, which again forces you to pick a bigger place when you move.