Welcome to the Plasma Television Screen Sizes page, this is our guide to the screen sizes available when buying a plasma television. There are lots of screen sizes available with plasma screens including 32, 37, 42, 43, 50 and 60 inch screens. For smaller screens you have to get an LCD screen due to the technology used, basically LCD is better for smaller screens and plasma is better for larger screens. The most popular sizes are the 32 and 42 inch screens as these are the standard sizes and are more common, after 42 or 43 inches the prices tend to rise more steeply which is why 42 inches is so popular. The screen size of a plasma television should be stated with all plasma televisions so you know how big they are, the measurement of a plasma television covers only the screen that displays the picture and is measured diagonally from either top corner to the opposite bottom corner (see the image below).

Measuring the screen size diagonally has an interesting effect on the screen size, for example you would think that a 64 inch screen would be double the size of a 32 inch screen whereas in fact it has 4 times the total screen area. This is because the diagonal measurementcovers the vertical and horizontal elements of the screen so doubling the screen size in actual fact increases the surface area of the screen by a factor of four, on the image below you can see that one quarter of the screens area cover has a size that is half of the overall size of the plasma screen.

So this goes some way to explaining the big price differences between larger and smaller plasma screens, the larger screens give more screen area than the measurement suggests and couple this with the fact that plasma screens are expensive anyway and you can see why there is such a difference in price between the smaller and larger plasma screen sizes.

When buying a plasma screen the main constraints are the room that you have for the plasma screen and how much money you want to spend on the plasma screen. So the screen size is important when working out what you have room for, you have to remember that the measurement is diagonal and not horizontal so when measuring the space you intend to place the plasma screen bear that in mind. Also remember that the size stated is only the actual screen, it does not include the casing or speakers so the actual plasma unit will be larger than the screen size states, this is not normally a problem though as most shops will state the physical size of the unit.