After a few months of picking out a new budget TV, I bought a 55" TCL 4K QLED TV with a miniLED backlight (basically equivalent to Samsung's "Neo QLED") for $700. One of the highest quality TVs I've ever seen - couldn't notice a difference between this TV and an OLED one. The blacks are perfectly black, looking at it from a 2m distance - even if I looked closer, I think I wouldn't notice that nearby LEDs are lighted up too. For $700 I didn't expect much, but it comes even with Dolby Vision (which Samsung infamously doesn't support!) and it has a 144 Hz panel. I don't know the exact price range for the TVs mentioned in the article, but if I can get this high quality in a $700 TV - I couldn't care less about some quantum dots.
