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Best Smart TV?

5 pointsbombcar15 comments

We’ve had a number of threads complaining about not being able to get a dumb TV. But what is the best smart tv? One that doesn’t auto play shows or ads, always appears as a chrome cast and Airplay target, uses little energy, and has good app and automation integration, etc? So far my experience has been that a Vizio was pretty decent, and the Samsung I got when the Visio took a remote to the face absolutely sucks.

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> But what is the best smart tv?

My advice: (1) Buy the TV based on size, picture quality, format support, your budget, etc. and (2) ignore the built-in user experience and use an Apple TV instead.

(1) My current favorite resource for picking the best TV for you is RTINGS.com. If you want to reward them for their "real tests, unbiased, no ads" approach, you could give them $10 while you do your research and make a decision.

(2) I understand this advice is incompatible for people who don't have or want an Apple device, and/or who believe Apple is evil. But the playback quality is stellar, it's power efficient (between 0.3W on standby to 5.8W for 4K HDR playback), and I'm far more comfortable with Apple's privacy policies than the alternatives. The Plex and Infuse apps are great.

I have an Apple TV and it works nice - the problem is that the amount of fiddling to get everything on and correct is annoying - I can easily do it but the others have a hard time remembering that HDMI needs to be set to 2, receiver on, etc. Even with ARC it seems to get confused.

I have the same setup and it usually works nicely with ARC, but it all depends on the specific products and models you use, for example most TV's will remember the last use HDMI (or else I get an emergency phone call to fix that)

With CEC can't you just press a button on the apple tv remote, which turns on the tv and sets it to the correct input? That's all I do on my ancient dumb tv.

This is the route I took, started with a 40-something inch TCL TV and eventually moved up to 75" LG OLED, the constant has been an AppleTV. The interface, the apps, etc. all work.

If only it had a mode that would keep commercial/trailer volume at a reasonable level.

I think the best TVs right now are still the LG OLEDs. The new Samsung OLEDs get brighter, but I do not trust Samsung's QA.

In terms of the built-in software, it is all mostly bad to mediocre. The LG WebOS software is okay, but a bit clunky. You can turn off of the ads.

If you really care about the Smart TV function I recommend just buying an Apple TV. It is by far the best I have used. If you prefer not to spend the money a cheap Roku stick is not a bad option. Others will mention something like Shield TV and they are fine, but the Apple TV is superior.

TCL with ROKU O/S TCL 65" Class 6-Series 4K Mini-LED UHD QLED Dolby Vision IQ & Atmos, 144Hz VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, Smart Roku TV – 65R655

has been outstanding

Agreement from me. I have had no complaints about the Roku TV experience on my TCL.

I have this same TV, but the Google TV version. However we use Amazon Firesticks instead of using the Google TV. Very much like the TV.

"and the Samsung I got when the Visio took a remote to the face absolutely sucks."

what this means ? haha, remote is not good ? :-)

Kids decided to imitate people new to Wii Sports and threw the remote at the vizio hard enough to shatter the LCD and backlight.

This is a surprisingly common problem.

found out only after I became a parent and started talking kids stuff with others.

At least TVs are cheap enough it's not terribly painful, but if it appears to be happening again some Lexan might be in my future.

Buy a Hisense U6H. Absolute best value on the market right now. It has full local array dimming, runs Google TV, and is cheaper than the competition.

I bought a TCL 4K TV, didn’t connect it to the Internet, and connected an Apple TV 4K to it. No regrets.

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