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Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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Credit:
Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar
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For an affordable price, the TCL 6-Series delivers a bright, colorful picture and an impressive array of next-gen gaming features. Read More
The 2022 TCL 5-Series combines impressive performance, improved brightness, great gaming support, and Roku OS to be the best budget pick available. Read More
The Sony A95K is not only the best OLED we’ve ever tested, it’s also the best TV, period. Its top-of-the-line picture quality outshines a handful of minor flaws. Read More
The Hisense U8H is one of the best budget-friendly TVs of the year. It offers excellent performance and useful features for a surprisingly low price. Read More
The LG G2 is one of the brightest OLED TVs ever made. Its world-class performance and impressive features are ideal for A/V and gaming enthusiasts. Read More
These days, most TVs come with built-in smart features to help stream movies and TV shows without making a second purchase. However, not all smart platforms were created equal. Currently, Roku is our favorite smart TV platform. We appreciate its intuitive features, impressive search, and vast array of available apps.
As such, the Roku-powered TCL 6-Series takes the trophy for the best smart TV we tested, offering the best combination of overall performance for the price and a killer smart platform.
There are TVs that eclipse the 6-Series for picture quality—LG’s OLEDs, for example—but none come with Roku. If you're looking for something more affordable, TCL's 5-Series is our pick for Best Value, offering the same Roku platform and a great intersection of picture quality and price.
The TCL 6-Series is the best Roku TV available.
Excellent out-of-box performance
Snappy Roku OS
Great for casual gaming
Some light bloom
Roku or bust
World-class picture quality
Superb design
Fast, flexible software
Gaming support so-so
Minor color fringing
Excellent contrast and color
Easy-to-use smart platform
Strong gaming support for the price
A few picture processing quirks
Narrow viewing angle
Lackluster design
Incredible contrast
Sensational color
Ready for next-gen gaming
Lackluster stand design
Occasional pink tint during off-angle viewing
Our current Home Theater expert is Michael Desjardin, who’s been testing televisions with the Reviewed tech team since 2014. Michael, a Senior Staff Writer, is a film enthusiast and TV expert, and he’s passionate about finding TVs that match peoples’ specific needs.
John Higgins is Reviewed’s A/V and Electronics Senior Editor. In his A/V career that has spanned two decades he has written about TVs, speakers, headphones, AVRs, gaming, and all manner of technology. He is also an ISF Level III-certified calibrator.
At our laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we have a wide array of testing equipment similar to what you would see in a factory that makes and calibrates TVs. Over our years testing televisions, we’ve honed a system that combines complex, fine-tuned measurements on brightness, color and more with tests that make sure a TV is fun and convenient for everyday use.
Purchasing a TV will always mean making a trade-off. Sony tends to offer unmatched picture quality, but the price runs higher. Hisense offers a good blend of brightness, color, and features, but the image processing isn’t always as robust. There are similar trade-offs when it comes to smart platforms.
Smart TVs have evolved a lot over the years. Nowadays, their main function is to serve up streaming content from services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, or Disney+. Some may offer additional features like a calendar function, or integration with the major smart home brands for voice control.
Generally speaking, smart TV bells and whistles can be hit or miss. The most important things to consider are “Does it have the apps that I want to watch?” and “Is it easy to use?”
There are three big platforms that TV makers can license out: Amazon’s Fire TV, Google TV, and Roku. Some brands, like LG and Samsung, use homegrown smart platforms that are exclusive to the TVs that they make.
Amazon Fire TV is one of the big smart platforms that manufacturers partner with. It’s also available via Fire TV devices that plug into your television. It has some neat features, including a robust selection of streaming services and voice commands through Amazon Alexa. However, it doesn’t support playing media from other devices through local casting services like Apple AirPlay or Google’s Chromecast.
Google TV is an Android-based system that’s available on partnered TVs or through Google’s Chromecast devices. It provides most of the popular streaming services, as well as voice commands through Google Assistant. It tends to run smoothly, and you can use Chromecast to push content from other devices to your TV.
Roku was one of the earliest streaming devices available, and they’re also one of the most finely-tuned and easiest to use, whether on a separate Roku device or on a built-in Roku TV. It features a full complement of streaming apps, as well as support for Apple Airplay and Miracast, but not Chromecast. There’s no smart home voice control, but you can do certain voice commands through a Roku Voice Remote.
LG webOS is LG’s homespun smart platform, and it can be used with LG’s ThinQ voice assistant or with Alexa or Google Assistant as part of a larger smart home environment. We love the brand—the LG C2 OLED TV is our top pick for best TV overall. However, webOS tends to run sluggishly, and it’s weighed down with lots of sponsored content. If you’re buying a TV specifically for the smart platform, look elsewhere.
Samsung Tizen OS Samsung’s homegrown smart TV platform is based on Linux, and built to incorporate compatibility with Galaxy phones, SmartThings smart home appliances, and the Bixby voice assistant. (It can also be used with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.) It supports local casting and has plenty of streaming apps, with a few omissions like anime streamer Crunchyroll. We find it a little laggy and frustrating overall.
Generally speaking, our favorite smart platform is Roku, which makes TCL a great brand overall. We also like the Google TV smart platform, which you can typically find in brands like Sony and Hisense.
We don’t typically care for LG’s smart platform, webOS. However, LG’s 4K TVs are a strong balance of picture, features, and price that they’re our favorite overall, even if we don’t like the smart TV functionality itself.
Likewise, while Samsung makes strong televisions, their smart platform isn’t the best. With both LG and Samsung, we typically recommend getting a separate streaming device like a Roku or an Amazon Fire stick.
That depends on what’s important to you. Typically, we focus on aspects of the image quality like brightness, color, and contrast. Resolution is important, too, but since 4K TV is standard now, you’re unlikely to find a smart TV with lower resolution than that.
You might also want to consider gaming features. Features like variable refresh rate and auto low latency mode can help make pictures smoother and reduce input lag when playing video games. Then again, most gaming consoles can also stream video from a wide variety of streaming services, making smart platforms a little less important.
Michael Desjardin graduated from Emerson College after having studied media production and screenwriting. He specializes in tech for Reviewed, but also loves film criticism, weird ambient music, cooking, and food in general.
John is Reviewed's Managing Editor of Tech. He is an ISF Level III-certified calibrator with bylines at ProjectorCentral, Wirecutter, IGN, Home Theater Review, T3, Sound & Vision, and Home Theater Magazine. When away from the Reviewed office, he is a sound editor for film, a musician, and loves to play games with his son.
Alex Kane is a senior editor at USA Today’s Reviewed and the author of the Boss Fight Books volume on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He has written for Fangoria, PC Gamer, Polygon, Rolling Stone, StarWars.com, and Variety. He lives in west-central Illinois.
Michael Garrett Steele has been writing and editing professionally since 2013, and has been a part of Reviewed since 2020. An MFA in music composition, Garrett has lent audio expertise to everyone from Independence Community College to Bethesda Softworks, informing reviews of audio equipment and services. Garrett also covers tech, drawing on experience working everywhere from IT helpdesks to enterprise architecture sales. Steele has also become a go-to reviewer for minor plumbing fixtures since covering bidets for Reviewed in early 2020.
Our team is here for one purpose: to help you buy the best stuff and love what you own. Our writers, editors, and lab technicians obsess over the products we cover to make sure you're confident and satisfied. Have a different opinion about something we recommend? Email us and we'll compare notes.
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