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When looking at the TVs for testing, I wanted to ensure I chose a decent cross-section of smart TV interfaces and I chose three of the most popular: Roku, Fire TV and Samsung Smart Hub. All three deliver a wide range of streaming apps, as well as voice assistants and smart home integration.

Most users have their own favorite in a smart TV operating system, but Roku's is beloved and has millions of users because of its simple, friendly interface. The remote control is the key to the experience and the Roku Select even has a voice-activated remote finder that works well.

I've come to appreciate the Fire TV interface since its last major update a few years ago. Key to its usability is that mid-screen shortcut bar with your favorite apps and crucially the input icon. That shortcut makes it easy to switch between connected devices and having the apps right in the center means you don't have to wade through acres of content suggestions.

Of the three I tested, I liked the Samsung smart TV interface the least -- but it's at least the 2025 version that now includes a gaming option in the menu as well as link to Connected Devices (where the input selections live).

When setting up these TVs, I was impressed to see Filmmaker Mode on two of these TVs (Samsung and Hisense). As the closest thing the industry gets to standardization, this mode helps ensure some consistency when watching TV and movies. By comparison, the Fire TV only has a choice of Movie Dark and Movie Bright (lit rooms) while Roku has its own Movie mode.

I tested the TVs by streaming movies, using Fandango at Home, including It and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. These two movies are tests for any TV -- the ability to display either moody, high-contrast scenes (It) or the vivid colors of a comic book (Spider-Man.) In general, I found that the Hisense had the best contrast and best color saturation, while the Fire TV and Roku are brighter in movie modes.

Using the opening scenes of It, as Georgie descends the stairs, I found that the Roku had the poorest shadow detail of the four, with the details of intricate woodwork and wall under the stairs crushed into a blue/black. 

Meanwhile, it was the Hisense that had the best shadow detail -- with more of the under-stairs area visible over these few frames. The Hisense had a solidity to its image that the other TVs lacked. As Georgie moves into the basement the room looked real, whereas the other TVs devolved into gray fog with disembodied furniture  In addition, black areas of the picture -- even on the black bars at top and bottom -- were truly black and not dark blue or gray as with the Samsung and Fire TV.

As with last year's Samsung TV -- red areas of the U8000's picture are a little desaturated, and this was most obvious during Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. At 32.48, during the memorial service for the old Spider-Man, Spidey's suit looked a little more bedraggled on this TV as opposed to both the Fire TVs which had vibrant reds. Lastly, the Roku looked vibrant in its rendering of Spiderman's red and blue, but the picture looked a little 2D and flat. The Roku did pick up a little during the blazingly-bright collider sequence, with the brightest picture of the four, but the Hisense had the best contrast.

I did find one when testing the Roku, in that its off-axis response was quite poor. Even when I was sitting dead-center of the screen at a distance of six feet I was never on-axis to all of the screen -- there was always a part that's just off axis. 

As far as bright-room performance is concerned, they all had some level of reflectivity, although some were better at rejecting direct light sources than others. I shone my cell-phone flash on each of the TVs in turn and found the Hisense was the best here, with a bright center but reduced corona. The next three were similar to each other, although the Fire TV's reflections were dullest, then the Roku and the Samsung had the brightest reflections.

I compared the sound quality of all four TVs using a mix of music and movie soundtracks, with a particular emphasis on dialogue. For music, I used Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as it's a dynamic track with a bassline that some TV speakers can run afoul of. For TV, I used a mix of daytime talk shows and the opening scene of Mad Max: Fury Road. None of them sounded "good," and that's to be expected of a budget model, but all buyers really need is for a TV to get dialogue right.

Of the assembled models, the Samsung had the thinnest TV sound with reedy-sounding dialog and no real bass to speak of. WIth the Nick Cave track the TV was very quiet -- even at maximum volume -- but there was plenty of sparkly hi-hat. Finally, a TV for trebly percussion fans!

Conversely, the Fire TV had a strong sense of stereo sound, and this was exemplified by the dialog during the beginning of Mad Max: Fury Road. The Amazon TV was able to lend the swirling voices a decent amount of space. In addition, when Tom Hardy spoke, it sounded fairly natural -- not throaty or mumbly. With music, the Fire TV didn't get as loud with Red Right Hand but didn't distort like my next TV, the Roku.

The Roku was thin sounding with dialog as well -- none of the full-sounding voices of the Fire TV -- and it was especially weak at higher volumes. When playing the Nick Cave track, the bass guitar sounded very wobbly -- like it had been put through a distortion and phaser pedal.

Lastly, the Hisense was able to get quite loud but given how great its picture was it was a disappointment for me to find the sound as anything but. Music was distorted and speech quality wasn't up there with the Fire TV.

Budget TVs are cheap and often lack many of the features that make more expensive TVs so appealing. That said, there are still a few things that you'll want to consider when looking at a budget TV.

Price: TVs range in price from $100 to more than $2,000. Smaller screens are cheaper, well-known brands are more expensive and spending more money also can get you better image quality. Most entry-level TVs have a good enough picture for most people but TVs last a long time, so it might be worth spending more to get a better picture. It's also best to shop for a TV in the fall, when prices are lower.

Screen size: Bigger is better in our book. We recommend a size of at least 43 inches for a bedroom TV and at least 55 inches for a living room or main TV -- and 65 inches or larger is best. More than any other "feature," stepping up in TV screen size is the best use of your money. One of the most common post-TV-purchase complaints we've heard is from people who didn't go big enough. And we almost never hear people complain that their TV is too large.

Capability: Among entry-level TVs, the most important feature is what kind of smart TV system the TV uses. Among midrange models, look for a feature including full-array local dimming, mini-LED and 120Hz refresh rate, which (unlike some other extras) do help improve the picture in our experience. And among high-end TVs, OLED technology is your best bet.

For more TV buying advice check out our guide to how to buy a TV.

For this roundup, I compared four budget 50-to-55 inch TVs side by side -- using sources such as an Xbox Series X, Roku Ultra and Oppo UDP-203 -- and all synchronized using an AVPro Connect 8x8 4K HDR distribution matrix. I watched the TVs in a variety lighting conditions and played different media -- including movies, TV shows and games -- in order to evaluate each model's brightness, video processing, gaming responsiveness and HDR capabilities. Instead of performing CNET's standard suite measurements or Geek Box tests for this group of TVs, I measured input lag for gaming as well as brightness in nits using a Konica Minolta LS-100 luminance meter. My tallied scores also account for design, features, smart TV performance, HDMI inputs, gaming compatibility and other factors.

Check out our page on how CNET tests TVs for more details.

TCL 4-Series Google TV – 50S446: The TCL 4-Series is an older Google TV that I tested as part of last year's roundup. It's a decent TV, but it's outclassed by some of the competition here.