insignia smart tv lcd panel manufacturer

Insignia TVs are relatively one of the newer brands suitable for those with a tight budget. Many unknown brands are surfacing nowadays, so identifying the maker companies can help you trust a brand more. Our experts did a lot of research to give you everything you need to know about the Insignia brand. Insignia Systems Inc: Founders and Owners

Insignia is Best Buy’s brand of televisions and other electronics. Though it is mainly sold in Best Buy, you can also purchase this on Amazon and via Best Buy online shopping websites. They come in different sizes and specs. There are small screens, big screens, and 4K HDR models.

The Insignia brand can be comparable to big brands as other models have Amazon Fire TV. Identifying the maker of this brand is important before you decide if they are worth buying or just a waste of money.

Insignia’s TVs are owned and operated by Best Buy Co., Inc. They also offer other devices such as refrigerators, gaming devices, cameras, tablet accessories, and the likes. The Best Buy brand also operates internationally. They have branches in Canada and Mexico. Where are Insignia TVs Made?

Insignia TVs are Best Buy’s in-house brand of electronics. Major brands buy these televisions. Selling them to other brands ensures bigger discounts and larger profits. Best Buy does this to get a higher revenue in selling Insignia products, even if they are cheaper than other smart TVs.

However, these big TVs are actually outsourced from a manufacturer. The Best Buy store is pretty mum on what company makes Insignia TVs, but a plant from China manufactures it. Since the exact manufacturing plant is not disclosed, it is highly possible that multiple factories are involved in making this TV brand. Price Point and Quality

Insignia televisions are mid-range options for those who want to enjoy the more expensive brands’ picture quality. However, as they are less pricey than Sony, LG, Toshiba, or Samsung, you cannot enjoy all the details these Smart TV brands offer.

According to our researchers, the company who makes Insignia TVs, especially the high-end ones, is the Chinese corporation Hisense. All high-end televisions of this brand, including Amazon Fire TV, are made by this brand.

However, other Chinese manufacturers usually make the cheaper option TVs. Some other articles claim that the same Chinese company that supplies electronics for Samsung also manufactures Insignia TVs.

This may be because they follow the same naming convention for their model number. Aside from that, the memory modules[1]used in Insignia brand electronics are the same as that of Samsung. However, Best Buy has not verified this claim.

All Insignia TVs, as well as other devices and accessories sold in Best Buy, have a warranty. Warranties can range from product replacement to product repair. If you bought a smart TV at a low price, then encounter a problem with it, they will most likely just replace it as repairing it might cost more. Is Insignia a Good Choice for TVs?

Yes, Insignia is a good choice when you are looking for quality TVs at a reasonable price. This brand can give you good-quality audio and video data, adding depth to your viewing experience.

Insignia is not a Samsung TV. This is a different brand owned and distributed by Best Buy. Many people are confused because they follow the same pattern in their model numbering and use the same memory module. However, Samsung’s plants do not manufacture Insignia TVs.

Insignia TV is an American company as it is owned by Best Buy, an American consumer electronics retailer. Best Buy stores sell them in their shops, their online store counterparts, and on Amazon.

Insignia is made in China. However, the details on who manufactures them are not yet released by its distributor, Best Buy. High-end TVs from this brand are known to be made by Hisense, but the maker of their mid to low-priced TVs are not yet disclosed. Best Buy branches sell these TVs in the US, Canada, and Mexico, as well as on their online store and Amazon. Conclusion

When looking for a new TV, identifying the maker is important to trust the product fully. Our experts researched who makes Insignia TVs. Best Buy, an American retailer, owns the brand. However, it is manufactured by a Chinese company. Although not disclosed, it is claimed to be manufactured by Hisense and other small manufacturing companies.

It’s time to shop for a new TV and the Insignia name lines the displays at Best Buy. Many consumers are accustomed to Sony, Samsung, Phillips, and other widely known manufacturers. With the surge of Insignia TVs and electronics, some consumers ask who makes Insignia TVs?

While owned by Best Buy, Insignia TVs are manufactured by Hisense, a Chinese company responsible for a wide range of home appliances and electronics. There are rumors that Best Buy manufactures these televisions themselves, but the flow of production is not what some assume.

Best Buy shoppers may have noticed other Insignia products premiered as a dependable Best Buy brand. It’s common for stores to feature brands, take the Kenmore line of appliances at Sears as an example. Keep reading to clear up the details surrounding the relationship between Insignia and Best Buy.

Best Buy, known for its wide selection of electronics, and appliances and home to the Geek Squad offersInsignia TVsand electronics in their stores and online.

They own the trademark for the Insignia brand, but Best Buy is in the retail business, not manufacturing. Instead, they outsourced, usually to China, to assemble products. Insignia’s Fire TVs are exclusively made by Hisense.

The fact of the matter is nothing is exclusive when it comes to Insignia TVs. Pondering minds have found evidence that suggests that other Chinese companies have a part in their development.

So little information can be found about the manufacturer of Insignia’s products other than the Hisense name. However, contradicting information is floating all over the web, and some wonder where these misconceptions started.

A quick Google search about the manufacturer of Insignia TVs spurs more questions. Are their parts made by LG? Does Samsung make Insignia TVs? The only clear answer can be found by turning our direction to the physical product itself.

As a child, did you enjoy taking things apart and reassembling them one metal scrap at a time? This practice of digging deeper can lead to additional discoveries. What could be revealed by disassembling an Insignia TV?

The mainboard of a TV serves as its brain so to speak. A closer look at the label on Insignia TVs reveals a name that resembles that used for Samsung TVs.

The LCD panel or eyes of the TV is the main component of the screen. Insignia TVs have either LCD or LED displays depending on the model and size. Disassembling some of these TVs, it has been found that these displays are manufactured by a smaller Chinese company China Star Optoelectronics Technology.

Modern TVs come standard with built-in Wifi connections as more families turn to stream services for entertainment. To equip their TVs with this function, Insignia turned to Taiwanese manufacturing company Wistron NeWeb.

The business model of Insignia makes sense. Find the best components from other TVs and use them together to create a lower-priced TV. One could liken this TV to Frankenstein, made up of disjointed parts. It hasn’t taken long for Insignia to make its mark in the world of electronics.

Insignia offers more than just TVs. Customers turn to them for refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, and much more. Perhaps their composition of parts from multiple manufacturers has been the recipe for their success.

Small electronics like cameras, air fryers, power banks, and phones are offered by Insignia. One feature that Insignia seems to strive for across their products is good quality for a competitive price point.

2018 marked the dawn of the partnership between Best Buy and Amazon. This brilliant business plan, spurred by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos and Best Buy’s Hubert Joley secures the Fire TV market. Insignia has quickly established itself as a leader in Fire TV sales.

You won’t find Insignia’s products for sale at Best Buy’s rival stores. It’s in Amazon’s interest to have a brick-and-mortar retailer that promotes Fire TVs as their house brand.

The Insignia brand is owned and operated by retail giant Best Buy. Best Buy outsources the parts from more than one manufacturing company. Best Buy’s partnership with Amazon has resulted in Insignia’s concentration on producing fire TVs.

https://homeaffluence.com/who-makes-insignia-tvs/amp/#:~:text=Hisense%2C%20a%20Chinese%20company%2C%20manufactures,primary%20provider%20of%20Insignia%20televisions.

Insignia is Best Buy’s in-house brand that makes all kinds of tech from appliances to GPS systems. However, Insignia is most well known in the consumer electronics world for its budget TVs that compete with the likes of TCL, Toshiba, Hisense, and Amazon, to name just a few.

Insignia TVs are today divided up into four distinct lines: the N10 Series, F20 Series, F30 Series and F50 Series. These TV ranges scale up in terms of features and price, but the biggest and most expensive Insignia TVs will still cost you less than $1000, placing the brand firmly at the budget-conscious end of the market.

So, does retail giant Best Buy know what it takes to make a good TV? What features do Insignia TVs offer, and why might you want to buy one over a set from another brand? We haven’t put these Insignia TVs through our comprehensive review process, but there’s still a lot we can learn from delving into the specs of these sets.

So if you"re wondering whether to take the plunge on an Insignia TV deal, sit back, strap in, and read on to learn all about the 2022 Insignia TV range…

Insignia has a vast selection of TVs that range from 720p resolution to 4K; from ‘smart’ and app-filled to, well, non-smart and app-less; and from less than $100 to around $850. However, despite models boasting different feature sets, all Insignia TVs do share some things in common.

Firstly, Insignia TVs don’t carry premium picture-related features often associated with higher-priced TVs, such as HDR10+, 120Hz support or gaming-focused features like VRR. Screen technology like full-array local dimming is also absent, as is HDMI 2.1 support. While these ommissions may disappoint those looking for a no-compromises set, they also invariably help to keep Insignia’s prices competitive.

Secondly, most – but not all – of its models across the ranges are ‘smart’ TVs, meaning they can be connected to the internet and that supported video streaming services can be played directly from them. As all of Insignia’s smart TVs use Amazon’s Fire TV smart platform, the choice of apps available is plentiful, though the interface is rather Amazon-centric, so if you’re not an Amazon Prime subscriber or fan of the Amazon ecosystem, you may want to consider TVs based on other smart platforms, like TCL’s Roku TVs or Hisense’s Google TVs, to name a few.

Luckily, all of Insignia’s TVs come with familiar features like VESA mounting support and a variety of HDMI inputs including HDMI ARC. Generally strong user ratings and reviews attached to their listings on Best Buy help their case too.

In short, Insignia TVs aren’t at the cutting edge of TV tech. They don’t have premium OLED or Mini LED panels or next-gen gaming features. But if you’re not concerned with buying the best set money can buy and your priority lies with getting the most screen for not a lot of money or just finding a cheap set for a second room in the house, Insignia offers up a spread of affordable TVs you’d have no trouble using to watch or stream whatever you’d like or casually play some games on.

The N10 Series is Insignia"s most basic TV range, starting at $90 and topping out at $220. This is the only Insignia line without smart support, so if you want to stream from, say, Netflix or Hulu, you’ll need to go up a TV range. Alternatively, you could buy and connect a cheap dedicated streamer.

The 19-inch, 24-inch, and 32-inch N10 TVs only support 720p, lower than the 1080p of today that is nowadays considered fairly basic in light of the increasing prevalence of 4K TVs. That said, for a 19-inch display, the difference between 720p and 1080p is going to be a lot less noticeable than it is on a larger screen.

Features-wise, the N10 TVs are generally about as basic as TVs come these days, but they are also some of the cheapest too. The 19-inch N10, for example, will only run you $90, so if you’ve got a small space you’d like to squeeze a small TV into, like a kitchen, then a set like this might be just the ticket.

We will say this, though: spending $220 on a 43-inch N10 1080p LED TV is very unlikely to be the best deal out there. Even for that modest budget, it isn’t hard to find 4K/HDR TVs of the same size from other competing brands as well as Insignia’s own F30 Series and F50 Series TVs…

Insignia’s F20 Series Fire TVs are a step up from the brand"s N10 Series TVs, but not in the way you might expect. In terms of picture quality, we’d expect much the same performance from F20 TVs as we’d see from 1080p N10 TVs, considering they both have 60Hz LED displays.

The big difference between the two comes down to the F20 Series having smart functionality courtesy of Amazon’s Fire TV OS. With the F20 Series, you can stream from a wide variety of video and music apps as well as enjoy Alexa voice control support, too. The F20 Series has a more limited choice of screen sizes than the N10 Series, though all the F20 TVs are 1080p regardless of size.

Pricing on the F20 Series TVs is, unsurprisingly, similar to the N10 Series. A 24-inch F20 will run you $190, a 32-inch costs $200, and a 42-inch is $270. Over the N10 Series, the F20 Series will go for around $50 to $90 more for the same size set to get that Fire TV functionality. So, we’d consider opting for an N10 Series model and buying a $25-$35 streaming stick if you’re looking to save.

The F30 Series Fire TV line is where Insignia’s offerings start to get interesting. Like Insignia’s N10 and F20 lines, F30 TVs also have LED displays and 60Hz refresh rates and are smart, but they"re also 4K resolution and support both HDR10 and HLG. HDR is about displaying a wider and subtler range of colors, which can look great, but you will need HDR content to take advantage.

The F30 Series TVs are much more in line with the best-spec’d TVs at the budget end of the market nowadays. They put ticks next to 4K and HDR support, though reasonably their spec sheets stop short of fancier display technologies, like QLED and OLED panels, and niche features like VRR for gamers. That’s OK, though, as TVs boasting such skills are far pricier than the F30s…

Insignia’s F30 Series starts off at $300 for the 43-inch set and goes all the way up to $850 for the 75-inch set. These are often on sale for much less, too, so that can be a huge bonus. If you compare prices with Insignia’s other TV lines, a 43-inch 1080p (no HDR) N10 is $220 and a 42-inch 1080p (no HDR) F20 is $270.

That $30 to $80 extra spend for an F30 model (or zero if the sale price is right) will net you a massive increase in resolution alongside HDR and HLG support, and you’ll be getting smart TV functionality over the N10 Series.

This combination of features and price is about what you’ll see from other budget manufacturers’ flagship TVs – those from TCL and Hisense and the like offer similarly spec’d, similarly sized sets for around the same prices.

The F50 Fire TV Series is where Insignia starts adding in some more premium features. These smart TVs sport QLED displays alongside 4K/60Hz support, HDR10, HLG, DTS Virtual-X, and HDMI eARC.

While we haven’t seen firsthand how QLED tech is implemented in Insignia TVs, QLED technology is the real deal. QLED displays routinely offer better color and contrast over traditional LED TVs and can potentially provide better brightness than OLED TVs (though typically don’t go as dark as them).

Insignia’s F50 Series Fire TVs go for $430 for the 50-inch, $500 for the 55-inch, and $650 for the 65-inch, making them only $30 to $80 more expensive than an equally sized F30 Series set. For the price of sales tax, you can get yourself a meaningful upgrade in image quality.

What’s more, these Insignia QLED sets are competitively priced compared to the QLED competition. For reference, Amazon’s new QLED Fire TV costs $800 for the 65-inch mode, though you can find similarly sized QLED sets from other competitors like Hisense and TCL that cost less.

Insignia TVs have a lot to offer, albeit some models more than others. In 2022, you can do better than spending hundreds of dollars on a 1080p TV or a TV without smart functionality. You can almost always find smart, often 4K/HDR-supporting sets for the same or similar prices.

However, the more expensive lines of Insignia TVs, like the F30 Series and the F50 Series, appear to offer better value for the money than models further down, delivering 4K/HDR picture support at decent screen sizes for anywhere between $300 and $650. And look out for those deals and discounts at Best Buy, not least during the Black Friday sales.

There is only so much anyone – including us – can tell of a TV’s value for money without having properly reviewed it. Picture performance quality can vary wildly, of course, and we’d be hesitant to heartily recommend anything we hadn’t put through its paces. (For tried and tested TVs, check out our best budget TVs, and below you"ll find links to Insignia TVs.)

But judging from the specs, features list and the many positive reviews from customers online, an Insignia TV looks to be a solid, cost-effective way to bring a smart TV into your home. So long as you don’t mind the Amazon OS.

40-inch N10 TV:$189$139 at Best Buy(opens in new tab)This 40in TV features an LED-backlit LCD screen that offers a 1080p Full HD picture. You get 3 HDMI ports, composite (AV) jacks, digital optical audio output, headphone jack, coaxial jack and USB port. Basic, but a bargain at this price.

Insignia 24-inch F20 Series TV:$189.99$169.99 at Amazon(opens in new tab)The smallest Fire TV Edition TV that Insignia makes is now available at a great price. At 24in, it"s not going to suit a big lounge, but would be perfect for a more modest living space or as a bedroom set. And it"s HD quality, not 4K.

Get yourself 50-inch smart TV for under $300. Enjoy all your favorite streaming services thanks to Amazon"s Fire TV OS, and enjoy modern picture quality thanks to 4K/HDR support. Act fast and get one $120 off, too!

Frequently asked questionsAre Insignia TVs smart TVs?Luckily, the majority of Insignia TVs are smart TVs that use Amazon"s Fire TV platform and operating system. The only current range that isn"t is the Insignia N10 series. Though, sometimes it can be more cost-effective to buy an N10 TV and a streaming stick over a more expensive smart TV, depending on what you"re looking for.Which is better, Insignia or TCL?Insignia and TCL are both popular brands targeting the budget end of the market, and oftentimes, if you"re looking for a deal, you may well be choosing between a TCL set and an Insignia set.

TCL makes a lot of Roku TVs, while Insignia makes Fire TVs. If you prefer the Amazon ecosystem, go with Insignia, and if you like Roku more, go with TCL. Depending on what services you already use, one may be a better fit for you than another.

In general, though, if you aren"t comparing TVs with the same spread of features, some TCL sets will offer extra features like full-array local dimming and VRR. More basic sets tend to be cheaper over at Insignia, while if you"re willing to pay a bit more, TCL tends to offer more for your money.

Depending on what you"re looking for out of a TV, you may prefer the fuller feature set of TCL; however, some will prefer the Fire TV experience of Insignia and may not care about more niche gaming features like VRR.Which is better, Insignia or Hisense?Hisense is another brand that usually targets the budget end of the market, and oftentimes, if you"re looking for a deal, you may well be choosing between a Hisense set and an Insignia set.

As is the case with TCL, some Hisense and Insignia TVs will be similar in terms of specs and prices. One of the differences that might swing your decision could be the operating system they use, whether that"s Google TV and Hisense or Insignia and Fire TV.

However, in general, Hisense TVs tend to be a bit more expensive than Insignia TVs. Though, you will be able to find Hisense TVs with more features than Insignia TVs, including IPS panels and VRR support.

So, if you"re looking for a simple TV at the lowest price, you might look at Insignia, and if you"re looking for a budget TV with the most competitive features, you"re more likely to be swayed by Hisense.

Insignia is Best Buy’s proprietary brand of electronics and televisions. You’ve probably seen them stocking the shelves of your local Best Buy store, although they’re also sold on Amazon.com.

So in this article, I’m going to cover some basic information about Insignia and where their products are made. Then I’m going to do a teardown of Insignia’s new 32″ Fire TV model, the NS-32F201NA22 to see what really makes it tick.

Best Buy, like most major retailers, have their own in-house brand of electronics. Not only can they can sell them at a discount to the major national brands, but they have better profit margins. Best Buy gets to keep more revenue from selling Insignia TV’s, even though they’re cheaper than their competition.

All of Insignia’s TVs are manufactured in China. However, the exact name of the manufacturing plant where the TVs are produced is unclear. Because of this, it’s likely that Insignia TVs are manufactured in multiple factories across China.

Best Buy refuses to comment on which specific manufacturers manufacture the components of their Insignia TV’s. This gives them the flexibility to order whatever components they need, in bulk, from different manufacturers.

So while we’re going to be looking specifically at Insignia’s new 32″ Fire TV model, the NS-32F201NA22, keep in mind that other models may have different parts from other manufacturers.

The main board on the Insignia TV is the brains of the unit. It houses the system memory and the graphic processing unit. This is the only identifying sticker on the board itself. Here, you can see the part number at the very top: 0980-0900-1530(0A).

While I wasn’t able to find that specific model number, it does follow the same naming convention as Samsung TV main boards. So it’s reasonable to assume that Samsung manufactured this TV main board and sold it to Insignia.

The LCD panel itself is manufactured by a company called China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT). Here, you can see the model number ST3151A07-1-XC-3 on the panel itself.

A little digging led me to a site called Panelook.com, which is a great resource for finding out all the details on LCD and OLED panels. The panel’s specs match exactly to the Insignia TV’s specs, so this is definitely a match.

Looking a bit deeper at CSOT, I discovered that it’s a display producer, based out of China, that is owned by TCL, Century Science & Technology and Samsung. So while this isn’t a Samsung branded LED panel, they definitely had a hand in the technology itself.

I actually didn’t need to tear down the entire TV to find the WiFi module. The manufacturer’s sticker on the back of the TV lists the WiFi module, due to FCC regulations.

Insignia makes a wide range of TV’s, all aimed at the budget consumer. They range in size from small, 19″ TV’s designed for dorm rooms all the way up to massive, 70″ QLED 4K UHD models for large living rooms.

While they won’t have some of the cutting-edge features you’d find on expensive Sony or LG TV’s, Insignia TV’s offer a great balance, and value for the money.

As you’d expect, all Fire TV models include the Alexa-enabled remote control, which provides instant access to Amazon’s voice assistant. The new remotes are longer than previous versions, providing a more ergonomic feel. They also added curves on the side and rear for a more comfortable grip.

Overall, Insignia TVs offer top-notch features at a terrific price, especially for those looking for a high-performance unit that won’t break the bank.

Insignia TVs are warrantied for one year from the time of purchase, as long as you purchased it brand new. The warranty covers any manufacturing defects, but does not cover accidental damage, cosmetic damage, power surges and lightning strikes, or damage due to misuse or neglect. Within the first year, simply take the TV back to Best Buy and they will send it out for repair.

Like most electronics companies, Insignia TV warranties covers material or workmanship defects. This means anything that was under the manufacturer’s control, such as a defective LED bulb or crooked television casing.

Because Insignia is a Best Buy brand, if you have problems with your Insignia TV, you take it in to your local Best Buy store for service, or call a toll-free phone number to troubleshoot it over the phone.

It’s worth noting that your local Best Buy store probably won’t be the ones to actually fix your TV. Most companies have regional repair centers where all their qualified technicians will have parts and specialized tools available to do the work.

Smaller units that are less than 42 inches (106 cm) are still taken directly to any Best Buy store for diagnostics. For 42 inch TVs (or larger), you’ll schedule an in-home visit from a certified, Insignia technician.

Overall, Insignia TV’s offer some pretty good value for the price. Given what I found in my teardown, it’s likely that Samsung manufactured most of the important components of my Insignia Fire TV.

I’m a big fan of Samsung TV’s because of their clarity, brightness and overall performance. To be able to get Samsung quality at an Insignia price-point is a big win for budget-conscious consumers.

Tim Wells got his first computer at the age of ten and hasn"t stopped tinkering ever since. After discovering Android TV boxes in 2013, he created a popular Android PC Review website and guided it to over 8 million pageviews before stepping away in 2018.

After a brief hiatus from the industry he"s back at the helm of AndroidTVNews.com to bring Android TV and TV boxes to the forefront of the streaming world.

If you have been wondering who makes Insignia TVs for Best Buy store, where Insignia TVs are made and whether or not the products any good, then you will find all the answers you are looking for in this guide.

Big stores like to have house brand products and you can see that with Best Buy’s Insignia TVs, Walmart’s Onn TVs and many more. Usually, they have a pricing advantage in that these products are much more cheaper than similar products offered by bigger brands.

Although Insignia TVs are owned, branded and sold almost exclusively by Best Buy, the TVs are actually manufactured by various contract manufacturers.

Like many private-label, in-house products, various components of Insignia TVs are sourced from brands like LG, Toshiba, Samsung, TCL and are assembled by contract manufacturing companies in China and Vietnam.

Although there are various claims of Insignia TVs (especially the Fire TV editions) being actually manufactured by big brands like Hisense, Samsung, LG, Sony and others, none of these are verified. The only thing that is certain is that these companies and more provide the various individual components used.

In-house products like these have been a common trend among big retail brands for years now, and you can also see something similar with Walmart’s Onn TVs. In 2018, Best Buy became the exclusive retail partner to sell Fire TV edition TVs made by Toshiba as well as Insignia TVs from the retail giant in a deal with Amazon.

I already mentioned that Insignia TVs are sold and branded by Best Buy, but are not in fact manufactured by them. Instead, Best Buy sources the components from various original electronics manufacturers (OEMs) and the components are assembled to make their own TVs.

For this to work, Best Buy makes a deal with these TV manufacturing brands. By giving the manufacturer a forward order for bulk volume of these parts, they get a much cheaper price. Also, they can change the manufacturing companies they use in these deals.

A closer look at the components of Insignia’s new 32″ Fire TV model, the NS-32F201NA22 revealed some of the companies that manufactured and supplied them. Let’s take a look at some of them.

The model number on the LCD panel was labelled ST3151A07-1-XC-3, which from research showed that the the LCD panel was manufactured and supplied by a company called China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT).

CSOT, also called Shenzhen Huaxing Photoelectric Technology is a China based display producer (owned by TCL, Century Science & Technology Investment and Samsung Display) that produces both LCDs and OLED displays, and started way back to 2012.

The company is a leading TV panel supplier which first began production in 2009 as one of China’s independently-built, highest generation thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) manufacturing facilities.

The Insignia Fire TV model has a main board labelled 0980-0900-1530(0A). Although, the specific model was not found, the part number does follow the same naming conventions as Samsung’s main boards (16 numbers with 1 number and letter in a bracket).

Although, Best Buy is a multinational electronics retailer that operates in the US, Canada, and Mexico, they do not manufacture any of the TVs themselves. The components used are manufactured and supplied by various manufacturers across various countries but the TVs are compiled in Asia, mostly China and Vietnam.

Insignia TVs have good picture and while sound is not so great, it is good enough. For the price you get these for, they are still solid smart TVs. However, when compared to TVs from bigger brands like Samsung, LG, TCL, Hisense Sony, Vizio and the likes, they are quite not up to the mark.

Whether or not you will enjoy it comes down mostly to why you are buying the TV and what you are looking for. If you are looking to get a good TV for the best value, then Insignia is one of the ways to go especially the 4K UHD models using Fire TV.

They have a wide range of streaming apps available via the Fire TV OS including Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, YouTube and many more. Older Insignia TVs used to have the Roku OS.

If you are looking for a TV to use as a gaming monitor, Insignia TVs are not the best option unless you are going for the more recent QLED panel editions (like the F50 series). Otherwise, the LED panel editions have fairly high latency and you won’t enjoy gaming on them.

Currently, some of the best Insignia TVs to buy include the Insignia F50 series in 50″, 55″, 65″ and 75″ which are built on QLED panel and hence brighter than the stand LED panel in some other Insignia TVs.

Insignia TVs can last up to 7 years or more. However, there have also been cases of users reporting that they had issues and the TV became unusable after 3 years or less. The latter is something that can happen on all other TV brands as well, although maybe less common in bigger brand TVs.

In most cases, the backlights are usually the first to burn on and become faulty under heavy usage. When this happens, the picture on the TV goes off and all you see is a black screen.

The point is, there is no definite answer to the question of how duration Insignia TVs are. The product is good, the quality of the materials used is solid and while some users have enjoyed their set for a very long time after purchase, others have had it otherwise.

Although some of the models have a similar model number pattern as Samsung, Insignia TVs are not actually manufactured by Samsung. Samsung has been one of the companies that supplies TV components to Best Buy which are them assembled to build Insignia TVs. Other companies include LG, TCL, Hisense and Toshiba.

While Best Buy owns the Insignia TV brand, they do not actually manufacture the TVs. Instead, they make deals with contract manufacturers who assemble the TV components that are gotten from other brands like Samsung, LG, TCL and Toshiba.

China’s Hisense Corporation makes Insignia TVs with the Amazon Fire Smart TV operating system. Other Insignia models have been ordered from other Chinese manufacturers. But the leading supplier of Insignia TVs is Hisense. It’s standard practice for a company to register a brand, usually a large trading company or a company that has decided to exploit it. An OEM manufacturer of TVs can produce a TV with any name; an order for TVs is placed with such a company.

Best Buy Co, Inc owns the Insignia brand. Under this brand, the company sells more than just televisions. The brand offers the following product categories: home appliances, computer accessories, digital cameras, phone accessories, and games.

Best Buy positions TVs as an inexpensive consumer brand; they are budget TVs with mediocre technical parameters, but they are reasonable. And they are designed for customers who want to buy a cheaper TV. So the TVs have modest screens with 8-bit color depth and a frame rate of 60 frames per second. In 2018, Best Buy signed an agreement with Amazon to use the Amazon Fire Smart TV operating system in its TVs. This allows Insignia TVs to integrate more deeply with Amazon services. Also, the Insignia brand of TVs, represented by Best Buy, has become an Amazon partner, and the TVs are sold through Amazon. I can’t say that Insignia TVs are bad, they are in their class, but they are significantly inferior to new TV models from leading companies. I will say this if you want to buy a cheap TV, but one that you can watch videos on, you can buy an Insignia TV, but don’t expect anything special.

Best Buy is a retail company that does not design TVs; the TVs are ordered under the Insignia label from OEMs and ODMs. There is a perception on the Internet that Insignia TVs are made from Samsung, LG, and Toshiba components of yesteryear. But that’s not true; the policy of the leading manufacturers is that they only supply the screens. Electronics for LG and Samsung TVs are almost never supplied to third-party assemblers, except for premium brands, where premium TV components and circuit boards may be supplied. This is done to block the production of copy TVs. Speaking of Toshiba: Toshiba hasn’t made televisions since 2015, has licensed the brand to Compal Electronics, Inc., and in 2018 Toshiba got rid of the video division entirely by selling its visual solutions division. That division was bought by the Chinese company Hisense. So Insignia TVs are Hisense TVs, but with the Insignia label.

China’s Hisense makes the Insignia TVs with Amazon Fire Smart TV. To understand Hisense, of the total number of TVs assembled, it sells about 50% of the TVs under its brand. The rest of the TVs are made under other brands, including Insignia.

Best Buy, as a brand holder, provides warranty service for the televisions sold. Best Buy contracts with TV repair companies. There is also a one-stop call center that will take your request and direct the technician to you. The warranty repair policy is that for inexpensive TVs, in case of failure, replacing them with a new TV is cheaper than repairing it, as stated in the warranty document. More expensive TVs with larger screens are repairable, subject to the availability of spare parts.

With a built-in Fire TV experience and a voice remote with Alexa, Insignia – Fire TV Edition is a smart TV that gets smarter every day. Your voice remote allows you to easily launch apps, search for TV shows, play music, switch inputs, control smart home devices and more — using only your voice.Shop Fire TV Edition ›

Insignia is Best Buy"s discount electronics sub-brand—and products that bear its... symbol... are HDTVs like the NS-50L440NA14 (MSRP $549.99). If you"re anything like us, your first thought when you saw this TV online or in the store was: "What? A 50-inch TV for $550 bucks? What kind of sorcery is this?"

Yet that is the kind of price point that Insignia exists to boast of. An LCD of the same size from Samsung, Panasonic, or LG is going to list at least $200 higher—more if they"re smart TVs. While you might love the idea of saving a couple of benjamins, Insignia"s low prices have caused some to believe that build quality is a concern.

Regardless of this Insignia"s physical quality, anyone looking for a budget-friendly buy with a solid picture should stay away. Its pre-set picture modes are set up incorrectly, and it tested with a host of errors.

After receiving a whopping roundhouse kick from our in-lab testing process, the NS-50L440NA14 was left reeling like Rocky Balboa—if Rocky Balboa had color production issues, incorrect reference levels, and a host of other problems. This budget-friendly Insignia is an enemy to your eyes—it"s bright and inexpensive, yes, but otherwise produces a fairly terrible picture.

We consider the ability to produce a good black level (or minimum luminance level) to be amongst the loftiest goals for a TV. Unfortunately, the CCFL-backlit L440 produces grayish, polluted black levels that are severely distracting while you"re watching it.

On the other hand, its peak luminance is quite dazzling—but at what cost? Prior to calibration, the TV brightens so quickly that shadow details are glossed over by an imbalanced enthusiasm for middle tones and highlights.

The biggest issue with this TV"s skewed color production—way off of the international standard for color—is that it also creates visible error within the TV"s blacks and grays. Visible tinges of color mar what should be neutral tones, adding unsightly tint to picture details like snow, clouds, or a silver automobile.

A complete inability to soften or correct these errors is the straw that breaks this camel"s back. Most TVs, even lower end ones, contain color or grayscale controls to greatly increase the accuracy and clarity of an image—even if it comes out of the box with a lot of problems. Insignia doesn"t include any of these controls besides a very basic color temperature option.

Finally, while many of these issues will be much more pronounced on 1080p content like Blu-ray discs, cable and satellite content suffers as well. Gamers and sports fans should steer clear of this set—its motion handling is quite poor, even with the Insignia Motion 120Hz setting enabled, which aggressively smoothes without correcting issues associated with complex pattern artifacts.

The most notable aspect of the NS-50L440NA14"s design is that there"s absolutely nothing notable about it. Well, that"s a little harsh, but it smacks of some truth: A bigger rectangle attached to a smaller rectangle is an apt summary of this Insignia"s looks.

Digging a little deeper, this TV is not particularly thin compared to the market leaders, but it looks modern... ish. A black-and-gray plastic casing wraps the panel, terminating in thicker-than-average bezels.

There are some advantages to the cheap build, however. The panel is light, despite its thickness, so assembly is easy and the TV can be hefted around without much strain—ours is a 50-inch unit, and I"m a 5"4" tall tech reviewer, to put it in perspective. It"s also safe to assume that the low-cost plastic design, standardized parts, and CCFL backlight contribute to this TV"s cheap price.

From a usability standpoint, the NS-50L440NA14 is fairly well designed. On-set controls (Power, Menu, etc.) are within easy reach on the TV"s right side, comprised of small, etched buttons that provide good tactile feedback. You"re probably better off using the included remote—a standard infrared affair.

The L440A is equipped with an above-average port selection that lists vertically along a cutout on the rear-left side of the panel. From bottom to top, users will have access to one USB input, three HDMI inputs, VGA in, a shared component/composite cluster, digital audio out, and a coax jack for cable/satellite. These ports are labeled and evenly spaced, and the horizontal orientation of the plugs makes the 50L440NA14 a good candidate for wall mounting.

Whether you"re an avid AV nerd or a tech-shy shopper, TV menus can be hard to keep up with. Over the last few years, they"ve evolved industry-wide by way of control options, available settings, and aesthetic quality. Yet the NS-50L440NA14"s software sits squarely within the realm of yesteryear, offering a sparsely populated interface replete with ugly, blocky symbols for each sub-menu. That $550 price tag is starting to make sense, eh?

Anyway, down to brass tacks. The software available to consumers is rather limited by modern standards, but its biggest flaw is that it"s just flat out ugly. Having reviewed the priciest, most high-end TVs this year already, this Insignia"s unsightly white text and pseudo-drop-shadow emblems look nothing short of awful. This doesn"t discredit the NS-50L440NA14"s value, as much as it offers some insight into the higher prices of its competitors.

From a practical standpoint, however, things aren"t much better. This TV"s software is broken into four sub-menus: Picture, Audio, Channels, and Settings. The Channels menu is only available if you"ve scanned for over-the-air content or connected a direct cable cord, which leaves the majority of users with audio, video, and system adjustments.

The usual picture controls are included (Backlight, Brightness, Color, Tint, Sharpness, and Contrast) as well as more advanced settings for color temperature, dynamic backlight, aspect ratio adjustment, overscan, motion processing, noise reduction, and automatic contrast. While this sounds like a lot of options, it"s really quite standard by modern TV parlance.

Audiophiles would probably never watch TV without a surround sound system, but at least Insignia includes treble, bass, and balance adjustments within the NA-50L440A"s audio menu, as well as no small amount of pre-set modes—five in total, each purposed for a different task. Beyond the picture and audio settings, however, this Insignia"s feature list proves a very short one, and is bereft of the most important picture controls: white balance, gamma, and color management.

The Insignia NS-50L440NA14 is one of the worst TV"s I"ve tested all year. The picture it produces is riddled with errors, and the on-board software does not supply the controls to fix them. You don"t need test equipment to rule this one out—even lower-resolution content looks shoddy.

It may seem like a steal at $549.99, but we strongly urge you to shop around. Within this size class, plenty of lower-cost products don"t utterly deny you the potential beauty of movies and TV:

The Insignia NS-50L440NA14 (MSRP $549.99) was shredded by the flurry of origami cranes that are our in-lab tests. An in-depth look at this TV"s out-of-the-box performance revealed very poor color production, a grayscale riddled with errors, overly bright black levels, and an RGB balance that we were unable to correct. It may be cheap for a 50-inch set, but this value TV is a wolf in budget clothing.

Calibrating a TV should improve it. Unfortunately, to calibrate any display, you need the necessary controls over the image it produces—and Insignia includes none of them in the stingy software loaded onto the 50L440NA14. We were able to correct this Insignia"s reference levels—something that 90% of TVs already do correctly—but lacked the advanced controls for further correction.

Short of adjusting the Backlight control for 40 fL, the Brightness control for proper legal limits, and the Color control to slightly correct the L440"s color production, no other calibration was possible, so the lion"s share of this TV"s errors remained uncorrected.

Contrast ratio—expressed as X:1—is a telling measure of how immersive a TV"s picture will be. To determine this Insignia"s contrast ratio, we divided its peak brightness by its minimum luminance level. The result was below average, due to an overly bright black level.

In the lab, I measured a black level of 0.17 cd/m2 , which is rather poor even for an LCD. The L440"s peak brightness was commendable at 345.80 cd/m2 , giving it a total contrast ratio of 2034:1, which is bad by the year"s current standards.

A display"s viewing angle is a measure of how far off-center you can watch it before its picture begins to degrade. The L440"s poor black levels hurt its off-angle viability—we tested a total horizontal viewing angle of 18°, or ±9° from center to either side of the screen. This is very bad, even for an LCD—black levels rose to 0.50 cd/m2 and above beyond 20°.

RGB balance refers to the way a TV incorporates its red, green, and blue sub-pixels into the production of grayscale elements—white, silver, or any colorless shade. TV"s use additive color, meaning the sum of their sub-pixels creates the grayscale. The L440"s sub-pixel balance prior to calibration was quite bad—blue was emphasized heavily after 30 IRE whereas red and green both begin to decline rapidly around 65 IRE. My post-calibration results were roughly identical, since this Insignia lacks the controls to correct its grayscale or balance.

Gamma correction refers to how a TV alters the interval space between its middle luminance steps in order to make increases in light output more obvious to human eyes. Gamma sum is communicated in sets of standard numbers—1.8, 2, 2.2, 2.4—with higher numbers meaning a slower increase from black to white. Prior to calibration, the L440"s gamma sum was 2.06, which is much too low. The ideal gamma sum for theater displays is 2.4, but 2.2 is also acceptable. After calibration, despite no gamma control being possible, the TV tested with a gamma sum of 2.23—much better.

A color gamut illustrates of all of the colors a TV can produce. International standards dictate that a TV should produce just such an exactly saturated red, green, and blue, and that they should be the proper hue and luminance. In other words, TV"s have a strict set of rules for what their colors should look like. Unfortunately, the L440"s produced color was quite askew—green and blue were especially off, but magenta and cyan were much worse. Calibration allowed me to correct cyan quite a bit, but at the expense of magenta. There"s just no way to win with this TV!

Lee was Reviewed"s point person for most television and home theater products from 2012 until early 2022. Lee received Level II certification in TV calibration from the Imaging Science Foundation in 2013. As Editor of the Home Theater vertical, Lee oversaw reviews of TVs, monitors, soundbars, and Bluetooth speakers. He also reviewed headphones, and has a background in music performance.

There are various panel technologies. Each has its own specific features - viewing angles, color reproduction, response time, brightness/contrast, production cost, etc. The image quality depends directly on the type of the display panel used.VA

The most widely used panels are those with 6, 8, and 10 bits for each of the RGB components of the pixel. They provide 18-, 24-, and 30-bit color, respectively.8 bits

The maximum number of colors, which the display is able to reproduce, depends on the type of the panel in use and color enhancing technologies like FRC.16777216 colors

The backlight is the source of light of the LCD display panels. The type of backlight determines the image quality and the color space of the display. There are various backlights such as CCFL, LED, WLED, RGB-LED, and etc.Direct LED

The TV tuner is a device, which allows the receiving and visualization of a certain type of television signal. There are tuners for digital, analog, cable and satellite television.TV tuner

The operating systems of the smart TV sets feature user interface technologies for navigation and other ways of interaction with the smart TV - installing applications, internet browsing, video calls, sharing content with other users, playing videos and music, etc.Roku TVAudio

Insignia is a ‘house brand’, which means that it is a brand name that is exclusively sold by one retailer. In this case, Insignia is a line of electronics products sold only by the electronics retailer Best Buy. Insignia branded products include small appliances, cables, televisions, mini fridges, and tablets. Televisions with the Insignia brand can be split up by size into three categories: 32 inches or smaller, between 39 and 50 inches, and 55 inches or larger. These televisions usually have LED screens. LED screens are very energy efficient, and have high color contrast and brightness. They are capable of displaying a large range of colors. LED screens are also very thin, and are very common in flat screen TVs like those in the Insignia brand.

Insignia offers budget televisions, which means that the video quality and contrast will probably be lower quality than a more expensive model from a different brand. However, the low price of these televisions might make them a good option anyway, especially those with extra features such as 4K HDR quality or Amazon Fire TV capability. CNet has done reviews for a variety of Insignia branded televisions.

Buying a TV is one of life’s big purchases. Kind of like buying a car, you want to make sure the one you get is perfect for your needs and budget and has a reputable brand name behind it — you don’t want to buy yourself a lemon. You’ve probably already figured out some of the basics like size, resolution, and maybe whether you like smart TV operating systems like Roku TV or Google TV. But what are the best TV brands out there? Are the big players like Samsung, Sony, and LG worth the premium prices, or are value brands like TCL and Hisense just as good?  What features and technologies do they foster? We’re here to help answer these questions.

And if, when you’re done, you’re ready to narrow down your search, check out our roundups of the best TVs on the market, the best TVs under $500, or the best TVs under $1,000. If you’ve dug even deeper and have an OS preference, we’ve got lists of the best Google TVs and the best Roku TVs, too.

Note: Televisions chosen for this list are representative of makes and models available in the U.S. market. Further, TVs included in this guide were chosen primarily for their picture performance, with other considerations such as operating system or audio performance as secondary considerations.

South Korea’s Samsung is the de facto market leader in the world television space, and took the top spot again last year, leading competitors like LG and Sony by a wide margin in terms of overall sales. That’s partly a result of the company’s size (Samsung ranks 18th on the Fortune 500), but mostly it’s because Samsung makes great TVs with a focus on accessibility.

Tizen is Samsung’s own Linux-based smart TV OS that places all your apps in a row along the bottom of the Smart Hub (read: home screen). It’s got all the popular streaming apps as part of a 2,000-plus app library, and it has a neat feature that activates when you select an app, showing you popular sub-categories (like Netflix shows or Spotify playlists) for that app. There’s also a Tizen Gaming Hub which supports Xbox, and GeForce Now for streaming games.

Perhaps most impressive is how Tizen works with the Samsung app family, including SmartThings, Smart Connect, and Smart View. You can use those to mirror content from your phone — even iPhones — to your TV or send TV playback directly to your phone (only on Samsung phones). If you’ve got compatible smart home devices, you also can use the TV as a control hub.

Also, Samsung’s newer models — QD-OLED, QLED, and otherwise — offer some cool features like importing app logins from your phone to save time, and the Samsung One Connect Box, built to simplify messy cable nests behind TVs (and to enable cleaner wall-mounting).

Samsung has stayed away from producing OLED displays like those of LG. So, instead of striking a deal to use LG’s panels, Samsung branded its own LCD tech “QLED.” For a detailed breakdown, check out our QLED TV versus OLED TV comparison, but the general gist is this: QLED uses quantum dots to enhance performance by producing a purer, full-spectrum white light than LEDs are capable of on their own.

In practice, QLED televisions are brighter (better for bright rooms) than less-expensive LCD TVs, and unlike OLED, can be more affordably built into large displays (100 inches and beyond).

Last year also saw Samsung announce its expected QD-OLED TVs, which use an advanced blue light source that acts as a hybrid between QLED and OLED. We’ve started seeing these TVs show up in the wild now, including the stunning Sony A95K QD-OLED, and the Samsung S95B OLED, if you are looking for an OLED-like upgrade from your current set.

For 2023, Samsung’s forging ahead with their QD-OLED displays, announcing at CES 2023 their latest S95C lineup they’re branding simply as “OLED.” They’re available in 55- and 75-inch sizes, as well as a massive 77-inch model that we recently got our hands on for review. Samsung’s microLED TVs are also coming down in size and price and its primary money maker, its mini-LED Neo QLED lineup, has gotten a redesign too, and we’ve already had some time with the new stable.

Another South Korean company, LG may not be as massive as Samsung, but thanks to its OLED TV display technology, it’s had minimal competition when it comes to top-of-the-line picture performance with its unrivaled contrast and black levels, but new screen tech like QD-OLED is making headway.

WebOS is LG’s easy-to-use user interface and, like Tizen, Roku, and Google TV, is the hub from which you access your apps, TV settings, and other advanced features. The most recent version of webOS for 2023 TVs has been redesigned to offer more customization and shortcuts so users can get to what they want to watch faster.

OLED — Organic Light Emitting Diode — is the premier display technology today. OLED TV panels are capable of reaching black levels never before seen, with better contrast across the board, and because the individual pixels themselves light up, OLED televisions boast quicker response times (and less input lag) than other types of displays, and the picture integrity is stunning at any viewing distance.

Last year we saw some stunning OLED Evo TVs hit the market from LG, including our top pick for the best TV, the 65-inch LG G2 Evo Gallery OLED, and the well-reviewed LG C2 Evo OLED. In 2023, however, not only did LG announce some pretty interesting new TVS with the 97-inch LG Signature OLED M that transmits audio and video wirelessly from what they call a Zero Connect box, and the transparent OLED T television, but had to also throw down its answer to Samsung’s QD-OLED, with its latest OLEDs, the evo G3 Gallery Edition with its bolder and brighter microlens (MLA) array, but the latest lineup of its popular C3 OLED TVs, too.

It’s easy to get lost in the Samsung versus LG TV wars and not think as much about Sony, but you’d be making a big mistake. While its TVs tend to be a bit more expensive, they’ve got some of the best processing capabilities and accurate color reproduction of them all, especially if you care about things like motion processing and gaming.

Google TV — versions of which run on many other devices, like the Amazon Fire TV family — isn’t quite as slick as WebOS, but it’s arguably more powerful. Unlike WebOS and Tizen, the Google TV home screen is laden with apps and suggestions, and you can scroll down for even more. Sony’s 2021 catalog was the first generation of sets to switch over to Google TV, an overhaul of the Android TV OS that features a faster, more intuitive user interface, complete with recommended and sponsored web content.

Google TV also has built-in support for Google Assistant (via a microphone in the remote or in your phone) and Chromecast, for both video and audio. Plus, as with Tizen, Google Smart Lock can automatically sync logins from your mobile device to your TV. You also have the ability to create separate profiles with Google TV for each person in your home.

Sony is one of a handful of companies offering OLED televisions (the list has recently expanded to include Panasonic, Philips, Hisense, and Vizio) thanks to a deal with LG Display allowing Sony to build TVs using LG OLED panels, which can be found in Sony’s excellent A90K OLED and 2023’a all-new A80L OLED — the latter of which, it’s worth noting, will not use LG’s new MLA tech.

Due to Sony’s Cognitive Processor XR chip, Sony’s Bravia flagship TVs offer greater contrast, improved sound, low input lag, and faster web performance than we’ve ever seen. Many of Sony’s TVs also offer VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) for gaming, particularly with the Sony-owned PlayStation 5.

But the most interesting battleground is with QD-OLED. Last year Sony caused a stir by releasing its first QD-OLED TV, the stunning Bravia A95K, which is built using Samsung Display’s QD-OLED panel. Sony clearly sees a future in QD-OLED as it marries the best properties of OLED’s lush, perfect blacks and QLED’s brightness abilities. For 2023, Sony has doubled down with its next generation of QD-OLED, the A95L (that replaces the A95K), which uses Samsung’s brighter, more efficient QD-OLED panel. The A95L should be a contender for TV of the year.

TCL was barely a blip on the radars of seasoned LED TV reviewers half a decade ago. Today, it’s the fastest-growing brand out there and has been offering us some of the best mini-LED QLED TVs on the market at preposterously low prices.

TCL isn’t the only company making Roku TVs — Sharp, Philips, and Hisense do the same, among other manufacturers — but it has been the most successful so far. It remains to be seen what will happen this year when Roku begins making and selling its own OLED TVs. The Roku TV platform’s vast selection (4000+) of apps and its snappy cross-app search function is second to none and the OS is super easy to use. But if Roku isn’t your jam, TCL expanded into Google TV territory in 2021 and hasn’t looked back. There were even some rumors that the company would be ditching Roku, but they assured us that this isn’t the case.

If you’re on a tight budget, but you still want some buttery mini-LED QLED goodness in your TV with stunning picture quality that can actually go toe-to-toe with some of the higher-end Samsung and LG TVs, TCL is the way to go. Up to CES 2023 earlier this year, TCL’s long-running, and excellent, 6-Series, 5-Series, and 4-Series TVs were its bread and butter, with its flagship 6-Series consistently wowing us, landing on several of our best TV lists.

Chinese manufacturer Hisense has been steadily making moves in the TV market over the years, licensing Sharp’s brand name(and buying its North American factory outright in 2015), buying Toshiba’s business in 2017, and making TVs under all three names for the U.S. market. Hisense had a rocky start but found a rhythm in making value-conscious Quantum 4K panels. In fact, their quality has improved so much that one of the latest versions, the 65-inch Hisense U8H, is on our list of the best TVs for its amazingly bright image and class-leading black levels.

Hisense is unique in that it doesn’t have a singular operating system tied to its line of televisions. Some of its TVs still use Android TV, and Hisense also sells models with Google TV, Roku TV, and Fire TV, for Alexa lovers. It also offers TVs that use an OS called Vidaa TV, a slick-looking software that’s good for local TV, and XClass TV, which is simple and bare-bones.

With all of those OS choices, buyers can pick the smart platform they like, with plenty of options for budget-friendly purchases. And like TCL, Hisense uses mini-LED QLED (Hisense calls it ULED) technology for its best TVs, including the above-mentioned 2022 U8H Google TV which has excellent contrast and vivid color, that comes close to many of the best models from Samsung, Sony, and LG. 2023 will see the U8H elevate into the new U8K models, which are even brighter, listing 1,500 nits, and have a new anti-glare screen and a built-in 2.1.2 Dolby Atmos audio system among other improvements. Hisense’s step-down models, the U7H and U6H series TVs, are also beautiful and beautifully priced and are both getting an upgrade this year making the leap from standard LED backlighting to mini-LED with the U7K and U6K series.

Lastly, new for 2023, is a new flagship Hisense, the 85-inch ULED X, a mini-LED QLED monster with more than 5,000 local dimming zones and a peak brightness of 2,500 nits. Dolby Vision, Wi-Fi 6e, NextGen TV, and AMD’s Freesync Premium Pro are some of the other features that are helping push Hisense forward this year, too. Like TCL and Vizio, Hisense’s TVs are priced to afford, making you sometimes wonder why you’d even pay more for the big players.

Vizio was once the undisputed champion when it came to awesome picture quality at a reasonable price. And while brands like TCL and Hisense have since challenged the Mighty V’s position at the top of Budget TV Mountain, this isn’t to say that Vizio isn’t still a name to be reckoned with.

Before 2017, all of Vizio’s Smart TVs ran a system that required users to download an application on their smartphone or tablet, which would be used to cast any content to the screen. In a nutshell, they were designed for mirroring. SmartCast updated that system by automatically curating a wide selection of apps without the need to download anything. That includes major streamers from Dis