The Best TV on a Budget for 2025

When looking at the TVs for testing, I wanted to ensure I chose a decent cross-section of smart TV interfaces, and it’s arguably from the four most popular: Roku, Google TV, Fire TV and Samsung Smart Hub.

Most users have their own favorite when it comes to smart TV, but Roku’s is beloved and boasts millions of users due to its simple, friendly interface. The remote control is the key to the experience and the voice-activated remote finder works well.

The TCL’s Google TV is great for content discovery, but some people prefer an apps-first approach rather than a bunch of categories they have no direct control over. As I mentioned above, Google TV is great if you have an Android or Nest system at home. Chromecast makes it easy to send content zinging around your home, and it’s a little easier to search for content using your voice, too.

Though it’s objectively ugly, I found the shortcut bar in the Amazon Fire TV’s interface invaluable. That input 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 four I tested, I liked the Samsung smart TV interface the least — it’s simply not as user-friendly as the others. For instance, the settings menu is hidden behind multiple button presses as are the Connected Devices.

As soon as flat-screen TVs arrived, sound quality suffered. It’s a matter of physics really — sound is about pushing air around, and there simply isn’t enough room on the bottom edge of a TV to do that well. I have long espoused the benefits of a separate soundbar — especially if you want to use a TV for gaming or watching movies.

To begin, I set every TV in its default sound mode, which for three TVs was Standard, and for the TCL was Dynamic. Of the four, the Amazon delivered the best clarity with Tom Hardy’s tenor voice at the beginning of Mad Max. The Samsung wasn't quite as clear but it was able to be played louder. Meanwhile the Roku’s sound had no bass and Hardy’s voice sounded raspy in a nasty way. Lastly, the TCL sounded OK though it wasn’t as clear as the Amazon or Samsung.

Given the affordable nature of these screens I was surprised at how variable, but in some instances how good, the picture quality looked. While even the best screens had some image quality issues, it was about how they each balanced these with the more important things like contrast. In all instances, I chose the best-looking mode on each TV (movie) with any adaptive modes disabled.

I starting with the opening scenes of It (Part 1) as they are a great way to test a TVs picture by incorporating plenty of shadow detail as well as high-contrast HDR images. At 3:05 you see Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) at the top of the basement stairs with light splashed against the wall behind him. The Samsung and Roku TVs showed everything in the room, including the banister and the beams under the stairs, but the Roku was too green. Meanwhile, the Amazon had better black levels, but it crushed his face a little, and on the TCL you couldn’t tell what was happening apart from a kid standing at some steps. I attempted to fix the TCL’s issues by enabling High Dynamic Contrast and Low Micro contrast to get better shadows, but it still had the worst contrast of the four.

Later during this scene, another issue arose on the Roku, where its preponderance for overexposed shadow detail led to some strangely strobing shadows in one corner of the basement. As I was using Fandango From Home to stream, it was likely a artifact that was hidden by the other TVs. Spooky, sure, but unintentional.

Next I tested the budget models with the movie Troy, and found that the Samsung’s subdued palette continued. Though the Amazon Fire TV’s picture had looked good up until this point, this movie exposed a new issue — the assembled soldiers looked overly pink and the shadows on their faces turned an unnatural tomato red. Meanwhile, the faces on the Roku appeared a little washed out, and the TCL, on balance, was pretty good.

In summary, the Samsung offered the best picture here, with excellent black levels and low-level shadow detail. It was decidedly less saturated looking than the other TVs, though color is less crucial than contrast, and this was easily fixed by increasing the Color control about 10 points. Conversely, the TV with the least impressive picture was the Roku with those overly green shadows and the lightest black levels.

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 can also 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, four budget 50-inch TVs were compared side by side, using an AVPro Connect 8x8 4K HDR distribution matrix in various lighting conditions and playing different media, including movies, TV shows and games, across a variety of test categories, from brightness to video processing to gaming to HDR. 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. Our evaluations also account for design, features, smart TV performance, HDMI input, gaming compatibility and other factors.

Check out our page on how we test TVs for more details.

Amazon Fire TV 4-series (2020): The Amazon 4 was part of our budget TV testing done back in 2022, and is not a current model. Like many Amazon products, it has stayed on sale long after being replaced by a newer version. It has been replaced by the 2024 model.