Best Budget TV for 2024: Cheap TVs From Samsung, Roku, TCL and More

2 weeks ago 6

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.