Best Smart TV 2022 ~ Top-Rated Smart Televisions

To help you find the best smart TV for your home entertainment setup, we’ve combed through plenty of models, testing them for resolution, pixel count, and, most importantly, built-in integration with popular smart home devices and TV streaming devices, such as Amazon Fire TV and Roku TV. Also, we looked at how voice-controlled smart assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant work. The final thing we valued was products with helpful add-ons such as long warranties, multiple outputs and the possibility to play numerous video formats.

Of the seven TVs on this list, the Toshiba Ultra HD Smart TV impressed us the most, with a large display, up to 50”, built-in Fire TV functionality, compatibility with Alexa, and a stunning 4K resolution with over eight million pixels. You can read on to find out more about this Toshiba Ultra HD SmartTV and all the models that are included in the list.

Top 7 Smart TVs Compared

#1 TCL Class 5-Series Roku Smart TV (50”, 55”, 65”)

Award: Honorable Mention

WHY WE LIKE IT: A best-in-class app makes this product truly shine, allowing for navigation, volume control, search, and headphone listening right from your phone or tablet. The smart TV is great for people who use smartphones instead of traditional remotes. However, it comes with one.

Read Full Review: TCL 32S327 Roku Review

The TCL Roku Smart TV is extremely easy to use, this simplicity is furthered by the fantastic related app, which allows you to control every aspect of the device right from your phone or tablet. You can also plug headphones directly into your tablet or phone and use them as headphones, avoiding the need to connect via Bluetooth. You can control Alexa or Google Assistant from the device. The UI is simple and elegant and allows you to search across every streaming service quickly.

The picture was bright and beautiful, despite its lower resolution. The direct-lit LED provides excellent picture quality with a 60Hz refresh and almost no motion blur. Although the product offers a variety of parental controls we found them difficult to use and set up. The best TVs for 90 inch are getting smaller.

#2 Insignia NS-50DF710NA19 4K Ultra HD Fire TV Edition (43”, 50”)

Award: Best for Live TV

WHY WE LIKE IT: A fantastic product with a stellar 4K display, an 8 million pixel count for clarity, built-in Fire TV support, Alexa integration via remote control, and a pleasing UI that automatically combines streaming options, and live TV on a unified home screen. For those who have a lot live TVs, this is the perfect product. You can also boost live TV’s transmission signal by reading our TV antenna guide.

Read Full Review: Insignia NS-50DF710NA19

The Insignia 4K Ultra HD Fire TV Edition boasts a fantastic 4K display that delivers crisp and sharp visuals, with an 8 million pixel count for stunning picture quality, excellent clarity, vivid colors, and deep contrast. Fire TV is included so that all your streaming choices are accessible from the beginning. The intuitive user interface makes it easy to choose what TV channel you want. Streaming services include Netflix, SHOWTIME, YouTube, Hulu, Prime Video, HBO, STARZ, and more. Voice control is possible with the Alexa-enabled remote.

The streaming options available are vast and cover all major platforms. However, the Xfinity App is not listed, so this could pose a problem if your provider is Xfinity. The remote control is a little difficult to use. It uses several rings to navigate channels. Alexa was much easier to use. You might be interested in learning more about when is the best time for you to purchase a new TV with multiple streaming options.

#3 TCL 50S425 4K Roku Smart TV (43”, 50”, 55”, 65”, 75”)

Award: Best for Headphones

WHY WE LIKE IT: A stunning 4K TV available in a wide variety of size options, bottoming out at 43” and maxing at 75”, with Roku functionality built-in, HDR integration, a powerful mobile app, and support for Alexa and Google Assistant. The TV is also available in 65-inch (4k) sizes. This television will suit the needs of most families.

Read Full Review: TCL 50S425 Review

The TCL 4K Roku Smart TV is available in a large variety of sizes, maxing out at 75”, which should make it easy to find a place for it in any room of your home. You can control almost every aspect of your TV from any device, including your tablet or phone, thanks to its stunning resolution. Roku is built into the device, allowing it to stream from any major platform and sync with Alexa and Google Assistant. Also, you can listen to your TV’s sound through a pair of smartphone-connected headphones thanks to the Roku app, which includes a private listening mode. It’s great if you don’t want to disturb your partner at night. This TV offers all of the best features in 65-inch televisions.

Though the TV does boast a USB port, allowing for content to be streamed via stick or external hard drive, we found that it didn’t recognize every device we plugged in. The company states that the TV has a 120Hz refresh rate, however, it actually only works at 60Hz. Motion interpolation technology is used to make the product appear faster. Not a huge deal, but still.

Samsung-series-7-un65ru7100fxza-ultra-hd-smart-tv-43-50-55-65″> #4 Samsung Series 7 UN65RU7100FXZA Ultra HD Smart TV (43”, 50”, 55”, 65”)

Award: Best for Bluetooth

WHY WE LIKE IT: A sleek, ultra-thin product, with tons of Samsung bells and whistles, including 4K resolution, a powerful UHD processor that automatically upscales standard HD signals to Ultra HD, Alexa and Google Assistant support, and built-in Bluetooth. If you like Bluetooth streaming to external speakers and headphones in your home theater, this is the product for you.

The Samsung Series 7 Ultra HD Smart TV is a highly capable product, with plenty of the kind of sheen that has made the company such a major player in the space, including an ultra-thin frame, clocking in at just over 2 inches, a built-in UHD processor that automatically upscales standard HD to 4K and the ability to integrate with Alexa and Google Assistant. It is easy to navigate through the UI, which makes it quick and simple to search for streaming and live TV. The built-in Bluetooth allows you use your headphones or external speakers. However, keyboards are not compatible. Bluetooth gives you options to enhance your audio through wireless headsets or soundbars.

Although the TV was lighter than other models on the market, it did weigh a little more than the others. The prices also were higher than the average price of similar products. The TV took approximately a minute to link to WiFi once it was switched on after being turned off or returned from sleep. If you’re looking for a smart TV specifically, this could be one of the best TVs for you.

#5 TCL Class 6-Series 4K Ultra HD Roku Smart TV (55”, 65”, 75”)

Award: Best for Gaming

WHY WE LIKE IT: It offers some quality-of-life improvements over the other TCL products on this list, including Dolby Vision HDR technology and a proprietary Contrast Control Zone (CCZ) technology that helps deliver a deep black and a pure white color array. The TV’s low input lag makes it shine when you play video games and watch Amazon Prime Video.

Read Full Review: TCL 75R617 4K Review

The TCL 4K Ultra HD Roku Smart TV is perfect for gaming, thanks to its low input lag functionality and suite of color-enhancing technologies, including Dolby Vision HDR, helping to deliver stunning true-to-life graphics and seamless control to all of your favorite gaming applications. With Roku enabling streaming on all major platforms and Alexa allowing remote control, the UI is simple and elegant. TCL provides an extra 18-month warranty along with all their products. This warranty is much better than the typical one-year guarantee on comparable models.

Bluetooth connectivity is not available on the product. The remote also does not have a headphone socket. Although you can use your headphones with the TV, it integrates well with another app. It allows for streaming content from your tablet or phone, but not all streaming platforms. Additionally, the 75” model is the highest-priced product on this list.

Samsung-un32m4500a-32-inch-720p-smart-led-tv”> #6 Samsung UN32M4500A 32-Inch 720p Smart LED TV

Award: Best for Small Spaces

WHY WE LIKE IT: This is a no-frills smart TV that delivers excellent visuals, belying its 720p resolution, and extreme portability, weighing in at just nine pounds. The product is great for small spaces such as a dorm or kitchen. Its light weight makes it portable and easy to use.

Read Full Review: Samsung UN32M4500 Review

The Samsung 32-Inch 720p Smart LED TV boasts an extremely small form factor, weighing just nine pounds, making it easy to move around the house at will. This TV is ideal for small spaces such as kitchens and dorm rooms. Because the speakers sound great and are very loud, the speaker can be heard throughout the space. Also, the screen is small enough to cover the low pixel count. Samsung’s UI is fantastic, as always, allowing for simple navigation on every major streaming platform.

This is the smallest display on the list, however, so if you are looking for a “wow” factor, you might want to pick a bigger television. Also, we couldn’t help but be saddened by the lack of support for smart assistants, such as Alexa and Google Assistant, making this TV a strictly analog affair, with no voice controls available.

Note: Other smart TVs worth mentioning that we have not included on this list include the LG Signature OLED 88Z9, the Hisense 50-inch Class H6570G 4K Ultra HD Android Smart LED TV, and the Vizio PX-65-G1 P Series. The LG Signature is an 8K resolution TV using the WebOS operating system and LG’s most powerful AI-powered intelligent processor. The Hisense Android TV offers 4K quality, four times the resolution of HD screens, and a full-array LED backlight. The Bluetooth connectivity on this Hisense TV is a great feature that allows you to wirelessly expand your audio via a soundbar or stereo. Vizio 65 inches TVs feature quantum colors that deliver up to 165% higher color quality than traditional 4K TVs. The Visio 65-inch TV features Dolby Vision HDR and is compatible with Apple Airplay.

#7 Toshiba 43LF711U20 Ultra HD Smart TV (43”, 50”)

Award: Top Pick

WHY WE LIKE IT: A stunning product, with 4K HD resolution, an 8 million pixel count, and a refresh rate of 60 Hz, plus all of the benefits of a Fire Stick built right into the television, with a speedy processor that makes searching a breeze and Alexa support on the remote. It is a stunning TV, with beautiful colors and a multitude of intelligent features. The best TV you can buy. This TV can display 4K content.

Read Full Review: Toshiba 43IF711U20

With its 4K HD resolution and 8 million pixels, the Toshiba Ultra HD Smart TV boasts spectacular clarity. The built-in Fire TV functionality gives you instant access to all major streaming platforms, such as Netflix/YouTube/Hulu/Amazon Instant Video, and the quad-core CPU/multi-core GPU makes navigating menus and searching for content extremely speedy. Alexa allows you to use the remote control for smart home devices and it is updated constantly thanks to WiFi.

Though this television isn’t the biggest on the list, capping out at 50”, the gorgeous display and smart features more than makes up for it. We did have a spot of trouble navigating the built-in web browser, as it offers a somewhat clunky interface, but we didn’t find much need to surf the net on it anyways. The best 55-inch smart televisions are available.

How We Decided

To help narrow down the above list, we tested these smart TVs across a spectrum of functionalities, and smart platforms, looking for products that delivered crisp and clear visuals that met or exceeded their advertised resolutions, with high-quality speakers that produce the kind of world-class sound that is ideal for Hollywood blockbusters and streaming dramas alike. You also needed to get the ideal black level, and the best contrast ratio. Also, it was important to choose a mix of standard HD and 4K TVs to suit your budget.

We also wanted to make sure these TVs were actually smart, with easy access to all major streaming platforms, via Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, or Samsung’s proprietary UI. To make it as easy as possible to search on any tablet or computer, we preferred products that have simple menus and internal processors.

Finally, we took a look at additional smart features, such as Alexa and Google Home functionality, providing hands-free control over the unit, and built-in Bluetooth for headphones and external speakers. The remotes were also tested to ensure they work properly. Additionally, any apps that may be related to the unit were checked to confirm that it was possible to navigate via a tablet or smartphone. We also looked at viewing angles. Each product in the list has at least a year warranty. A few have warranties of 18 months.

Smart TV Buying Guide

The Most Important Features to Consider

1. Screen Size and Resolution
   Just like their not-as-intelligent counterparts, smart TVs live and die by their max resolutions. You will need the sharpest possible picture quality if you are absolutely certain. If you are fine with standard HD, at 1080p or 720p, then you can save a few bucks by eschewing 4K. It is important to think about the size of your screen. It should be where it is going to go. If it’s going to be the centerpiece of your entertainment room, bigger might be better. If it’s going to be placed in a kitchen, small bedroom, or dorm room, then you might want to pick a smaller television, to conserve space. Alternatively, if you’re buying a TV for a senior, then you’ll want a large unit that’s easy to use.
2. Access to Streaming Platforms
   The best part of a smart TV is that they are bundled with access to Roku, Fire TV, or a similar streaming provider, meaning you won’t have to fork over extra cash for external streaming devices. Check that you have access to all major streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu. Look for devices that have useful apps such as web browsers, and sometimes simple games. So, if you’re doing a lot of binge-watching, then you’ll want to snag a high-performing Smart TV for streaming, as you’ll read about in our Hisense H5500G review.
3. Voice Control
   Many smart TVs offer smart assistant integration, allowing you to use Alexa or Google Assistant to control the device. Though the hands-free operation is certainly a perk, most of these products do require an external purchase, such as an Amazon Echo, in order to achieve this functionality. Once the setup is complete, the TV can be used as a smart hub to control smart appliances in the home.

   While these smart TVs have great features that enhance your viewing experience, there’s plenty more to investigate. If you’re looking for more information, we have a list of top conference TVs and ultra HD TVs.