Best TV on a budget for 2025

Given the affordable nature of these screens, I was surprised at how much variation it could be, but in some cases, how good it was and the image quality was. Even the best screens had some image quality issues, but it was about how each one balances these and does more important things like contrast. In all cases, I choose the best looking mode on each TV (movie) and the adaptation mode is disabled.

Starting with the opening scene (part 1), it’s a great way to test your TV image by incorporating many shadow details and high contrast HDR images. At 3:05, you can see Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) scattered light on the wall behind him at the top of the basement stairs. Samsung and Rok’s TV showed everything in the room, including the banister and the beams under the stairs, but Rok was too green. Amazon, on the other hand, had a better black level, but it crushed his face a bit, and in TCL you know what’s going on with a child standing in a few steps I was unable to do so. I tried to fix the TCL issue by allowing for high dynamic contrast and low microcontrast to get better shadows, but still the four contrasts were the worst.

Later in this scene, another issue occurred with Roku. There, overwhelmed the unexposed shadow details, and there was a strange strobe shadow in a corner of the basement. I was using fandango from home so it was probably an artifact hidden by other televisions. Spooky, sure, but not intentional.

We then tested the budget model in the film Troy and found that Samsung’s suppressed palette continued. The Amazon Fire TV photos were visible up to this point, but the film exposed a new issue. The assembled soldier looked too pink, and the shadows on his face turned the unnatural tomatoes red. Meanwhile, roku’s face was washed away a little and his TCL was pretty good in balance.

In summary, Samsung offers the best photos here, with excellent black and low levels of shadow details. Color was less important than contrast, but it was clearly less saturated in appearance than other TVs. Conversely, the most striking picture television was Roku, with their overly green shadows and the lightest black levels.