The Best TVs Under $500, According to Experts

The TV brand you select is more important than ever when you’re looking at the under-$500 price range. You’ll find plenty of budget offerings from big electronics brands like Toshiba, Pioneer, Insignia, Westinghouse, and Onn, but these generally underperform compared to models from brands you may be less familiar with but are actually more established as TV manufacturers.

TCL and Hisense are two brands that have emerged as value leaders over the past few years by providing high-performance features that enhance picture quality even in their entry-level TVs. Samsung, Sony, and LG also make good budget TVs, though the picture quality isn’t nearly as impressive as the pricier models from those brands.

Two other relatively new TV brands are Roku and Amazon, both of which offer budget models with a strong emphasis on usability — they’re experts in the smart-TV interface for streaming, and they’ve brought that to their TVs. “A lot of people really like the Roku interface, which is easy to use and offers voice control,” says John Sciacca, a custom-installation pro and AV product reviewer for Residential Systems. Voice control is also a reason that James Holland, a TV reviewer for TechRadar, finds Amazon’s budget TVs appealing: “Do you care about hands-free control? Any of Amazon’s TVs except the 2- and 4-Series can do that.”

Finding a TV with 4K resolution for under $500 used to be a tough task, but that feature has now become fairly standard for the price range. Two less standard features that can have a big impact on picture quality are mini-LED backlights and full array local dimming, and an increasing number of under-$500 TVs are starting to provide both.

LCD-based TVs such as the models listed in this guide use either standard LED or mini-LED backlighting to illuminate their LCD panels and create their pictures. The benefit of mini-LED is that the lamp modules in the backlight are significantly smaller than standard LEDs, so there are more modules packed in the array to light up the screen, resulting in brighter, more uniform pictures. Full array local dimming, which can be found on both standard LED and mini-LED TVs, is a process that allows different areas of the screen to be lit up at varying brightness levels. The benefit to this is stronger picture contrast, along with uniform blacks free of the “screen clouding” effects that typically plague cheap TVs that lack local dimming.

Nick Pino, managing editor for TV & AV at Tom’s Guide, strongly recommends budget shoppers look for a mini-LED TV with full array local dimming at minimum. “Not only are these TVs evenly backlit, but they come with a large number of contrast control zones that prevent blooming, or bright elements that bleed into the dark parts of the screen.”

Another high-performance feature that has recently started to show up on TVs in the under-$500 price range is quantum dots, a layer of semiconductor particles that work to improve the efficiency of the TV’s display panel, bringing enhanced brightness and color saturation. LED and mini-LED TVs lacking a quantum-dot layer generally have duller-looking pictures with less vivid colors than models providing that feature, so it’s one well worth paying a bit extra for in an under-$500 TV.

Along with 4K, another feature that’s become pretty much standard for most under-$500 TVs is high dynamic range (HDR) capability, which lets TVs display programming encoded in a format that allows for expanded brightness levels to bring out increased detail in picture highlights and shadows. Movies and TV shows — and even some sports — encoded with HDR are common on streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max, and a TV with HDR support can display these programs.

There are multiple flavors of HDR, with HDR10 being a base format that’s supported by all streaming services and HDR-capable TVs. Beyond HDR10, there is Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and HLG (hybrid log-gamma), which is a format used mainly for live TV broadcasting. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are similar in that both are dynamic formats where the picture’s brightness range is optimized on a scene-by-scene basis. Many budget TVs, including models from TCL, Hisense, Roku, and Amazon, support the full range of HDR formats. TVs from Samsung, Sony, and LG, on the other hand, provide more limited HDR support, with Samsung omitting Dolby Vision, and Sony and LG omitting HDR10+.

Yet another feature previously limited to high-priced TVs that’s since migrated down to the budget range is high refresh-rate support. A typical low-cost TV used to have a refresh rate (the number of times per second a video image is displayed onscreen) limited to 60Hz, but you can now find models with 120Hz or even higher refresh rates. The importance of this feature is that it allows you to take advantage of the 120Hz output capability of the latest generation of gaming consoles (and even higher rates for PC gaming). A high refresh rate results in smoother, more realistic motion overall, not just when gaming, so it can also benefit sports on TV by helping to reduce the blur effect in fast-action plays. A high refresh rate on a TV can also improve the look of movies by limiting any judder effects in shots with camera motion.

Chris Boylan, a TV and AV editor at eCoustics, finds a TV’s smart interface to be a major factor to consider when shopping, because it “will dictate your enjoyment of the TV over time.” Boylan prefers the smart interface of LG and Samsung TVs, both of which limit the number of ads you are exposed to, and they also receive regular updates with new features and apps. He also generally likes the Google TV platform found on Sony, TCL, and Hisense TVs but finds the platform to be too weighted toward YouTube in its content search results.

Amazon and Roku both made an initial foray into the TV world through streaming sticks, then eventually launched their own lines of budget TVs that emphasize streaming and smart-home features. Amazon is a good option for those who subscribe to Prime Video or other Amazon services. Amazon TVs can also be used to control the company’s smart devices such as lights, thermostats, and Ring security cameras using Alexa voice commands. Amazon’s smart interface, however, tends to be a bit cluttered and ad-heavy compared to the Roku TV interface, which has a simpler, more streamlined layout.