My pick for the best budget TV is the 50-inch Samsung Q60B. For under $600, you get excellent native and upscaled 4K resolution as well as great picture quality. The QLED screen uses dual LED panels to create warm and cool colors simultaneously for a greater color range and more lifelike images. You can use Alexa, Hey Google, or Bixby for hands-free controls, and view multiple video sources at once with its Multi View feature.

But if you’re considering other options, here is a comparison chart of each TV: 

Once you’ve nailed down a budget, you’ll want to choose a TV that has a suite of features that best suits your entertainment needs. If you prefer wireless connectivity, choose a TV that has Bluetooth for setting up audio equipment or sharing your mobile device screen. Console gamers should look for a TV with a dedicated gaming mode that optimizes picture settings and input lag while also providing plenty of HDMI inputs if you have more than one console.

Aside from making sure my picks were budget-friendly tv deals, I chose a variety of screen sizes and brands with features customers have come to expect from smart TVs. I tried to choose models that provided a lot of value for the actual cost of the TV so shoppers wouldn’t have to sacrifice things like sound or image quality and streaming capabilities in order to stick to a budget.

If brand loyalty is important to you, then yes, it does matter. But if all you’re looking for is a decent TV that you can use to put on Love is Blind in the background while you cook dinner (and then have to start over because, like Marie Kondo, you love mess and don’t want to miss any of the truly unhinged dialogue), then no, branding doesn’t matter. Different TV brands do have some unique features like Sony’s Acoustic Surface Audio which turns the screen into a speaker, Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant, and TCL’s use of the Roku platform. 

But since all televisions serve the same basic functions and budget-friendly models either have very few of these unique features or none at all, it’s best to just go with what you can afford and what works with your existing setup.

No matter how much you spend on a TV, you can reasonably expect it to last at least 4 or 5 years before it needs to be replaced; whether it’s due to become obsolete when new, better models hit the market or systemic part failures. Of course, a TV can last much, much longer if they are properly cared for (the 25-year-old, 19-inch CRT model I carted around with me to college, my first apartment, and beyond can attest to that), but smart TVs are making that more and more an exception rather than the rule. 

Eventually, an older smart TV won’t be able to support new versions of apps or operating system firmware, forcing you to upgrade whether you want to or not. But the good news is: you know it’s going to happen at some point, so you can prepare well in advance by window shopping, making a list of must-have and nice-to-have features, and socking away a tiny bit of savings to buy a new TV when your current one eventually either gives up the ghost or needs to be relegated to the basement playroom as a DVD-only screen for your kids.

There are a lot of options for you when you upgrade your TV. You can set up the old one in a different room of your house for a secondary screen, so your family doesn’t have to argue about what movie to watch. You could try to sell it if it’s still relevant enough. You could also donate the old TV to a charity shop like a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, which could get you a tax write-off if you need more incentive than keeping electronics out of landfills or providing a less-well-off family with a decent TV. 

Or, if you live in a bigger city and the TV is too old to sell, you could take it to an electronics recycling center which will strip it down for copper, what little gold is in the circuit boards, glass, and plastic to keep non-biodegradable waste out of landfills and repurpose precious and semi-precious metals for more eco-friendly electronics in the future.

My pick for the best budget 65-inch TV is the Hisense 65U6G. For less than $600, you’ll get Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support for enhanced detailing and color accuracy as well as Google Assistant built in for hands-free voice controls. It’s also compatible with Chromecast so you can share your smartphone or tablet screen to view photos and videos or listen to music.

The best budget TV for gaming is the LG Nano75 series. It has a dedicated game optimizer mode that lets you monitor frame rate, input latency, and contrast so you can catch issues before they can ruin your gaming session. It also supports cloud gaming via Nvidia GeForce Now so you can play PC games from the comfort of your couch. And with 3 HDMI inputs, you can connect all of your consoles at once.

There are plenty of budget-friendly options to buy if you’re looking for a new TV on the cheap. Here’s a shortlist of other models I thought were great: