The 7 Best Smart TVs For Streaming - Spring 2023 Reviews

The best smart television we've tested is the Samsung S95B OLED. It's an amazing TV with a great selection of smart features, including support for Bixby, Google Assistant, and Alexa voice assistants. This means you can choose your preferred platform and spend less time searching for content and more time enjoying your new TV. If you don't want to use voice assistants, the Tizen interface is well-organized, fast, and easy to use, and it has a huge selection of streaming apps, so you can quickly find your favorite shows.

For picture quality, it looks great in both bright and dark rooms. It gets bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room and has fantastic reflection handling, but using it in a bright room causes its black levels to raise. On the other hand, you get perfect black levels when using it in a dark room thanks to its near-infinite contrast ratio, and there's no distracting blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. It's been replaced by the Samsung S95C OLED, but the new model isn't much of an improvement in picture quality, and it's more expensive, so it's better to get the 2022 model while you can.

Although the Samsung S95B OLED is the best choice overall for most users, if you have a home theater and want the best experience available, the Sony A95K OLED is a bit better, but it's also a lot more expensive and it's only available in 55 and 65-inch screen sizes. It delivers similar picture quality to the Samsung as it uses the same QD-OLED panel, but the reason it's better for home theater setups is that it more accurately tracks content to the creator's intent. Thanks to its more advanced image processing capabilities, you'll also enjoy an extremely accurate and life-like image. It also supports more HDR formats, as it supports Dolby Vision, which is more widely supported than the competing HDR10+ format on the Samsung.

The A95K is also no slouch when it comes to smart features. It runs the built-in Google TV interface, which is a bit slower than Samsung's Tizen OS, but it has more features and a wider selection of streaming apps. It supports hands-free voice control, so you can find your favorite content without the need for the remote, or use the voice assistant to control your other devices in the house.

If you're looking for the best TV for streaming in the upper mid-range price category, check out the Samsung QN90B QLED instead. It's different from both the Samsung S95B OLED and the Sony A95K OLED because it doesn't use the same QD-OLED panel, meaning the picture quality is slightly worse. Because of this, there's more blooming around bright objects in darker scenes, including around subtitles. However, it looks much better in well-lit rooms thanks to its incredibly high peak brightness in SDR, making it an excellent choice for a bright viewing environment. It's even bright enough to use outdoors but isn't weather-proof, so you'll need an appropriate enclosure.

It also has a wide viewing angle, which is great if you have a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around with the TV on, as the image doesn't fade or look washed out when viewing it from the sides. As far as smart features go, it's identical to the S95B, with the same great Tizen OS interface. There's a huge selection of streaming apps, and the remote makes it easy to find your favorite content thanks to its built-in support for different voice assistants.

If you find the Samsung QN90B QLED too expensive but still want a high-end TV at a cheaper cost, consider the LG B2 OLED. It's a different type of TV than the QN90B as it uses an OLED panel, but it doesn't use a QD-OLED panel like on the Sony A95K OLED. This means it isn't as bright as either the Sony or Samsung, so highlights don't pop as much in HDR and colors aren't as vivid. If you do care about the peak brightness, the LG C2 OLED is another option that gets a bit brighter in HDR, but it also costs more, so it may be out of your budget if you want a mid-range TV. Besides that, the B2 offers the same near-infinite contrast that OLEDs are known for, making it a fantastic choice to use in dark rooms.

In terms of its smart features, LG's proprietary webOS smart platform is excellent as it's easy to use, and navigating through it feels smooth. LG's remotes are unique because they have a point-and-press feature, similar to a Wii remote, that lets you easily choose apps and settings in the menu, saving you the hassle of scrolling through everything with a directional pad. The webOS smart platform also allows customization with different profiles, so you can have a different layout than someone else at home.

If you want something cheaper but aren't necessarily on a budget, consider the Hisense U8H. It's a clear step down from the LG B2 OLED in terms of picture quality because it doesn't deliver the same perfect blacks, but it's still an impressive TV that outperforms any other TV in its price range. Unlike the LG, the Hisense runs Google TV as its built-in smart interface, which has many apps available to download through the Google Play Store, so you're sure to find your favorite content. Google TV can take some time to learn, but once you do, it's easy to use, and navigating through the menu feels smooth.

It also supports hands-free voice control, which makes it easy to find your favorite content, as you can ask it to search the name of your show or open a specific streaming app without even picking up the remote. In terms of picture quality, it gets incredibly bright and has excellent reflection handling, so it can easily overcome glare in a bright room. Unfortunately, it has a narrow viewing angle, so it isn't good for watching shows with a wide seating arrangement, as the image degrades as you move off-center.

If you're on a budget, the best budget smart TV we've tested is the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED. The main trade-off with the Hisense U8H is that this TV doesn't get as bright, so highlights don't pop as much in HDR, which is what you have to expect for a budget-friendly model. It also has worse reflection handling, so it's better to use in a dark room, where it displays deep blacks thanks to its full-array local dimming feature, but there's some blooming around bright objects. It has some good processing features, as it has great gradient handling and displays most content the way the creator intended.

Fortunately, it runs the Roku OS interface, which is very simple to use and has a great selection of streaming channels. The included remote is very basic but doesn't support voice control, which is disappointing if you want to quickly search something up. However, the Roku companion app is well made and offers a few unique convenience features, including a private listening feature that lets you send the audio from the native apps to your phone.

If you want something cheap that gets the job done, the Hisense A6H is the best cheap smart TV we've tested. It's a rather basic TV that delivers worse picture quality than the TCL 5 Series/S555 2022 QLED, but this is normal for cheap models. It isn't as good in a dark room as blacks appear washed out. By going with a cheap TV, you're also losing out on advanced features like local dimming to improve the appearance of dark scenes. However, unlike the TCL, it has a wide viewing angle, which is great if you watch TV while walking around, as the image remains consistent when viewed from the sides.

It runs the same Google TV smart interface as the Hisense U8H, which has one of the widest selections of streaming apps, so you can easily find your favorite shows and movies. It makes it a great choice for an office or guest bedroom, as your guests can watch their favorite shows without you having to worry about buying an extra streaming stick.