Insignia F50 QLED TV Review

The Insignia F50 QLED has a basic design, with thin bezels on three sides but a thick bottom bezel that sticks out a bit. It looks similar to other entry-level models, like the Amazon Fire TV 4-Series.

Update 09/11/2024: Replacing the LED strips fixed the backlight, but, unfortunately, the panel broke during reassembly, and we can't repair it. We've permanently removed this TV from the test.

Update 07/29/2024: Unfortunately, the Insignia F50 QLED's backlight failed, and it's no longer usable. It's been removed from the test for now, but we'll disassemble it to determine the cause and see if we can fix it. Watch this space or our main longevity article update page for updates.

Update 08/09/2023: The uniformity of this TV continues to degrade. It's noticeable with all slides and real content now, and it's exceptionally bad in near-dark scenes, as you can see in this 5% gray uniformity slide.

The Insignia F50 has a basic stand. It's nearly the full width of the TV, so you'll need a large table if you're not planning on wall mounting it. It supports the TV well, but there's still a bit of wobble from front to back.

Footprint of the 65 inch stand: 51.18" x 13.5". There's 3.07" between the table and the bottom of the screen, meaning you can place a soundbar in front of the TV without blocking the screen. There's only 1.9" between the table and the bottom of the bezel, so most soundbars won't fit underneath the TV.

The back of the TV is very plain, with no consideration at all for cable management. The back is a mix of metal and plastic. The most common inputs face to the side and are easy to access. There are a few inputs, including one of the HDMI ports, that face down and are very difficult to access when the TV is wall-mounted.

The Insignia F50 has just okay build quality. It's a mix of metal and plastic, but the materials used are pretty cheap, and the back panel flexes a bit. The feet are pretty basic and support the TV well overall, but it still wobbles a bit.

The Insignia F50 has excellent contrast, so blacks look black and not gray if you're in a dark room. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to improve contrast.

Unfortunately, the Insignia F50 has disappointing peak brightness in HDR. It's not bright enough for small highlights to stand out in dark scenes, and HDR content looks dull and muted overall. It follows the EOTF well, as most scenes display at the correct brightness level, but there's a sharp cutoff near the TV's peak brightness. This causes a loss of fine details in scenes that are brighter than the TV's peak brightness.

These measurements are from the 'Movie' Picture Mode with Contrast and Backlight at their max and Color Temperature set to 'Standard'. These are the brightest and the most accurate settings. Increasing Contrast to '100' increases the brightness of dim scenes a bit, as shown in this EOTF, but the overall peak brightness is the same.

The Insignia F50 is a bit dimmer overall in 'Game' mode with the default settings, and it doesn't track the EOTF as well as 'Movie' mode, as most scenes are a bit too bright. Using the default settings in 'Movie' mode, with the Contrast at '90', results in a brighter image, with an average of 377 cd/m² in most scenes.

The Insignia F50 has just decent peak brightness in SDR. There's very little variation in brightness with different scenes, which is great. It's bright enough to overcome glare in moderately-lit viewing environments, but it's not bright enough to overcome direct glare if you have a lot of windows.

These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with Color Temperature set to 'Warm', Gamma set to '0', Contrast set to '80', and Backlight at its max. Increasing Contrast to '90' with the 'Standard' Picture Mode, with Mid Luminance gamma set to '-5' results in a slightly brighter image, with a peak luminance of 347 cd/m² with a 10% window, but it's also less accurate.

The Insignia F50 has an excellent color gamut. It can display most of the DCI-P3 color space used by most current HDR content, resulting in vivid, lifelike colors. It also has decent coverage of the Rec. 2020 color space, making it a somewhat future-proof choice.

The Insignia F50 has good color volume. It's limited by its incomplete coverage of the DCI-P3 and Rec. 2020 color spaces. Despite its high contrast ratio, it can't display saturated colors at low luminance levels very well.

The Insignia F50 has great accuracy out of the box overall. The white balance is great, and the color temperature is very close to the calibration target of 6500K. Gamma is very close to the target. Although most colors are displayed accurately, all saturated colors in SDR are terribly oversaturated, as the TV is stretching them to match the native HDR color gamut of the TV.

Unfortunately, this TV doesn't have a full calibration system, and what little calibration it has, doesn't improve the overall accuracy much. Switching to the 'Natural' Picture Mode unlocks a more complete white balance calibration, but it doesn't work properly, as the settings reset each time you go in the menu, so it's not possible to calibrate it.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Insignia F50 has good gray uniformity. The corners of the screen are a bit darker than the center, and there's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, which is mainly noticeable when watching sports. Uniformity in near-dark scenes is much better, with no noticeable issues.

The Insignia F50 has good black uniformity. There's some clouding throughout, as well as a few vertical jailbars on the left side of the screen. Unfortunately, there's no local dimming feature to reduce clouding and improve black uniformity.

Unfortunately, the Insignia F50 QLED has a poor viewing angle. The image fades quickly as you move off-center, and colors lose accuracy, so it's not well-suited for a wide seating arrangement, or if you like to move around with the TV on.

The Insignia F50 has just decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss finish helps reduce the intensity of direct reflections a bit. Combined with its decent peak brightness, glare isn't an issue in a moderately-lit room, but direct reflections are still an issue if you have a lot of windows or bright light opposite the TV.

This TV uses a BGR sub-pixel layout, which negatively affects the way text renders when using the TV as a PC monitor. You can read more about it here.

The Insignia F50 has a good response time, but it's not good enough for competitive gamers. Transitions around dark objects are significantly slower, causing noticeable smearing behind dark objects. The TV's relatively low flicker frequency causes duplications in motion.

Unfortunately, the Insignia F50 QLED flickers at all backlight levels below the maximum. This low flicker frequency causes noticeable duplications in motion, and it can cause headaches and eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. The backlight always flickers, which helps reduce the appearance of persistence blur but causes duplications in motion.

The Insignia F50 QLED has an optional motion interpolation feature, and it can interpolate lower frame rate content, like movies and most TV shows, increasing the frame rate up to 60 fps. The feature is very limited, and even when enabled, the effect is very subtle and hardly noticeable with some content. There are no noticeable artifacts or issues, as it's hardly even doing anything.

Due to the TV's relatively slow response time, there's just a bit of stutter when watching movies. It's mainly noticeable in slow panning shots.

Unfortunately, this TV can't remove judder from any source. It's mainly noticeable when watching movies, as it doesn't display each frame for an equal amount of time.

Unfortunately, this TV is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, and it doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies like FreeSync, which is disappointing for gamers.

The Insignia F50 has outstanding low input lag, resulting in a responsive gaming and desktop experience. There's very little variation in input lag with different resolutions. Unfortunately, the input lag in 'PC' mode, which you normally need for clear text with a chroma 4:4:4 signal from a PC, is extremely high. Since this TV can't display 4:4:4 properly anyway, this mode is useless. Enabling motion interpolation adds no input lag, as the feature is very weak and not very effective.

Unfortunately, this TV can't display chroma 4:4:4 signals properly. It results in some noticeable text artifacts when using it as a PC monitor, but it's not noticeable when gaming, either from a PC or a console.

The Insignia F50 Series only supports the most basic formats from the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X. It automatically switches into 'Game' mode when you start playing games.

Unlike most modern TVs, the Insignia F50 has a composite input, which is great if you have older devices, including some older game consoles.

This TV has eARC support, allowing you to send high-quality audio, like Dolby Atmos via TrueHD, to a compatible receiver over an HDMI connection.

This TV has an okay frequency response. It has a fairly well-balanced sound profile, so dialogue sounds good at moderate listening levels. Like most TVs, it has almost no bass response and can't produce any thump or rumble. If you like bass, an external soundbar or a home theater system is a better choice.

This TV has good distortion performance. There's more distortion in the bass range, but this isn't very noticeable. There's very little noticeable distortion in the vocal range, even at max volume, which is great.

The Insignia F50 runs Amazon's Fire TV smart interface. The interface is very smooth and easy to use, and it has a great selection of additional streaming apps.

Unfortunately, like almost every TV on the market, there are ads throughout the home interface and content store, and you can't disable them.

The app store has a great selection of additional apps to download, and you can also cast content from your mobile device.

The remote is nearly identical to the one included with the Amazon Fire TV 4-Series. It's a pretty basic remote, but it has built-in voice control, which you can use to change inputs, launch apps, or search for content in specific apps, but you can't use it to adjust settings like the backlight.

There's a single button along the bottom bezel. You can use it to turn the TV on and off or switch inputs.

• Power cable
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• User guide