The Roku Select Series 2023 is the lower-tier model in Roku's first-ever proprietary series of TVs. It sits below the Roku Plus Series QLED, but unlike that model, the Select doesn't use quantum dot technology to display a wider range of colors. As it's a cheap TV, it lacks some gaming features that more expensive models tend to have, like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, a 120Hz panel, local dimming, and variable refresh rate (VRR). Unlike the Roku Plus, the Select doesn't support Dolby Vision but still supports HDR10+. It comes with version 12.5 of Roku's fast and intuitive Roku TV smart OS, and its remote has an integrated microphone for voice commands. You can also use voice through the Roku app on your phone. The TV comes in eight different sizes, from a very small 24-inch to a large 75-inch model.
Our Verdict
The Roku Select Series TV is inadequate overall. It's bright enough in SDR for a moderately lit room, but its reflection handling leaves a lot to be desired, leading to a mediocre yet distracting bright room experience. It works best in moderately lit rooms, not bright ones. In HDR, it's just not bright enough to provide a vibrant and impactful viewing experience. Unfortunately, it also doesn't look good in a dark room due to its poor black levels and muted colors. The TV doesn't have any modern gaming features, and its slow pixel transitions mean motion is blurry, so it's not a good gaming TV either. Finally, it also lacks good image processing. However, it does follow the content creator's intent decently well and doesn't have much banding in its HDR gradients.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
- Available in a ton of different sizes.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
- Limited gaming features.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV is an inadequate option for a home theater setup. It has poor black levels, so blacks look gray most of the time. The TV only displays a narrow range of dim colors, which leads to colors that lack vibrancy, although at least there isn't much banding in HDR gradients. It's too dim in HDR to provide a truly impactful HDR experience. Plus, its upscaling and low-quality content smoothing are rather poor, so this TV really needs high-fidelity content, as it can't clean up lower-quality media effectively. Thankfully, there isn't much stutter, so motion in movies and TV shows is mostly smooth. However, it only removes judder from external sources, like Blu-ray players, and not from its own internal apps. It also doesn't remove judder from 60Hz sources.
Doesn't stutter much due to its slow response time.
Not much banding in HDR gradients.
- Doesn't remove judder from most sources.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV delivers a mediocre bright-room viewing experience. It's bright enough in SDR for a moderately lit room, and its image accuracy is excellent in SDR without any calibration, so you get a bright, accurate image right out of the box. Unfortunately, its reflection handling isn't good enough to combat glare, making reflections on the screen very distracting. Ambient light doesn't affect colors much, but because the TV has poor color reproduction to begin with, they appear muted. Black levels also aren't significantly affected by ambient light, but since the TV's black levels are already weak, they still look gray.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
The Roku Select Series TV is an acceptable option for watching sports, though it doesn't stand out. Colors lack vibrancy, making the entire image appear muted, but at least the TV is accurate and bright enough for a moderately lit room, especially in SDR. Its viewing angle is decent and wide enough for a small gathering, though the image degrades when viewed from a wide angle. Still, it's acceptable for an LED TV. However, its sub-par reflection handling doesn't reduce glare well, so any lights positioned directly opposite the screen are distracting. It also doesn't do a good job removing artifacts from low-bitrate content, like when watching sports online, and it doesn't upscale low-resolution content, so SD sports don't look as crisp as you'd like.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
- Noticeable uniformity issues with bright colors.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV is a poor choice for gaming. It's limited to 60Hz and doesn't support VRR to reduce screen tearing, so it's not a good option if you care about high frame rates or modern gaming features. It has low input lag at 60Hz for a responsive feel, but it lacks a faster refresh rate, limiting its usefulness for anyone seeking a truly responsive, high-refresh-rate option. Additionally, its pixel transitions are slow, resulting in blurry motion. Colors look muted in games due to the TV's disappointing color volume in SDR and HDR, and it's too dim to display impactful highlights in HDR games. Finally, the TV's black levels are poor, causing the entire image to appear washed out.
Low input lag at 60Hz.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
- Limited gaming features.
Response time is too slow for a truly motion blur free experience.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV's brightness performance is inadequate overall, although it's reasonably bright in SDR content. In HDR content, however, it's too dim to make highlights pop, resulting in a lackluster HDR viewing experience.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
The Roku Select Series TV's black level is poor. This is mostly due to its lack of local dimming, which leads to poor contrast as the entire screen looks blueish and washed out in darker scenes.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV has mediocre color performance overall, although thankfully it's amazingly accurate in SDR prior to any calibration. Still, its color volume in HDR and SDR is rather disappointing, so content doesn't look vibrant on this TV. Its pre-calibration accuracy in HDR is alright; not nearly as good as in SDR, but it does the job for a TV at this price point.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Note: We're in the process of improving our tests related to image processing, but this score should give you a general idea of how a TV performs overall with its image processing capabilities.
The Roku Select Series TV has sub-par image processing overall, as it struggles with cleaning up low-bitrate or low-resolution content, so most of that content looks blocky or soft, respectively. It fares better when it comes to HDR content brightness accuracy, although it's generally too bright, especially in dark shadows. It does a very good job with HDR gradients, though, as it's hard to notice any banding unless you look closely for it.
Not much banding in HDR gradients.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV's responsiveness in Game Mode is inadequate. It doesn't support VRR, so you do see screen-tearing. Although the TV's input lag at 60Hz is low enough for a responsive feel, it doesn't support 120Hz and above, limiting the TV's usability for those who seek a truly responsive gaming experience. Plus, the TV's pixel transitions are slow across the board, resulting in visible motion blur.
Low input lag at 60Hz.
- Limited gaming features.
Response time is too slow for a truly motion blur free experience.
We're in the process of fixing the way we evaluate a TV's overall motion handling. This section is currently broken, and the score isn't indicative of how well a TV handles motion overall.
Performance Usages
Changelog
- Updated May 08, 2025: Converted to Test Bench 2.0.1. We did this to fix an issue with our scoring in the Supported Resolutions section, since TVs with a refresh rate higher than 144Hz were being penalized for not supporting 144Hz.
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Updated Mar 26, 2025:
We wrote text for the new tests and rewrote text throughout the review after updating pre-existing tests and scores for Test Bench 2.0.
- Updated Mar 26, 2025: We converted the review to Test Bench 2.0. With this new methodology, we've added new tests to expand the scope of our testing, adjusted our scoring to better align with current market conditions, and added performance usages that group related tests together to give more insight into specific aspects of a TV's performance. You can find a full list of changes in the TV 2.0 changelog.
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Updated Nov 12, 2024:
We mentioned the newly-reviewed TCL S3/S350G in the Upscaling: Sharpness Processing section of this review.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the 65-inch Roku Select Series 2023 (65R4A5R), but it's also available in 24, 32, 40, 43, 50, 55, and 75-inch sizes. The 24- and 32-inch models have a 720p resolution, while the 40-inch model has a 1080p panel. Model sizes above 40 inches are all 4k TVs. The non-4k models also have three HDMI ports instead of four on the 4k models. Costco sells an exclusive 55-inch variant of this TV (55R4A6) that is identical except for the model code.
| Size | US Model | Resolution | Number of HDMI ports |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24" | Roku 24R2A5R | 720p | 3 |
| 32" | Roku 32R2A5R | 720p | 3 |
| 40" | Roku 40R2A5R | 1080p | 3 |
| 43" | Roku 43R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 50" | Roku 50R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 55" | Roku 55R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 65" | Roku 65R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 75" | Roku 75R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
Our unit was manufactured in December 2022.
Popular TV Comparisons
The Roku Select Series 2023 is a decent cheap TV and competes with the TCL S4/S450G and the Hisense A6/A65K. Overall, the Roku is better than the TCL but is a bit light on features compared to the Hisense, although the Roku is better for watching SDR content in bright rooms due to its higher SDR peak brightness. One advantage of the Roku TV over any other model in its price range is the sheer plethora of sizes you can buy it in; as small as 24 inches to as big as 75. It's certainly one of the best bang-for-the-buck cheap TVs and is widely available.
See our recommendations for the best budget TVs, the best smart TVs, and the best small TVs.
The Roku Plus Series QLED is better than the Roku Select Series. The Plus has local dimming, so it has a much better contrast for deeper blacks. It also gets much brighter than the Select in HDR, with a noticeably wider color gamut, enough for a satisfying HDR experience. The Select has a wider viewing angle, making it better suited for large parties or if you like to move around the TV, and it's much more accurate before being calibrated. It's also available in significantly more sizes than the Plus.
The TCL S551G and the Roku Select Series are both budget TVs that perform similarly overall, though the TCL has a slight edge. Aside from using different smart interfaces, they have similar contrast ratios and peak brightness. That said, the TCL has a wider color gamut and slightly better picture processing. The TCL also supports Dolby Vision and has more gaming features, like VRR.
The Roku Select Series is much better than the TCL S350G. The TCL does one thing better than the Roku: upscaling, and not by much. Otherwise, the Roku is the brighter TV in HDR and SDR, with slightly better contrast, offering a more impactful viewing experience in all content. It's also much better for gamers due to its vastly faster response time and up to 4k @ 60Hz resolution support; the TCL is limited to 1080p @ 60Hz on its two HDMI 1.4 ports.
The TCL Q550G is better than the Roku Select Series. The TCL gets brighter in both SDR and HDR, has better color volume and a wide color gamut, and supports Dolby Vision. The TCL also offers more to gamers with VRR support and the option of playing in 1080p @ 120Hz natively or 1440p @ 120Hz with resolution halving. On top of that, the TCL has better contrast and black uniformity, so it's a better option for dark room viewing.
We buy and test dozens of TVs yearly, taking an objective, data-driven approach to deliver results you can trust. Our testing process is complex, with hundreds of individual tests that take over a week to complete. Most of our tests use specially designed test patterns that mimic real content, but we also use the same sources you have at home to ensure our results match the real-world experience. We use two main tools for our testing: a Colorimetry Research CR-100 colorimeter and a CR-250 spectroradiometer.
Test Results
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