Advertisement

As with any other type of technology, once you get to a certain point of TVs, there are diminishing returns. Yes, the best OLED TVs will produce the best black levels and contrast – and yes, you’ll likely see the best color saturation and brightness from QLED.
However, there really are some budget deals that can deliver 80% of what you’ll get from the more expensive models at a third of the price – such as the Toshiba M550 series Amazon Fire TV.
The model was just launched in May and is already winning as one of the best TVs under US$500 thanks to its native 120Hz panel, support for Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10+, and built-in Amazon Fire TV smart platform with Alexa -dollars in meaning.
Without definitive numbers from our TV testing lab, it’s hard to say if it can live up to the hype – but if I were looking for the best 65-inch TV on the market for under $500, I’d buy this one alone on specifications.
What do the specifications mean?
Let’s break down the specs line by line. First off, this is a 4K HDR TV. That means it has 4K resolution – four times that of 1080p HD TVs – and supports high dynamic range (HDR) content. HDR uses an extended color space than standard dynamic range content. On an HDR TV, you see brighter whites, darker blacks, and more saturated colors.
Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are two advanced versions of HDR that offer shot-by-shot HDR calibration. Instead of a fixed peak brightness for the white highlights and a lower limit for the black levels, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ offer individually tuned HDR performance to better suit the filmmaker’s intentions.
Although the M550 is “just” an LED LCD TV instead of an OLED, the M550 uses full-array backlighting with local dimming over direct-lit or edge-lit lighting. This allows the contrast to appear smoother without having as many halos or mottled gray spots in the background.
For refresh rate, the M550 is a native 120Hz panel – something almost unheard of in the sub-$500 TV space. Most TVs in this price range have a refresh rate of 60 Hz. This means that the TV refreshes the picture 60 times per second. The problem here is that most movies are shot at 24 frames per second and for this to fit within a TV’s native 60Hz refresh rate, the TV must dip the incoming images unevenly (traditionally referred to as the 3:2 pulldown technique ). .
120Hz allows 24fps content to look more natural (nothing special needs to be done to the incoming content), resulting in a typically clearer image.
There’s a double benefit here for gamers: not only does the TV support 120Hz, but it also supports a variable refresh rate of up to 60Hz – an incredibly nice feature if you plan on connecting a PS5 or Xbox Series X Drop on a game, lowers the TV automatically adjusts its refresh rate accordingly, eliminating stuttering or tearing in gameplay.
Also, it has Amazon Fire TV with Alexa
One of the other great features of the M550 is that it comes with the Fire TV Smart platform, which you would also find if you bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K.
A device built directly into the TV has a number of advantages – e.g. B. You don’t have to buy a separate streaming device, you save money – and you can control the TV and all the apps you want to use with one remote control.
Speaking of apps, the Fire TV platform comes preloaded with the best streaming services: you’ll find Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, and of course Prime Video.
Admittedly, I’ve always felt that the Amazon Fire TV is following Prime Video’s recommendations a little too closely, but Amazon is going to Amazon, I think.
The final benefit of the built-in Amazon Fire TV is that your TV comes with Alexa and can also act like an Amazon Echo device. You can ask Alexa to turn on other smart devices in your home or get information about a local restaurant while you’re watching a show or movie – very handy if you’ve already invested heavily in smart home products. Better yet, if you lose the remote, you can ask Alexa to turn on the TV, turn the volume up or down, and change the input with just your voice.
Should you decide you don’t want another device to listen to you, there’s a physical switch on the TV to disable the microphone. It’s a completely optional feature.
According to users, it has some bugs
So why isn’t the Toshiba M550 taking the rest of the TV industry by storm? Well, if you look at some user reviews on Best Buy’s website, you’ll see that some people are having some issues with the TV’s firmware.
The most annoying of these problems seems to be the fact that the TV defaults to its Smooth Motion setting every time you turn the TV off. That’s particularly annoying if you notice and care about the dreaded soap opera effect (effectively an over-processed image that makes the characters look too lifelike on screen).
The solution there is simple – all you have to do is go into the settings menu and turn it off – but that could be annoying if you’re constantly turning the TV on and off throughout the day.
The other issue we’ve mentioned from reviewers is that switching sources sometimes results in a black screen with no sound. This can happen for a number of reasons (e.g. sometimes HDMI devices can’t pair with the TV via a digital handshake), but it seems like this issue is being resolved.
bottom line
Overall, the Toshiba M550 has everything you need in a sub-$500 TV. You get a large 65-inch panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision and support, plus Fire TV plus Alexa. Some might want to wait for the bugs above to be fixed, but this set should deliver. Stay tuned for our own review coming soon.