3 ms·

I'd strongly recommend against. I have a fairly recent Samsung "smart" TV, and it is a software dumpster fire with unremovable ads everywhere. If you want a go

I'd strongly recommend against. I have a fairly recent Samsung "smart" TV, and it is a software dumpster fire with unremovable ads everywhere. If you want a good smart app experience I'd stick to external dedicated device that you can swap out if they get annoying/bad (e.g. Roku, Apple TV, Fire Stick, Google TV, et al.). In general though Samsung has really lost its luster. They used to be a brand I'd gravitate towards for a fair balance of price Vs. features, but the quality has gone down and prices up. VIZIO are now the "cheap and cheerful" brand, with maybe LG (non-smart) being the premium brand.

SkyPuncher 5y ago
I have a 5 year old Samsung "smart" TV who's "smart" features are basically unusable. It can take nearly 10 seconds for the "home" screen to pop up. This home screen is core to switching inputs, apps, and settings. It worked just fine 5 years ago. Now, without having done anything, it's slow as heck.
- adolph 5y ago
  Have you performed any network traffic analysis? Maybe it attempts to phone home to Samsung or Ciansa and waits for a bunch of timeouts to dead endpoints before continuing.
epicide 5y ago
I recently got rid of a Samsung "smart" TV that I only had for a few years. It felt as though the UI were intentionally designed to be hostile. Even changing the inputs was not as simple as selecting an HDMI port. The TV had to determine what was connected to it so that it could show a cute icon for it. It also applied preset picture settings for the device, which were often horrible. After digging through the absolutely nonsensical menus, you could get the picture to look alright. I often had to turn off various enhancers and game modes to make it look remotely reasonable. Too bad it would repeatedly forget the settings every week or so. Even though the display panel itself was quite nice, I had resolved to just having a horrible picture at all times. I never used the actual connectivity features as I had my own external devices for that. The whole thing was an absolute dumpster fire of a product and it will not be missed. After that, I refuse to even consider any product from Samsung that isn't just a single component in something else (e.g. an SSD). Life is too short. (and none of this even gets to the various privacy concerns about the company, especially with their TVs)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
httpz 5y ago
Price of a Roku, Chomecast, etc are pretty trivial compared to a price of a TV. Just get one of those and don't bother with your TVs "smart" features. Recommending against a certain brand because their smart TV UX is bad doesn't seem like a good advice anymore because you can entirely replace the "smart" experience with a cheap streaming stick and ignore whatever smart features your TV offers. Some streaming sticks these days are pretty integrated so you can control everything you need with just one remote and don't have to bother with the TV's original remote anymore.

SkyPuncher 5y ago

I have a 5 year old Samsung "smart" TV who's "smart" features are basically unusable. It can take nearly 10 seconds for the "home" screen to pop up. This home screen is core to switching inputs, apps, and settings. It worked just fine 5 years ago. Now, without having done anything, it's slow as heck.

adolph 5y ago
Have you performed any network traffic analysis? Maybe it attempts to phone home to Samsung or Ciansa and waits for a bunch of timeouts to dead endpoints before continuing.

epicide 5y ago

I recently got rid of a Samsung "smart" TV that I only had for a few years. It felt as though the UI were intentionally designed to be hostile. Even changing the inputs was not as simple as selecting an HDMI port. The TV had to determine what was connected to it so that it could show a cute icon for it. It also applied preset picture settings for the device, which were often horrible. After digging through the absolutely nonsensical menus, you could get the picture to look alright. I often had to turn off various enhancers and game modes to make it look remotely reasonable. Too bad it would repeatedly forget the settings every week or so. Even though the display panel itself was quite nice, I had resolved to just having a horrible picture at all times. I never used the actual connectivity features as I had my own external devices for that. The whole thing was an absolute dumpster fire of a product and it will not be missed. After that, I refuse to even consider any product from Samsung that isn't just a single component in something else (e.g. an SSD). Life is too short. (and none of this even gets to the various privacy concerns about the company, especially with their TVs)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

httpz 5y ago

Price of a Roku, Chomecast, etc are pretty trivial compared to a price of a TV. Just get one of those and don't bother with your TVs "smart" features. Recommending against a certain brand because their smart TV UX is bad doesn't seem like a good advice anymore because you can entirely replace the "smart" experience with a cheap streaming stick and ignore whatever smart features your TV offers. Some streaming sticks these days are pretty integrated so you can control everything you need with just one remote and don't have to bother with the TV's original remote anymore.