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Oh well, I'm not sure how do you define average consumer. I don't really watch TV but I do have to deal with TVs for other members in the family. Put all those

by mrjin 5y ago

Oh well, I'm not sure how do you define average consumer. I don't really watch TV but I do have to deal with TVs for other members in the family. Put all those Ads/tracking/slowness issues aside, the quality of the Smart TV OSes/Apps were/are just bad. We had a Sony, which was good in most of the aspects except the OS/Apps were terrible. Had to factory reset a couple of weeks or so or the apps would not launch at all and all of a sudden, apps would not function properly even after resetting. So we used it with a android TV box, which was actually much batter. Not long after switching to TV box, kids cracked the screen. So I got a Samsung hoping it would be better. Samsung's apps seem to be slightly better than Sony but the remote is a pain the neck. The first thing was the remote removed most the buttons, especially the video source button. So I have to press 5/6 times just to get to the sources. If I pressed buttons too quick, add another 2/3 presses to it. And after switching, the menu bar does not go away I have to press another button just to get it out of the screen. Since I have multiple HDMI devices connected to the TV, Samsung was trying to be smart by turning on one of the devices automatically. That was extremely dumb as most of the time I was just trying to get to the one after it and it turned on the device unexpectedly. Okay, I turned off the device unexpected turned on, you guess what, the TV is turned off as the current video source was now off. So I have to turn of the CEC over HDMI and then I'll have to use multiple remotes to control different devices. If it was dumb TV with a traditional full size remote, it can be much easier.

jerf 5y ago
"The first thing was the remote removed most the buttons, especially the video source button" This is not a defense of Samsung, but something you can try if you're stuck with it: While the Samsung remotes have slimmed down quite a bit, at least on my TV it still responds to the buttons the old more fully-sized remote controls had. If you get a universal remote and program it for Samsung TVs, you may find you get a lot of the functionality back that your remote is missing. I can't speak for every year's TV; mine's a few years old now. But you may already have a universal remote just lying around, in which case this is really cheap to try.

by mrjin 5y ago

jerf 5y ago

"The first thing was the remote removed most the buttons, especially the video source button" This is not a defense of Samsung, but something you can try if you're stuck with it: While the Samsung remotes have slimmed down quite a bit, at least on my TV it still responds to the buttons the old more fully-sized remote controls had. If you get a universal remote and program it for Samsung TVs, you may find you get a lot of the functionality back that your remote is missing. I can't speak for every year's TV; mine's a few years old now. But you may already have a universal remote just lying around, in which case this is really cheap to try.