A while ago, I was looking to buy a "dumb tv". In the end I narrowed it down to professional display, computer monitors, and projectors. And sadly, the prices are usually higher than a TV of the same size.

Professional Displays are those you find in fast food with the menu, or in offices with info, doctors etc... One of the reasons they are expensive is because they are made to be on 24x7.

Projectors are cool, but they work better in darker rooms. The cheaper ones also need more space from the wall.

I ended up going with a computer monitor, LG ultragear 48 inches, it is great. And it was cheaper than anything else, and I was lucky there was a price drop from the MSRP because they were restocking to a newer model. Usually they are a bit more expensive than the equivalent LG C model TV.

With a monitor, you will have to plug anything that you want to watch, there is no wifi and apps. Another constrain is size, the largest I could find were 48 inches. Anything bigger would fall into the professional display category and get expensive fast.

Sadly, I just checked online and neither Amazon or Best Buy are offering those here in Canada https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/lg-ultragear-48-uhd-138hz-0-1ms-gtg-oled-lcd-freesync-gaming-monitor-48gq900-b-black/16310839. LG was usually around 1k CAD, and BenQ was not that far off.

I hope it is just shortage rather than discontinuing those line of products.

Anecdote:

Our Sony OLED is Google TV based (aka Android), so it works with every app out there.

It's default homescreen is awful and ad ridden, but it recently got an 'app only mode' that gets rid of EVERYTHING. I kid you not, the home screen is utterly barren except for a grid of the apps you installed; it's glorious. It's even cleaner than a relative's old Nvidia Shield, or old 'dumb' TVs.

...No idea how such reverse enshittification happened. My only guess is that Sony put a gun to their head and made Google do it, though the option is well hidden.

Looks great. You can look up Rtings for specs.

But that aside, it's internal ASIC is excellent. It decodes ridiculously high bitrate BD rips with zero stutters. The upscaling is good, the motion smoothing is legit good; the best I've seen. It has stutter compensation by default, and BFI if your eyes can take it. Both of ours were decently calibrated out of the box.

...And none of them have busted, not even the old one.

I swear, I am not a bot or shill. And this is a sample size of one family...

...But yeah. Having experience them with friends/family, I would not touch Samsung TV with a ten foot pole. LG would be my second choice, but I'd still assume I'm going to hook it up to a streaming box.

I believe Sony OLEDs also use LG panels, so I would suggest one from either brand - on the caveat that if you value privacy, and not being inundated with ads, you do not directly connect it to the internet - but instead use something like an Apple TV for your media playback.

I've been happy after moving from Sony/Samsung to Hisense.

I have an LG OLED B2 for a couple of reasons that remain true of LG OLEDs and new TVs:

• LG has the best OLED longevity results on Rtings tests
• supports Dolby Vision (Samsung pushes some „standards” nobody is using)
• VRR / FreeSync (if you play video games this is a must have on a modern TV)
• jailbroke mine to add ambient lighting via HyperHDR, ESP controller and a LED strip (total cost of something like $40)

My one other observation is that new TVs are marketed on how bright they get. It’s like Gillette razors with 20 blades but replace that with 3000 nits. I don’t have my B2 nowhere near max brightness because it’s eye-searing and reduces OLED lifespan. Brightness this high only makes sense if you’re going to watch your TV in the middle of an electronics store showroom.

As to UI, ads and spyware. Every vendor UI is horrible and will push ads on you eventually - don’t connect it to network, get an Apple TV set top box, set TV to use that input at start and never worry about that. I’m still using my 2017 one and while showing age it’s still faster than every TV I’ve seen.

I'd also recommend checking out RTINGS. They have a pretty comprehensive testing methodology that they apply to all models they review, and they also pay for all review models themselves to avoid any potential conflict of interest. They score on a 100 point scale for lots of different things (brightness, black level, colour, suitability for gaming, suitability for sport, etc) so if there are specific things you're interested in you can quickly compare different models and get a good idea of their relative strengths and weaknesses.

We love our sony. Samsung will be $100 cheaper but it's not worth it! Their user experience is TERRIBLE! If you need something quick and easy, grab a projector for ~$200. We used one for the first 3-4 months after moving because we didn't know where the TVs would go and it was easy to carry room to room while packing/unpacking. We had a TCL roku tv- not fancy but cheap and fine.

If I could go back I'd probably get a projector for around a hundred, some half decent speakers, and some heavy curtains. No TV to move, LED lights last way longer than the old bulbs and brighter, and way cheaper.

Grandma-usable is RokuTV.

Samsung is full of ads and SamsungTV.

I recently purchased a 65" Vizio from Walmart for pretty cheap and paired it with their Onn 4K Android TV box. Kept the TV disconnected from WiFi. It works pretty good but the TV liked to nag about not being connected so I created a hidden guest SSID that had no internet access and connected the TV to it to make it shut up. All in all it's not a perfect solution but it works and no ads like Samsung TVs.

1. get whatever TV you want
2. never connect it to your network
3. go through its settings to opt out of all the bullshit like data collection, tracking, ads etc. google directions for your model if you can't find it.
4. only watch media through connected devices
5. if roku has too many ads for you, try an Apple TV which is pretty much ad free.

My TCL Roku was great, but updates made it work very poorly the last few years. Has gotten better recently though.

What I would do if I had 300 bucks to burn is buy an NVIDIA Shield to plug into the HDMI and basically turn the Roku into a monitor with the software being on the Shield. I'm told you can install the apps that let you watch YouTube without ads on it too.