In just about any product category, you can probably think of recurring gripes that every user wants solved, but that companies are unable or unwilling to tackle. With smartphones, for example, most brands seem to sidestep the eternal demand for a battery that can last two or more days on a charge. It’s a complaint that isn’t just greedy — you might desperately need your phone during emergencies like hurricanes and wildfires, and you can’t always count on plugging in for a couple of hours.
The smart TV space is no different. There are legitimate technical hurdles, to be sure. Sometimes, though, companies are hellbent on maintaining their profit margins, and will ship what’s barely good enough rather than what people want. At times, they’re not even measuring up to the standards of rival tech sectors. You’ll see what I mean.
Keeping HDMI up to the latest standards
Even the rich shoppers are missing out
On many if not most TVs, you’re liable to get a mix of HDMI 2.0 and 2.1 ports. If you’re a casual TV viewer, you might not notice the difference. There’s probably no serious detriment if you’re only connecting a Blu-ray player or an eARC soundbar, and it’s not going to affect a TV’s preloaded apps.
There are some major feature gaps between the two HDMI standards, however. 2.0’s 4K refresh rates top out at 60Hz, which means a connected device can’t exploit the 120 or 144Hz refresh many sets now offer. It also lacks support for VRR — which keeps refresh rates in sync with framerates — and can’t handle any form of lossless audio, even if it’s in stereo rather than Dolby Atmos or DTS:X. It’s also less than ideal for dynamic HDR standards like Dolby Vision or HDR10+, never mind Vision 2 or HDR10+ Advanced.
I might not care so much except that HDMI 2.1 isn’t exactly a new standard. It dates back to 2017. TV makers have had nearly a decade to adopt it, and in all that time, component costs have no doubt come down dramatically. Including 2.0 ports may help keep TV prices in check, but at this point, it can’t possibly be enough to justify forcing some shoppers to pick up an HDMI switch or else cripple the performance of their devices.
The HDMI spec is already up to 2.2, but good luck finding that on a new TV — even high-end sets tend to be equipped with 2.1 across the board. It’s ridiculous, considering that you’d be extremely disappointed if you bought a $3,000 PC and it was missing USB 4.
Slow onboard processors
This one ain’t optional, fellas
To be fair, processors have come a long way. Way back in 2011, the first smart TV I owned was always lethargic despite running first-party software you’d think would be optimized. In 2026, a lot of TVs have respectable performance, even when they’re running a third-party platform like Roku OS or Google TV.
Too often, though, performance is no better than that, and cheaper TVs can be problematic. Mainly I’m thinking of models with Amazon’s Fire OS. On top of being mid-range devices at best, Fire TVs are notorious for slowing down over time, something I’ve experienced personally. Amazon’s recent overhaul should hopefully improve things, yet it’s simply unacceptable when a TV fails to deliver a smooth experience for the apps it shipped with.
Ironically, the growing demands of AI could come to the rescue. Advanced image processing tends to require extra horsepower, as do voice assistants like Alexa+ and Gemini, no matter how dependent they are on the cloud. When that power isn’t being used for 4K HDR or controlling smart home accessories, it may make loading and scrolling through apps a little more pleasant. We’ll see how many companies are committed to allowing a TV to do all these things with ease.
Weak USB and Ethernet connectivity
Where are the USB-C ports?
At this point, every TV has at least one USB port, and possibly several. Something you’ve undoubtedly noticed however is that most TVs are still stuck with USB-A ports, rather than the USB-C connections preferred on just about every other device you own. You may be forced to buy an adapter simply to connect a movie drive.
There are broader implications here. USB-A ports can’t get any faster than 10Gbps, and more commonly, they top out at USB 3.0’s 5Gbps. Some TV ports are capped at USB 2.0’s 480Mbps. That standard is over a quarter-century old, and can’t keep up with modern SSDs and Ethernet adapters, let alone DisplayPort Alt Mode, a USB feature that lets you push computer video using the most optimal format (instead of HDMI). Companies like Hisense are finally getting the message, but in many instances, you simply shouldn’t bother treating your TV like a monitor or media server, since you’ll get substandard results.
Speaking of Ethernet, a lot of TVs do have a native jack for it, but you may run into sets capped at 100Mbps instead of the 1Gbps that’s the norm elsewhere. That’s good enough for 4K HDR with Dolby Atmos, but much slower than Wi-Fi, which means that app and OS updates will take longer than necessary. And there can be legitimate reasons to prefer Ethernet, namely avoiding range and interference issues. It’s frankly pathetic that some TVs still include wired internet technology from 1995. In fact, there are adults with kids of their own who’ve always lived in a world with gigabit Ethernet.
Invasive advertising practices
Your TV is not your own, somehow
Anyone who’s used a smart TV in the past decade is probably used to being bombarded by banner ads. Usually this is for movies and shows hitting streaming for the first time, but you’ll also see ads for unrelated products, such as Coca-Cola. Many of these banners feature auto-playing audio and video that you have to manually disable if you don’t want to deal with it every time you scroll.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a lot of TVs have a technology called ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) enabled as well. This collects anonymized data about all your onscreen content, regardless of whether you’re using native apps or devices connected via HDMI. The goal is to collect marketing data for future campaigns, completely ignoring the privacy concerns most people have. Realistically, ACR probably isn’t going to result in anything worse than more targeted ads — but that fingerprinting is often done without your knowledge, and disguised under fanciful names so that you don’t know what to switch off. Guides like ours can point you in the right direction.
I might not even care about banners or fingerprinting if it weren’t for the fact that we’re already paying for most of our streaming content, and getting charged higher rates every year. I’ll bet a lot of people haven’t even seen the 4K HDR versions of services like HBO Max and Disney+, because the “premium” plans required can cost as much as two services combined.
- Brand
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Apple
- Bluetooth codecs
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5.0
- Wi-Fi
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6
- Ethernet
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Gigabit (128GB model only)
