Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: Which Smart TV Under $ 500 Wins?

Amazon Fire TVs are among the most popular, but why? When you want inexpensive TVs, there are a lot of options to choose from and not all of them are good. If you’ve looked through our list of the best TVs under $ 500, or even just browsed through the highlights of a recent weekend sale, you’ve certainly seen Fire TVs and you’ve probably wondered if they are even worth it. worth buying when they sell for such a high price. little.

The good news is that Amazon smart TVs tend to be better than most TVs in the same price bracket, and as long as you make sure you get a 4K model, you can rest assured that the Insignia and Toshiba Fire TVs. are good value, with or without these insanely low prices.

But which is better, the Insignia Fire TV or the Toshiba Fire TV? We’ve reviewed both, which you can find in our Insignia 4K Ultra HD Fire TV Edition NS-55DF710NA21 review and Toshiba C350 Fire TV (2021 model) review.

Let’s take a look at the details of each and find out what the best Fire TV deal is.

A note on the names: The Insignia model from our Insignia 4K Ultra HD Fire TV Edition NS-55DF710NA21 review was recently renamed Insignia F30 Series Fire TV Edition, so we’ve updated the review to reflect this and will be using the new name throughout this comparison.

Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: Specifications

Toshiba Fire TV vs Insignia Fire TV: price and size options

When it comes to affordable TVs, price and size can be the biggest factors in anyone’s buying decision. There’s no point watching higher-end TVs when you’re on a budget of $ 500, but you don’t want to look like Michael Scott with his tiny TV, either.

Fortunately, the Insignia and Toshiba Fire TV edition models offer a good mix of price and size. These are some of the more affordable 4K TVs on the market, and you won’t have to settle for a small screen to realize these savings.

Let’s start with the Insignia, which comes in sizes ranging from a compact 43in (roughly the smallest you’ll ever want to go for a 4K display) up to an impressive 70in. The 55-inch model sells for under $ 500, and even the bigger 70-inch sells for $ 619.

• 43 inch (model NS-43DF710NA21) – $ 289.99
• 50 inch (model NS-50DF710NA21) – $ 389.99
• 55 inch (model NS-55DF710NA21) – $ 419.99
• 65 inch (model NS-65DF710NA21) – $ 549.99
• 70 inch (model NS-70DF710NA21) – $ 619.99

The Toshiba C350 is also quite affordable, with equally low prices making it a mainstay of our best TVs under $ 500. Available in 43, 50, and 55-inch sizes, the more expensive model costs just $ 469 through Best Buy, despite having a recommended retail price of $ 519.

I say “recommended retail price” because I have rarely seen either brand of Fire TV sold at full price. They’re always a little discounted, but they make a splash every time there’s a big sale, like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, with sale prices dropping to year-round lows so retailers can make it. the headlines with 4K TVs sell for incredibly low prices.

And this is where Fire TVs really shine. As inexpensive TVs, they’re still an affordable and decent option. But as lead products, subsidized by retail giants like Amazon and Best Buy (Fire TV is Amazon’s smart TV platform and Insignia is Best Buy’s store brand), they can be purchased for a song whenever there is a sales event, and that makes them some of the more popular TVs.

But you’ll notice a big difference between the Insignia and Toshiba models listed here: There are more size options for the Insignia than for the Toshiba, which peaks at 55 inches. The Insignia also tends to be a bit cheaper, at least when you consider normal, non-event selling prices.

What is Amazon Fire TV?

So what exactly is Amazon Fire TV? It’s Amazon’s response to streaming platforms like Roku, built around Amazon Alexa and Amazon-owned services like Prime Video, IMDB TV, Twitch, while also supporting third-party apps like Netflix, Hulu. , Disney + and many more.

This is the same software used on other Fire TV devices, like the ones seen in our Reviews on Amazon Fire TV Stick Where Reviews on Amazon Fire TV Cube, two of best streaming devices You can receive. The Fire TV Edition smart TVs put this Amazon-powered software into a smart TV instead of a separate streaming device. The result is a pretty decent bundle of smart TV features, bundled into some of the more affordable 4K TVs out there.

Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: design

Whether it’s the Insignia F30 or the Toshiba C350, both are inexpensive TVs that use basic plastic construction. Affordable TVs aren’t known for their sleek styling or premium materials, and most inexpensive TVs have the same generic-looking black plastic construction.

However, the Toshiba C350 adds a sleek touch to the otherwise basic design, accentuating the basic black chassis with a strip of silver plastic along the bottom of the panel and silver plastic feet. The boomerang-shaped legs also give the Toshiba a sleeker look than the Insignia, but that may not be important to most buyers.

Both models work with standard VESA mounting brackets – the Insignia works with a 200 x 200 mm bracket, and the Toshiba uses a 200 x 300 mm model – so either will work with products from our best TV mounts listing.

When it comes to port selection, the Toshiba again has a slight edge, offering 4 HDMI ports to the Insignia’s 3 ports. Both TVs offer USB ports, coaxial antenna and cable connections, and composite video inputs. Both include an HDMI ARC connection for connecting a soundbar, but neither has the new HDMI 2.1 connection (or support for required features) that you might want to make the most of. started with a new game console.

Toshiba Fire TV vs Insignia Fire TV: Display

The Insignia and Toshiba Fire TV models operate under the same basic philosophy: Fairly well. It’s not an uncommon approach for cheaper TVs, but if you’re expecting something awesome just because it’s named after Amazon, you’ll be a little disappointed.

The Insignia suffers from limited color reproduction, producing only 96.68% of the Rec 709 color spectrum and offering a Delta-E score of 2.7, indicating decent color accuracy. The Toshiba wasn’t much better, producing 95.0% of the color spectrum, but surprised us with a Delta-E rating of 1.7, meaning it has significantly better accuracy than the Insignia.

In terms of test results, it’s kind of a washout. Both are precise enough that you won’t be constantly irritated by a bad color, but the limited gamut on both will leave the resulting image still a bit dull.

The Insignia was in the throes of motion blur until we turned off all video processing enabled by default, and even then it still had poor viewing angles – moving too far from the center of the screen introduced an unwanted color change. The Toshiba also had notable issues with limited viewing angles and inconsistent backlighting.

And without local dimming, some content looked flat on basic TVs. The Toshiba C350 supports Dolby Vision (not the Insignia), but neither Fire TV really offers the kind of contrast or backlight control needed for effective HDR performance.

Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: games

One area where we saw unexpected performance differences between the two brands of Fire TV was in gaming. With 60Hz panels and only nominal HDR support, neither will deliver superb picture quality, but both come at an ideal price as an inexpensive 4K gaming TV. (Check best 4K gaming TVs for more.)

The Insignia failed to impress us for gaming, with a decidedly slow latency of 36.4 milliseconds in our lab tests. The Toshiba C350, on the other hand, impressed us with its low latency of just 10.7 milliseconds, easily erasing the 20 millisecond cutoff we have for acceptable gaming performance.

If you want a cheap 4K TV to enjoy your gaming console, the Toshiba C350 is actually a great choice, and it’s one of the few that won’t cost more than a new one. PS5 Where Xbox x series.

Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: Audio

If there’s one area that consistently disappoints about budget TVs, it’s audio. Getting quality sound from the narrow confines of a TV chassis is a sophisticated and expensive process, and TV manufacturers generally reserve better sound for higher-end TVs. This is certainly the case with the two Fire TVs we are comparing here.

The Toshiba C350 has 7 and 8-watt speakers (7-watt on the 43-inch model and 8-watt on the 50 and 55-inch sets). The Insignia F30 models offer only slightly better, with an equally weak 10-watt speaker set.

Instead of multi-channel sound, both Fire TVs offer basic two-channel stereo – you can get better sound with one of the best soundbars. And that’s actually what we recommend. Both TVs provide sufficient picture quality, but the sound is dull enough that even a cheap soundbar will sound better.

Toshiba Fire TV vs. Insignia Fire TV: which wins?

Basically, the Toshiba C350 Fire TV is perhaps the better of the two Amazon-powered smart TVs. It has a sleeker design, better port selection, and better performance for broadcasts and games.

But don’t erase Insignia Fire TVs either. With lower prices, larger screen size options, and pretty similar performance (outside of games), the Best Buy store brand is also a great Fire TV.

But the real conclusion here is that you should definitely consider a Fire TV – from either brand – anytime you want to find a decent 4K TV with solid smart features and an affordable price tag. These budget smart TVs might not be ahead of the pack when it comes to high-end performance or features, but they deliver a modern, solid TV experience for much less than most of the big names. And when a big sale hits and you’re not sure you’re getting a Fire TV for a discount, you know you’ll be pretty happy with either model.