TCL 40FS4610R Roku TV

Design
TCL packs plenty of style and craftsmanship into its lower-cost HDTVs. While it's not an eye-catching, ultra-thin, metal-edged hallmark of engineering, the 24.8-by-42.8-by-3 inch (HWD), 28.3-pound 48FS4610R looks simple and attractive. Its flat, glossy, black half-inch plastic bezels run around the edges of the screen, accented by a metallic lip on the bottom. The HDTV sits on a heavy, trapezoidal, black-and-clear glass base that holds it up securely, and can be bolstered by two optional rubber-footed plastic legs that screw into the bottom of the display. The stand doesn't wobble at all, but it also can't pivot left or right.

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The FS4610R is a bit light on ports. While its three HDMI inputs are standard for a budget HDTV, the screen only has a composite video input as an alternative for sources. The lack of component video is unusual for any HDTV. The HDMI ports, along with a USB port, a 3.5mm headphone connector, an optical audio output, and an antenna/cable connector face right on the back panel. The composite video input faces directly back. A small control stick that doubles as the Power button sits on the lower-right corner of the back of the set.

Instead of a conventional buttoned wand, the FS4610R uses a pill-shaped remote similar to the ones bundled with Roku's media hubs. It's a small, cylindrical device with a prominent direction pad, menu and playback controls, and dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Rdio, and Vudu. The Volume Up/Down and Mute buttons sit on the right edge of the remote, similar to the headphone volume controls on the Roku 2's$59.99 at Amazon remote, but without the handy headphone jack for private, wireless listening.

Roku TV
Unlike Roku-ready HDTVs that either come with an MHL Roku Streaming Stick or simply support one through MHL, the FS4610R has Roku's interface built directly into the display. All of Roku's content channels, streaming media services, and apps are available through the TV's menu system. The Roku-designed menu also handles standard HDTV functions like picture settings and input selection.

Roku offers several hundred online services and apps, organized as channels. They include all of the usual streaming media services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and Pandora, plus various free and subscription-based specialty channels for sports, movie genres, news, weather, and international television. Roku also supports streaming content from your mobile device through the free Roku iOS and Android apps, and even lets you use your smartphone or tablet as a remote control. 

The interface is very easy to use, but picture settings are overly simplified and slightly buried in menus, requiring you to individually change settings for each input if you want to access any picture tweaks—at least beyond a vague TV Brightness setting that's separate from the standard Brightness (black level adjustment) setting. 

See How We Test HDTVs

PerformanceWe test HDTVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 software, and DisplayMate test patterns. After a basic dark room calibration, we found that the best settings for testing were TV Brightness (separate from Brightness) at Brighter, Movie Picture Mode, Brightness at 49, Contrast at 82, and Color Temperature at Warm. With these settings, the FS4610R showed a peak brightness of 261.57 cd/m² and a black level of 0.08 cd/m² for a 3,270:1. This is hardly impressive when compared against all HDTVs, but respectable for a budget-priced HDTV. It edges out the previous Editors' Choice Sharp LC-48LE551U's 2,850:1 contrast ratio thanks to its brighter panel. 

The chart above shows measured color levels as dots and ideal color levels as boxes. While white ran slightly cool, red and blue were fairly accurate, and green skewed only slightly in our tests. The colors aren't perfect, but they're about as close as can be expected on an inexpensive screen, again rivaling the Sharp LC-48LE551U.

In testing, The Amazing Spider-Man looked very good, with a sharp, bright picture that offered balanced colors. Because of the mediocre black levels, dark shadows tended to get muddy and lose detail. But this was only noticeable in the dark alley scene, and even then it wasn't enough to take me out of the experience. Flesh tones looked natural, if ever so slightly cool, and Spider-Man's red and blue costume looked vivid and accurate.

The Big Lebowski looked similarly bright and balanced. The harsh fluorescent lights of the bowling alley didn't affect the varied skin tones of any of the characters, even if the overall picture still looked a bit cooler than ideal. For a budget HDTV, the FS4610R shows a very nice, relatively accurate picture.

The FS4610R impressed us with input lag, an important measurement for video games, with the lowest lag we've measured yet, at just 30.6 milliseconds. Gaming monitors can show an input lag less than ten milliseconds, but for a large HDTV, 30.6ms is impressive.

Under normal viewing conditions using our calibrated settings, the FS4690R consumes 91 watts. An Eco Save picture mode reduces power consumption to 77 watts, but it notably skews the colors bluish-white. That's about on par with other HDTVs of this size, a bit above the Sharp LC-48LE551U's 84 watts and the 50-inch Sanyo FVF5044's 78 watts. 

Roku has brought connected features to budget HDTV models, and TCL's take on the Roku TV is the best inexpensive model we've seen yet. At $500 for the 48-inch model, the FS4610R series offers out-of-the-box streaming media features, an easy-to-use interface, and excellent performance for the price, earning our Editors' Choice for budget HDTVs.