Insignia™ - 55" Class F50 Series QLED 4K UHD Smart Fire TV

If you’re looking for a QLED TV that won’t break the bank and delivers a superb picture, this hits the target. Especially if it’s on sale!! But factory picture presets are a bit over the top brightness and color saturation wise. Just tone them down a bit and you’re good to go. Let’s get to the good stuff right off. Outstanding picture quality for the price. Very bright at the highest backlight setting. Rich vivid colors and excellent color accuracy. Input wise, 4 HDMI, 1 composite video and audio, USB and ethernet. Down firing speakers that sound good with EQ and DTS options and a headphone jack. Also ARC and optical audio out for use with a soundbar. It has a bluetooth remote with Alexa integration that worked perfectly for me. Have security cameras linked to Alexa? This TV will display them! USB in for photos, video and music. The OS is snappy and things load fast. TV has 12GB of RAM for apps, Dolby Vision, DTS, Bluetooth, WiFi. Plenty of settings to adjust to customize picture and sound. See overview and specs listed above for details. Not only did I compare this TV to my 4K Samsungs which are basic models, I went to Best Buy and some other retailers and looked at what the competition was offering and talked to the sales staff to get their take on brands, features and reliability. From what I found online, supposably Hisense makes TVs for Insignia and Toshiba. That’s not a bad thing. The sales people I talked to spoke favorably of them. So how does it compare to the TVs costing hundreds to thousands more? Not too bad. Remember, it’s not competing with high end OLED TVs or QLED TVs with backlit screens with a matrix of LED backlights that dim or brighten for a deep HDR picture. But it will get a picture that’s much closer to those than a typical LCD TV. For those that may not know this, All LCD screens are backlit with LEDs nowadays. Either from the edge or behind. OLED screens are where every pixel is an LED that emits light. LCDs are a light valve that lets the back light shine through. Unboxing is easy. Do follow the instructions on how to remove the TV from the lower part of the box after you take the top off. It’s in a plastic bag with handles to make it easy. You can mount it on the wall or use the included aluminum feet. Setup was easy. Once you connect it to the internet it will look for updates and download them and install them before letting you proceed. After that you will need to log into your Amazon account if you have one and set up a profile and log into whatever streaming accounts you have. If you do not have an Amazon account you will need one to use this TV since it is an Amazon Fire TV. Navigating the screen was easy and snappy. Apps loaded fast too. I have 600 mbps fiber internet and an Asus gaming router so that might have something to do with apps loading fast. Your mileage may vary. First thing you will notice when you get set up and going is this thing is Bright and the Colors are Hot! To the point of being overwhelming. Especially the reds. Like all TVs of late it has several picture presets like Standard, Dynamic, Movie, Game, Natural, PC and Custom. They change picture settings for brightness, contrast, color and other things that would take too long to list here. But I noticed they all were all higher than necessary in the brightness and color saturation department. So I highly recommend you adjust the settings to your liking for brightness, contrast and color. Sharpness will help too. There’s an advanced picture settings menu too. It has settings for things like “debanding”, “Skin Tone” and such. Most seem pretty straight forward to what they do but not all. I searched in vain online for information on what some of these settings do because the manual doesn’t cover them. Maybe they will post it later on. So yeah, you will need to tweak the picture settings to get the best picture out of this TV. Don’t let that scare you because it’s not that hard to do. Just leave the TInt setting and RGB levels alone. If gray looks purplish or greenish then contact BB as may not be something you can fix yourself by changing settings. My TV is pretty dead on for color balance and yours should be too. Do note that the Color Temperature settings are there to give a warm (think incandescent lighting) or cool (think daylight) look to the picture. I tested my TV by streaming from Amazon Prime, Hulu, Ruko, Discovery Plus, IMDB and YouTube. For HDMI input I used Dish Network, Sony UBPX700/M 4K Blu-Ray player I reviewed a while back and an Asus gaming laptop I recently reviewed also. For the average person it all looks Great! For the more discerning person the Sony Blu-Ray with a 4K disc will provide the absolute best picture quality. Especially if your Blu-Ray player has Dolby Vision. I literally synced up Alien on Prime in 4K and 4K Blu-Ray I have of the movie. The Blu-Ray won as expected. Better color, lighting and detail. Yes, it was noticeable but not night and day. Next up was the Blu-Ray of The Last Jedi in FHD. Not sure if the player or TV upscaled it but it looked great. Also keep in mind that streaming services do vary in picture quality. I didn’t notice any lag that some other reported. See photos of Blu-Ray Stills. Lastly I connected my laptop to see how it looked and attempted to use my color spyder to color calibrate the screen. Even after I set the picture settings to comply with the calibration software the TV would switch to the Game preset automatically no matter what I set the picture preset to and I found no way to disable it from doing it. That made it impossible to do a color calibration and check the TV’s color gamut. All TVs have a service or setup mode for techs and I probably could have hunted online how to get into it and to run the calibration but that’s beyond the scope of my review. I also took a photo of the TV with my thermal camera to show where it’s warmest. The devices below the TV are a Dish Joy and the Sony Blu-ray. As you can see in the photo the TV is lit from the bottom. The specs say back lit too but the thermal camera doesn’t quite confirm that. So draw your own conclusions there. Note: All photos taken with a Canon EOS R and not a smartphone. Except FLIR. Conclusion: I highly recommend this TV.

The Insignia 55-inch QLED Smart Fire TV has an excellent picture quality along with some pretty helpful features for a connected smart home. The integration with Alexa and Amazon's many services is outstanding - with very little initial time spent setting that part of the TV up. But, wow - this TV is BRIGHT! Right out of the box, the TV's picture almost seemed distorted because it was nearly blindingly bright - but, that is easily managed through settings. This is my first Fire TV and I seem to learn more each time I use it. Pros: - Great picture, once adjusted for your viewing preferences; my family likes it in Movie (Dark) mode to counterbalance the very bright initial setting - Intuitive and relatively straightforward set up for most apps - A whole host of available apps (I believe Android-based) - Outstanding remote with Alexa button built in - Instantaneous Alexa and Works-with-Alexa functionality for all devices connected to your Amazon/Alexa account -- Side note: if you use Ring Video Cameras in your smart home -- you will LOVE how easily you can pull up any of the cameras connected to Alexa. This is perhaps one of my favorite features - Rich sound from the built-in speakers, including virtual surround sound and ARC support for a sound bar. - 4K QLED (not quite OLED) picture with little - if any - stuttering on the majority of channels (see con below re: older, non-4k video) - Nearly frameless bezel; in a darkened room, it almost looks like the picture is floating Cons: - Packaging: the first TV arrived totally destroyed. I don't fault Insignia or Best Buy for this ... it would appear the delivery company did not handle the box well. When the first TV arrived, there were literally pieces of the box and parts of the TV screen falling out of the mangled box: Recommendation: have Best Buy install it (or deliver it) or pick it up yourself as the packaging seemingly cannot handle the everyday parcel services and the way they toss boxes around like basketballs. - There is a bit of lag when starting up and some apps are slow to launch. Be prepared for software updates and a lot of waiting... - We've experienced a few lock-ups with the TV which seem to resolve themselves (the TV just reboots itself) - On older channels and standard definition DVDs, there is a bit of stuttering with the picture. It's barely noticeable to some, but can be a bit of an annoyance - A small, but notable design issue: the power cord plugs in at the bottom left of the back of the TV (when facing the back) and is not only very awkward to get plugged in by pushing it up into the socket, but it's fallen out of the power socket a few times. a better design would be a flattened "L" shaped power cord as found on other brands. Overall, I give this TV a thumbs up. The screen clarity and ultra-4k clarity are breathtaking once you've set the display to settings you like. Sound is well-above average for a TV at this price point. The Alexa/Amazon integration is absolutely fantastic. I would - and do - recommend this product and am already considering a second for our den.

The F50 is Insignia’s first time competing in the Quantum Dot/QLED arena. For those unfamiliar with the terminology, QLED is just another way of saying mid-tier 4K TV with increased color depth. On paper, this TV seems like an uncontested winner. Unfortunately, it struggles to produce a satisfying picture consistently. Luckily, the F50 finds redemption in other features and in the execution of those features. As an owner of another Quantum Dot television, I benefitted from having a similar device to compare it against. Below are my findings. The Good • Intuitive Interface: The F50 gives a quick response to my remote selections and toggles between menus with ease. I’ve had navigational problems where there is severe lag or “freezing”, but so far there have been no issues with accomplishing basic to advanced tasks. Furthermore, I found my experience with the Amazon Alexa app to be useful in giving feedback and presenting information onto my screen. • Great Sound: Natively, the television speakers provide great audio through the DTS Virtual-X Sound. No complaints. • eArc: This is a major win for Insignia for those who own or wish to invest in a high-quality sound setup. I use this television with a soundbar, subwoofer, and speakers which makes for a pleasurable experience. • Screen Mirroring/MiraCast: Most TVs will have some type of casting technology implemented. As a long time user of SmartCast, I very much prefer MiraCast for projecting my device’s screen onto my display whether it’s my phone or computer. • Ample Amount of Storage Space: The FireTV Operating System (OS) doesn’t hog many resources on the initial setup or even after updating. After installing apps, I still had 9 GBs of free space available with the option to add additional space via USB. • Bluetooth Functionality/Headphone Jack: I’m still surprised by the number of products released annually that lack Bluetooth capabilities. I own several gaming devices which makes it awesome that I can connect wirelessly to stream the audio from the television directly to my headset. What’s even better is that I still have the ability to use a hard-wired connection for listening if I so choose. Extra HDMI Input: One of the biggest complaints from television consumers is the lack of “extra” HDMI ports. The products I currently own are an example of why three HDMI ports don’t work. I have a soundbar, 4 gaming consoles/devices, cable TV, and a laptop that could benefit from a wired connection depending on the task. It can be a hassle unplugging and re-plugging devices. The Bad • Colors Can Be Over-Saturated Too Much: To be fair, the product description does highlight that the colors are heavily saturated. Media can sometimes look artificial or as if a paint bucket was accidentally tipped over. • Poor preset picture modes: Because certain colors can be overpowering at moments, I had to resort to toggling between different preset modes. Picture modes are designed to compliment the type of content being viewed. I found myself switching modes to fix one issue, but this would inadvertently introduce another problem. The most common problem is when watching video that transitions scenes from day to night. The sunny scenes usually aren’t bright enough and the evening scenes are often too dark to where I can’t make out what’s happening on the screen. • Calibration is a must: I wish this TV was more of a plug-n-play device, but it’s not. It takes work to adjust the picture settings which could still lead to disappointing results in the long run. The Insignia QLED F50 is a good tv, but should never be your main TV. Out of the box, every mode needs to be calibrated. No owner wants to spend time doing tedious work after spending hundreds of dollars on a major purchase. I rated the Insignia F50 3 stars because image presentation is major for any television and this can fall short sometimes. So why would recommend a TV that I myself only gave 3 stars? 1. The Insignia F50 still produces stunning color. There are times when I witnessed vivid scenes filled with rich colors and thought to myself “this is pretty awesome”. It will still outperform any regular 4K TV by miles. The amount of content available in native 4K with HDR is still growing so much of the media we all view is still not in Ultra High Def (UHD). Also, the Insignia F50 dramatically improves Standard Definition (SD) and regular High Definition (HD) as it should. 2. The TV has several features that my existing QLED TV doesn’t possess such as Bluetooth functionality, eArc, MiraCast, ability to add apps, and expandable storage space. I am also aware that some of these same features may not all be included in other QLED TVs as well which is an advantage. 3. It’s versatile. Do you want to listen with wired headphones or wireless earbuds? Would you like to download that same app from your phone/tablet onto the FireTV, stream it directly from your device, or just use MiraCast to show the entire screen? Would you like to just connect with a cable using that 4th HDMI input that you’ll probably have available? Connecting equipment and staying connected shouldn’t be a problem. Overall, the F50 captures me more with what it can do rather than the things I wished it did better.

I got this on sale for $400 on Black Friday and for that price this tv is a great deal! That being said there’s 2 minor things that don’t make it perfect in my opinion. My Best Buy doesn’t have this TV on display so I looked at lots of pictures online. Something I didn’t notice online that I do notice in person is the power button protrudes out on the bottom left side. Not a huge deal breaker just would've looked a lot better if it didn’t stick out like that. Another thing is after setting it up I watched some YouTube videos and realized the TV comes setup with the saturation too high making all the videos look unrealistically brightly colored. This is an easy fix by going into the settings and they actually have a “Natural” display setting that makes the colors look much more realistic. Other than those 2 minor downsides this TV is amazing I love how thin the border is makes it look so sleek. And I was actually surprised that the legs and part of the back of TV are metal which makes it feel very sturdy and premium. (Although in my picture I ended up having to use a single universal TV stand instead of the legs as my entertainment center wasn’t big enough for the 2 legs). And the sound is much better than any other TV I’ve ever had! Overall a great TV for the price and the picture quality is crystal clear!

This TV has been an incredible addition to my living room. It’s the perfect size to fit over my fireplace and all of the smart apps work really well. The only issue is sometimes the brightness is a little too low during the day if I have all of my blinds open but outside of that I highly recommend!

Bright and radiant, I love this tv! Got it during the Christmas sale so was very excited to buy. This is my first tv this big so this is huge!

I love my fire tv by Insignia. Clear picture and easy to navigate.

Good picture good sound nice tv for a room i like this tv