If you’re looking for a really low price on a new TV, Best Buy’s Insignia brand might seem like an appealing choice. Its Fire TV Edition televisions are downright cheap, with the 55-inch NS-55DF710NA21 model we tested retailing for $429.99 and on sale at the time of this writing for just $329.99. We’ve tested some impressive budget-friendly TVs before, but none have been quite this inexpensive. Unfortunately, with mediocre picture quality, the Insignia Fire Edition TV line simply isn’t a great value for the money when you can spend just a bit more on superior models from Hisense and TCL.
A Utilitarian Design
The Insignia Fire TV Edition line won’t win any awards for style. The screen is framed by a simple, half-inch black plastic bezel on the sides and top, widening to about an inch on the bottom. It thickens out to 3.3 inches at the bottom half of the back of the TV. It stands on a pair of plain, flat black feet (it can also be mounted on the wall). It’s a thoroughly unassuming design, with a bland frame distinguished only by a gray Insignia logo in the middle of the bottom bezel, and a small trapezoidal bump on the lower left corner indicating the location of the infrared remote receiver, and a combination power/input button on the bottom edge.
Three HDMI ports, a USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack sit on the back of the TV, facing left. Slightly further inward, an Ethernet port, a set of RCA composite video inputs, an optical audio output, and an antenna/cable connector face down. Three HDMI ports are pretty scant for a modern TV, but it’s not too surprising for the price.
The included remote takes its cues from Amazon’s Fire TV streamers, sharing a similarly narrow, rectangular black wand shape with a circular navigation pad near the top. Power and voice assistant buttons sit above the navigation pad, along with a pinhole microphone. Volume and channel rockers, as well as menu, playback control, and dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, IMDB TV, and Netflix can be found below the navigation pad.
Amazon Fire TV Features
Like its name indicates, the Insignia Fire TV Edition uses the same smart interface as Amazon’s Fire TV media streamers. Once you sign in with your Amazon account, you can access a wide variety of apps and services, including (obviously) Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV, Twitch, and YouTube. You can also mirror your compatible Windows PC or mobile device screen through WiDi/Miracast, though unlike current Android and Roku TVs, it’s neither Apple AirPlay nor Google Cast compatible.
You can also use Amazon Alexa voice control by pressing and holding the voice assistant button on the remote and speaking into the microphone. Alexa is a powerful voice assistant that can provide general information like weather and sports scores, directly control the TV, search for media, and trigger compatible smart home devices.
Modest Performance
The Insignia Fire TV Edition is an LED-backlit LCD 4K television. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) content with HDR10, but it doesn’t support Dolby Vision.
We test TVs using a Klein K-80 colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software, using methodologies based on Imaging Science Foundation’s TV calibration techniques. Unsurprisingly, the budget-priced Insignia Fire TV Edition showed mediocre contrast performance in testing.
The TV displayed a peak brightness of 200.273cd/m^2 and a black level of 0.059cd/m^2 with an SDR signal, for an effective contrast ratio of 3,394:1. With an HDR signal, peak brightness increased to 269.253cd/m^2, while black level lowered slightly to 0.053cd/m^2 for a contrast ratio of 5,080:1. That’s in line with the Samsung TU8000 and the Vizio M-Series Quantum, but it’s not particularly good. If you’re willing to spend a bit more, the Hisense H8G ($499.99) and the TCL 6-Series ($649.99) show peak brightness levels between three and four times that of the Insignia model, which combined with much lower black levels adds up to significantly higher contrast ratios.
It’s notable that with an HDR signal, you can coax the Insignia’s peak brightness up to about 315cd/m^2 in Standard mode, but this significantly skews colors cool and less accurate than in Movie mode.
The above charts show SDR color levels compared with Rec.709 broadcast standard colors, and HDR color levels compared with DCI-P3 digital cinema standard colors. With an SDR signal, colors are largely accurate, though yellows lean a bit warm and reds pull slightly toward magenta. With an HDR signal, blues are spot-on, though reds are slightly undersaturated and greens are significantly undersaturated, the latter issue of which is common among inexpensive TVs (with the notable exception of the Vizio M-Series Quantum, which has remarkably wide colors). Greens pull slightly yellow and yellows slightly red, but otherwise colors are largely balanced and accurate within the range the TV is capable of.
The modest color and contrast performance is apparent when watching BBC’s Planet Earth II. The greens of plants look natural, but not as vibrant as they do on TVs with wider color ranges like the TCL 6-Series. Fine details like fur and bark can be clearly seen when lit well, but they tend to become muddy in shadows.
In Deadpool, reds like in the titular character’s costume and the opening Marvel logo look vivid and saturated. In the burning lab fight sequence, the flames look good and properly yellow-orange, but the TV’s mediocre contrast means shadow details can get lost against them, and disappear in the frame.
The cuts and contours of black suits in the party scenes of The Great Gatsby also tend to vanish against the bright whites in the frame. Whites look properly white in these scenes, and even reasonably bright despite the somewhat dim panel. Skin tones also appear saturated and balanced.
Gamers will likely be disappointed by the Insignia Fire TV’s performance. Not only is the screen 60Hz with no variable refresh rate (VRR), but input lag as tested with an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix is rather high, even in the Game picture mode. In Movie mode, input lag is an uncomfortable 112.7 milliseconds. In Game mode, that lag is cut to a much more reasonable 45ms, but that’s still over twice the lag of the 20ms threshold we use to consider a TV to be among the best for gaming.
An Inexpensive But Unimpressive TV
The Insignia Fire TV Edition is about as inexpensive as a new TV line gets, but it lags significantly behind slightly pricier models in performance. Its picture quality is mediocre at best, with contrast that swallows shadow detail, and its input lag is high even in Game mode. It also lacks Apple AirPlay, Dolby Vision, and Google Cast support. Instead of settling on this TV, consider spending just a bit more on the Hisense H8G, or at least the Vizio M-Series Quantum ($439.99 for a 50-inch model). The Hisense has far superior picture quality across the board, with a much brighter panel that displays a wider color gamut, while the less expensive Vizio offers even wider color, but it isn’t nearly as bright. Or, if you can spend a bit more than that, the Hisense H9G and TCL 6-Series remain our top picks for affordable—if not quite cheap—TVs.
