Smart TV or Smart Device? | Which is Smarter? in 2020

Question: Why do we have smart TVs at all, when you can just take any TV, plug this into it, and make it smart? 

All right, now, smartTVs versus smart devices. This is a topic that I've danced around a little bit in the past. 

We've talked about both but we've never really talked about the pros and cons of each. And, this came up because there was a great comment a couple of weeks , one of my youtuber says,

 "One caveat to smart TVs, once the manufacturer decides to move on and end support for the operating system, you are stuck with a device that's mostly broken. 

I've got three smart TVs in my house that have software that no longer functions. No matter how smart the TV is, the software, the operating system, will be dumb and obsolete at some point in the future." 

This is a great point. I thought it was a really good thing that friend of mine brought up and so I wanted to use this to kind of spring board us into this discussion. And, what I did was just kind of narrowed it down to a few reasons why each category is possibly better than the other. And, then essentially, I'll let you decide. 

So, a smart TV is basically just one of these streaming devices integrated into the TV, so you're not taking up an extra HDMI port, you don't have to fiddle with the input button, right? 

It seems really smart to just go with the smart TV. 

Well, let's talk about a few reasons 

why the streaming device might be a better bet. 

First of all is price. This can't be overstated, streaming devices can get really cheap and it's nice that way. 

If you wanna get a 

Chrome cast, it's 35 bucks! 

The Roku Streaming Stick Plus, 60 bucks! 

The Amazon Firestick 4K, 50 bucks! 

This is much cheaper than, you know, getting a 400/500/$1200 TV, if you just wanna pick up the device, it's a lot less of a hit up front. 

Now, some exceptions to that would be 

the Apple TV which goes to 150 to 200 bucks depending on what size you get. 

The NVIDIA SHIELD is creeping up on 200 bucks, 

you know, so there are some expensive players out there. They also tend to be a little bit more powerful than their smart TV counterparts. 

Especially, like I just mentioned, with price where you get what you pay for. If you get that AppleTV or the NVIDIA SHIELD, you're getting a much more powerful device than you would get with a typical smart TV. 

This matters if you do gaming. If you like to game on your device then that is going to be very helpful to have a more powerful device. 

Now this may not matter too much to the average user but to a power user, for instance, somebody who watches a lot of NCAA March Madness, they can split-screen using their Apple TV and watch several differentNCAA games at once. It's a pretty cool feature and something that you won't find on your typical smart TV. 

Honestly, you won't find that on your lower-end streaming devices either but getting a streaming device gives you that option of getting something that's more powerful than you would get otherwise. 

Lastly, and this kind of goes along with price, something like this is much more replaceable. It's much easier to try out. 

So if you're thinking to yourself, "You know, I've heard a lot about Roku. I've heard a lot about Amazon Fire TVs." Then you can try it out with a cheap streaming device and just give it a shot. See if you like it and then maybe you get something else in the future, an upgraded device, or a smart TV running that platform. That is a possibility. 

And, of course, if we talk about software going obsolete, like snoopy boy blue said, then if the software does go out and you need to replace something, replacing a $50 stick is much easier than replacing a $500 TV. 

Now, on the other hand, there are reasons to get a smart TV instead of a smart device. For instance, if you already know what platform you like. You know, I'm a big fan of Roku. I went out and bought a Roku TV because I knew I liked that platform and so it's worked out for me really well for the last couple of years. And, it's worked out well partly because it's streamline. When I plug this into an older TV, suddenly, I've got the TV remote to deal with and the Roku remote to deal with. Now, a lot of the more modern devices, like this one, will have TV power and volume integrated into their remotes so it can kind of streamline that as well. 

But some of the cheaper devices are still lacking that; some TVs don't necessarily support that. So you're guaranteed to have a much more streamlined experience with a smart TV. 

And, secondly, honestly you're probably gonna have to get a smart TV anyway. The non-smart TV market is pretty dry at this point. So if you buy a new TV, it's almost certainly going to be a smart TV anyway so you don't have much choice. 

And, let's talk about price as well. Now, I talked about how cheap these are but honestly smart TVs these days are so cheap that you may not feel very locked in anyway. 

You can get a smart TV for 300/400/500 bucks and these are decent TVs. 

Yeah, if you wanna get to the premium level, you know, the really nice Samsung TVs or something like that, it can run you 100/1500/$2000 if you get something really, really nice. 

But if you're a more casual user then you're gonna be looking at that 4 to $600 range for a decent TV. This is a far cry from we used to be paying years ago and if we're talking about software obsolescence then it's a lot less of an issue now because my Roku TV, 

for instance, let's say that goes out, that software is no longer supported for some reason. 

Well, that $400 TV is gonna be a lot easier to replace than it would've been 10 years ago. So it might not be that big a deal anyway. 

So let me know what you think! Hit the comments below and give me your best reasons for either the device or the smart TV itself. 

Conclusion!

Now, one last note. If you are on the hunt for a smart TV, do yourself a favour and don't buy an old one. These days a lot of the smart TVs are running things like Roku, Amazon Fire, Android TV. 

Those are great! Those platforms are going to be supported for a long time. 

But if you buy an older TV, like did you know Yahoo used to make a TV software platform? Yeah, that's not supported anymore. 

So if you buy one of those old things, they're essentially gonna be a giant brick in your living room. It's not gonna work out too well. So buy a newer TV if you go the smart TV route. 

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