Roku Pro Series review: the people’s smart TV

We live in a bezel-free world today, and that’s what Roku delivers with its Pro Series. The TV is not exceptionally thin, but I’m personally OK with that if space is used to house and operate a killer backlight system – we want brightness power and control.

Roku gets bonus points from me for the feet that support the TV because they each come with built-in screws that are easy to attach to the TV’s chassis — no screwdriver required.

The screen has a solid anti-glare finish, but it’s nothing remarkable. There’s no rainbow effect caused by the screen treatment as we’ve seen on other TVs, like the Bravia 9, which may come as a relief for those who don’t care for it.

Look past the novelty of the shape of the remote control if you can, because it otherwise ticks all the essential boxes. It is backlit. Instant win. It has a remote finder speaker. Another win. It’s a voice remote with an onboard switch. OK, I’ll take it. Volume and mute buttons are on the side. Fine. Streaming services you’ll actually use are in the hot-keys spot. I’m with it. And the quick-launch button is programmable, so you can put shortcuts here. I really, really, dig that feature. It sounds like a little thing now, but I swear you’re going to fall in love with it.

The Roku operating system? Well, it is what it is. I would love to see Roku give it a serious face-lift, and it’s gotten a little sprucing over the years. But those who use Roku will find it familiar and those who haven’t used Roku yet will find it easy to learn. The Roku OS is loaded with all kinds of actually usable extras — like a screen reader mode with lots of controls. It’s got easy-to-use parental controls, and a guest mode that allows guests to access their apps with the assurance that they’ll automatically be logged out while your main account remains off limits.

Will you see ads on this platform? Absolutely. Roku is more an advertising company than anything these days. But I’d say it is medium to medium-low invasive on the spectrum. It’s definitely not the worst when it comes to ads.

There are four HDMI ports — two are HDMI 2.1 — and the eARC port is separate from those next-gen HDMI ports. This TV does have an auto-game mode with some gaming-friendly features, including variable refresh rate (VRR) and auto low latency mode (ALLM) with FreeSync Premium Pro certification.

It’s a freaking well-rounded TV that I think a LOT of folks are going to love using on a daily basis. That already counts for a whole lot.

The sound quality on this TV is phenomenal for the price. I would put this right up against the Sony Bravia 9 — a TV that costs way, way more. I did not see this coming. I think Roku already made a great-sounding speaker in the Streambar. I was less enthused with the Roku Wireless Speakers when I tried them, but they were decent. This TV’s audio system, though? Top-tier. It’s got weight and punch for a TV. And when I had it sitting on the floor, I could feel the bass come through the concrete floor and a rug. The stereo separation is clearly audible and kind of impressive for a TV, and it doesn’t try to fake surround sound so hard that it screws things up for dialogue clarity. Voices are always clear.

For all my nit nerds out there wondering how the Roku Pro Series stacks up to the competition, here we go.

Roku sets up its user controls so you get this sort of shortcut of Darker to Brighter. This is available for both SDR and HDR picture modes, and it appears to raise the average picture level and the peak brightness capabilities. But interestingly, there’s no impact to the backlight setting in the expert settings menu. This means you get a pretty broad range of control of the TV’s brightness.

In SDR Movie mode, I got peak brightness readings that ranged from 100 nits on the low end up to about 750 nits on the high end. That’s by adjusting from Darker to Brighter and leaving the backlight setting alone. Normal, which is the default setting, puts the SDR brightness average at 300 nits.

In HDR, the brightest measurement I got — with the Brighter setting and the backlight and brightness sliders maxed out by default in HDR — was about 1600 nits. At the Normal setting, it was closer to 1,400. The takeaway is that the TV can get very bright and is on par, I suspect, with the QM7 from TCL, though that remains to be proven.

The TV is as bright as I would expect for the money. That’s the key here.

As for the rest of the measurements in the default SDR Movie and Dark HDR modes — which have the most accurate color temperature — all of the grayscale and color measurements were very poor. However — and this is extremely important — the reason that these measurements look so bad is due to just one thing: overbrightening.

The color coordinates are correct. Forest Green reads as forest green. It’s not like Forest Green looks like Emerald Green. The reason that the color measurements are so bad here is because they are far brighter than they should be. Same for grayscale. The RGB balance is not atrocious, though it is too warm in most cases.

I don’t have a problem if Roku’s intent was to just make a very bright TV. I think that’s what the overwhelming majority of consumers want. They like it like that, and I’m not here to say they shouldn’t have what they want. But this is called the Pro Series, and my personal preference would be for these picture modes to be more accurate. Overbrighten the picture in Standard mode, if you must. I don’t care.

What I do have a problem with is an issue I’ve seen in some competing TVs. Turn off local dimming, and all the measurements snap right into focus. And not by just a little bit. Do that, and these are stellar color accuracy and color gamut measurements for a TV at this price.

So why should local dimming make the TV spin out of control? It doesn’t have to be this way, and I would argue it shouldn’t be this way. I’m supposed to choose between having blooming and halo effect and grayish blacks that impact contrast and some semblance of accuracy? No. There’s no need for that. And I say this because there are plenty of other TVs that manage to maintain coherency with local dimming turned on and even maxed out.

So this is a bright TV. Technically, an overbright TV. It doesn’t measure well, but that doesn’t mean it looks bad. Quite the opposite. But if you were hoping that this could be a good enthusiast TV on a budget, it’s not that.

If you’ve skipped past all those numbers, here’s the deal with this Roku Pro Series TV: It is delightfully bright. Technically, it overbrightens everything, but that is a look that most folks love, so I have no problem with it.

And because the TV does a great job at maintaining good black levels, it has really impressive contrast, too. That combo means this TV is going to, again, be a delight to watch in terms of brightness, contrast, and color. Most folks will love what this TV is doing in those areas.

The test patterns I used suggest the TV isn’t great at upscaling. But the real-world content I watch suggests it does a pretty great job in the ways that matter to most folks. For example, I watched a lot of ChiPs – a TV show made in the late 1970s and early ’80s. So pretty low resolution. And it looks super clean on this TV. Almost all of the old TV shows I watched did.

Lower-quality YouTube content looked really solid as well. And I’m pretty sure cable or satellite TV is gonna look great on this TV, too.

But there are a few areas where this TV’s processing falls short. One is that the backlight is a little sluggish. It takes a second to ramp up to full brightness, or to dim down. This isn’t something you’ll notice often. But when the TV has to act fast because the scene is challenging — or if you’re just turning it on — you might notice it. Also, it has trouble resolving super fine lines of detail. That sort of swirling, flashing effect is called moire, and it’s a sign of a processor that’s struggling to resolve complicated detail.

I also noticed it sometimes had trouble dealing with color gradients. When you have large areas of subtle color changes — especially in low bit-depth content , you can see the colors kind of shift around as the processor is trying to land on a final decision.

Those issues I just mentioned, though? A lot of it is the kind of thing I’m going to notice, but my buddy is not going to notice. Which leads me to this:

Based on the everyday user experience, audio quality, and the bright, punchy look — along with the fact that everyday TV sources like cable, satellite, and free streaming TV don’t look trashy like they can on less expensive TVs — I will 100% recommend this TV to most of my friends. I can see this TV just thrilling the pants off them. This is a great premium TV for folks who just don’t want to spend a boatload of cash on an ultra-premium TV. It packs so many real-life performance upgrades in that I can recommend it with confidence to a massive audience of folks.

Tech companies have troubles from time to time — I get it. But I would feel totally unimpeded in my recommendation of this TV if I had a little more faith in some of Roku’s more important user-facing decision-making. This may change in time if things stabilize But as of now, I’ll make the recommendation — with a caveat. I’d rather be making recommendations as caveat-free as possible, ya know?

If you’re a TV enthusiast on a budget, pass on the Roku TV. Get a TCL or Hisense. If, however, you’re just looking for a TV that offers a great picture and a carefree everyday user experience? Absolutely go for the Roku Pro series. If you’re having trouble deciding between the Pro series and the Plus Series? I urge you to get the Pro series. It is so much better than the Plus Series I tested, and absolutely worth the extra money if you can afford it.

The Roku Pro Series is a study in what happens when you put what people want and need at the forefront of your design philosophy. That’s something Roku has always been good at. While it came out later than Roku’s lower-end models, this is still a first-gen TV. Considering how much they got right with the Pro Series their first time out, I’m stoked to see what the next version looks like. I think if Roku implements some of my suggestions for the next version of this TV, they may put the screws to TCL and Hisense for the enthusiast crowd.

Presently, the Roku Pro Series doesn’t punch above its price class quite as hard as its competition from TCL and Hisense, but it offers a better value than competing Sony, Samsung, and LG TVs. More important, though, is I think it’s going to be a favorite among the average TV buyer, and that may be enough for it to emerge from the ring with a TKO.