The Roku Select Series is the lower-tier model in Roku's first-ever proprietary series of TVs. It sits below the Roku Plus Series QLED, but unlike that model, the Select doesn't use quantum dot technology to display a wider range of colors. As it's a cheap TV, it lacks some gaming features that more expensive models tend to have, like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, a 120Hz panel, local dimming, and variable refresh rate (VRR). Unlike the Roku Plus, the Select doesn't support Dolby Vision but still supports HDR10+. It comes with version 12.5 of Roku's fast and intuitive Roku TV smart OS, and its remote has an integrated microphone for voice commands. You can also use voice through the Roku app on your phone. The TV comes in eight different sizes, from a very small 24-inch to a large 75-inch model.
Our Verdict
The Roku Select Series TV is inadequate overall. It's bright enough in SDR for a moderately lit room, but its reflection handling leaves a lot to be desired, leading to a mediocre yet distracting bright room experience. It works best in moderately lit rooms, not bright ones. In HDR, it's just not bright enough to provide a vibrant and impactful viewing experience. Unfortunately, it also doesn't look good in a dark room due to its poor black levels and muted colors. The TV doesn't have any modern gaming features, and its slow pixel transitions mean motion is blurry, so it's not a good gaming TV either. Finally, it also lacks good image processing. However, it does follow the content creator's intent decently well and doesn't have much banding in its HDR gradients.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
- Available in a ton of different sizes.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
- Limited gaming features.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV is an inadequate option for a home theater setup. It has poor black levels, so blacks look gray most of the time. The TV only displays a narrow range of dim colors, which leads to colors that lack vibrancy, although at least there isn't much banding in HDR gradients. It's too dim in HDR to provide a truly impactful HDR experience. Plus, its upscaling and low-quality content smoothing are rather poor, so this TV really needs high-fidelity content, as it can't clean up lower-quality media effectively. Thankfully, there isn't much stutter, so motion in movies and TV shows is mostly smooth. However, it only removes judder from external sources, like Blu-ray players, and not from its own internal apps. It also doesn't remove judder from 60Hz sources.
Doesn't stutter much due to its slow response time.
Not much banding in HDR gradients.
- Doesn't remove judder from most sources.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV delivers a mediocre bright-room viewing experience. It's bright enough in SDR for a moderately lit room, and its image accuracy is excellent in SDR without any calibration, so you get a bright, accurate image right out of the box. Unfortunately, its reflection handling isn't good enough to combat glare, making reflections on the screen very distracting. Ambient light doesn't affect colors much, but because the TV has poor color reproduction to begin with, they appear muted. Black levels also aren't significantly affected by ambient light, but since the TV's black levels are already weak, they still look gray.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
The Roku Select Series TV is an acceptable option for watching sports, though it doesn't stand out. Colors lack vibrancy, making the entire image appear muted, but at least the TV is accurate and bright enough for a moderately lit room, especially in SDR. Its viewing angle is decent and wide enough for a small gathering, though the image degrades when viewed from a wide angle. Still, it's acceptable for an LED TV. However, its sub-par reflection handling doesn't reduce glare well, so any lights positioned directly opposite the screen are distracting. It also doesn't do a good job removing artifacts from low-bitrate content, like when watching sports online, and it doesn't upscale low-resolution content, so SD sports don't look as crisp as you'd like.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
- Noticeable uniformity issues with bright colors.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV is a poor choice for gaming. It's limited to 60Hz and doesn't support VRR to reduce screen tearing, so it's not a good option if you care about high frame rates or modern gaming features. It has low input lag at 60Hz for a responsive feel, but it lacks a faster refresh rate, limiting its usefulness for anyone seeking a truly responsive, high-refresh-rate option. Additionally, its pixel transitions are slow, resulting in blurry motion. Colors look muted in games due to the TV's disappointing color volume in SDR and HDR, and it's too dim to display impactful highlights in HDR games. Finally, the TV's black levels are poor, causing the entire image to appear washed out.
Low input lag at 60Hz.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
- Limited gaming features.
Response time is too slow for a truly motion blur free experience.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV's brightness performance is inadequate overall, although it's reasonably bright in SDR content. In HDR content, however, it's too dim to make highlights pop, resulting in a lackluster HDR viewing experience.
Bright enough to fight some glare in SDR.
Too dim in HDR to make highlights truly pop.
Its reflection handling struggles with lessening the impact of glare.
The Roku Select Series TV's black level is poor. This is mostly due to its lack of local dimming, which leads to poor contrast as the entire screen looks blueish and washed out in darker scenes.
Poor black levels means blacks look gray.
The Roku Select Series TV has mediocre color performance overall, although thankfully it's amazingly accurate in SDR prior to any calibration. Still, its color volume in HDR and SDR is rather disappointing, so content doesn't look vibrant on this TV. Its pre-calibration accuracy in HDR is alright; not nearly as good as in SDR, but it does the job for a TV at this price point.
Excellent SDR image accuracy.
Colors look a bit dull in HDR and SDR content.
Note: We're in the process of improving our tests related to image processing, but this score should give you a general idea of how a TV performs overall with its image processing capabilities.
The Roku Select Series TV has sub-par image processing overall, as it struggles with cleaning up low-bitrate or low-resolution content, so most of that content looks blocky or soft, respectively. It fares better when it comes to HDR content brightness accuracy, although it's generally too bright, especially in dark shadows. It does a very good job with HDR gradients, though, as it's hard to notice any banding unless you look closely for it.
Not much banding in HDR gradients.
Poor low-quality content smoothing and low-resolution upscaling.
The Roku Select Series TV's responsiveness in Game Mode is inadequate. It doesn't support VRR, so you do see screen-tearing. Although the TV's input lag at 60Hz is low enough for a responsive feel, it doesn't support 120Hz and above, limiting the TV's usability for those who seek a truly responsive gaming experience. Plus, the TV's pixel transitions are slow across the board, resulting in visible motion blur.
Low input lag at 60Hz.
- Limited gaming features.
Response time is too slow for a truly motion blur free experience.
We're in the process of fixing the way we evaluate a TV's overall motion handling. This section is currently broken, and the score isn't indicative of how well a TV handles motion overall.
Performance Usages
Changelog
- Updated May 08, 2025: Converted to Test Bench 2.0.1. We did this to fix an issue with our scoring in the Supported Resolutions section, since TVs with a refresh rate higher than 144Hz were being penalized for not supporting 144Hz.
- Updated Mar 26, 2025:
We wrote text for the new tests and rewrote text throughout the review after updating pre-existing tests and scores for Test Bench 2.0.
- Updated Mar 26, 2025: We converted the review to Test Bench 2.0. With this new methodology, we've added new tests to expand the scope of our testing, adjusted our scoring to better align with current market conditions, and added performance usages that group related tests together to give more insight into specific aspects of a TV's performance. You can find a full list of changes in the TV 2.0 changelog.
- Updated Nov 12, 2024:
We mentioned the newly-reviewed TCL S3/S350G in the Upscaling: Sharpness Processing section of this review.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the 65-inch Roku Select Series TV (65R4A5R), but it's also available in 24, 32, 40, 43, 50, 55, and 75-inch sizes. The 24- and 32-inch models have a 720p resolution, while the 40-inch model has a 1080p panel. Model sizes above 40 inches are all 4k TVs. The non-4k models also have three HDMI ports instead of four on the 4k models. Costco sells an exclusive 55-inch variant of this TV (55R4A6) that is identical except for the model code.
| Size | US Model | Resolution | Number of HDMI ports |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24" | Roku 24R2A5R | 720p | 3 |
| 32" | Roku 32R2A5R | 720p | 3 |
| 40" | Roku 40R2A5R | 1080p | 3 |
| 43" | Roku 43R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 50" | Roku 50R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 55" | Roku 55R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 65" | Roku 65R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
| 75" | Roku 75R4A5R | 4k | 4 |
Our unit was manufactured in December 2022.
Popular TV Comparisons
The Roku Select Series is a great cheap TV and competes with the TCL S4/S450G and the Hisense A6/A65K. Overall, the Roku is better than the TCL but is a bit light on features compared to the Hisense, although the Roku is better for watching SDR content in bright rooms due to its higher SDR peak brightness. One advantage of the Roku TV over any other model in its price range is the sheer plethora of sizes you can buy it in; as small as 24 inches to as big as 75. It's certainly one of the best bang-for-the-buck cheap TVs and is widely available.
See our recommendations for the best budget TVs, the best smart TVs, and the best small TVs.
The Roku Plus Series QLED is better than the Roku Select Series. The Plus has local dimming, so it has a much better contrast for deeper blacks. It also gets much brighter than the Select in HDR, with a noticeably wider color gamut, enough for a satisfying HDR experience. The Select has a wider viewing angle, making it better suited for large parties or if you like to move around the TV, and it's much more accurate before being calibrated. It's also available in significantly more sizes than the Plus.
The TCL S551G and the Roku Select Series are both budget TVs that perform similarly overall, though the TCL has a slight edge. Aside from using different smart interfaces, they have similar contrast ratios and peak brightness. That said, the TCL has a wider color gamut and slightly better picture processing. The TCL also supports Dolby Vision and has more gaming features, like VRR.
The Roku Select Series is better than the TCL S4/S450G. The Roku is noticeably brighter in HDR and SDR, has better black uniformity and a significantly faster response time, and has a wider viewing angle than the TCL. The TCL does have better upscaling and low-quality content smoothing capabilities, but the Roku has better HDR native gradient handling. Overall, the Roku is the better-looking and better-performing TV of the two and is available in more sizes.
The Hisense A65K is better than the Roku Select Series. They're very comparable in contrast and HDR brightness, although the Roku is much brighter in SDR, with a wider viewing angle, making it better suited for watching TV shows or sports in bright rooms with lots of friends sitting around the TV. The Roku is also available in more sizes, so there's something for everyone. Still, the Hisense is vastly more colorful than the Roku, so HDR content pops more on it than on the Select. The Hisense also has more features, such as good upscaling capabilities, removes 24p judder from more sources, and even has a basic variable refresh rate feature.
Test Results
Unfortunately, the TV's peak brightness in HDR is poor. HDR content is generally dull and lifeless, and specular highlights don't stand out.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Dark HDR
- TV Brightness: Brighter
- Backlight: 100
- Contrast: 100
- Game Mode: Off
- Dynamic Tone Mapping: Off
- Color Temperature: Warm
The TV's HDR brightness with Game Mode set to 'On' is poor. There's no noticeable difference in peak brightness from having the setting set to 'Off.'
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:
- HDR Picture Mode: Dark HDR
- TV Brightness: Brighter
- Backlight: 100
- Contrast: 100
- Game Mode: On
- Dynamic Tone Mapping: Off
- Color Temperature: Warm
The TV's SDR peak brightness is alright. It gets bright enough to fight glare in a bright room, although it's better suited to a moderately lit one.
These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:
- Picture Mode: Movie
- TV Brightness: Brighter
- Backlight: 100
- Contrast: 100
- Color Temperature: Warm
- Gamma correction: 2.2 (recommended)
The Roku Select Series TV has a decent native contrast ratio, but as it lacks a local dimming feature, blacks appear gray and washed out most of the time. If you want a Roku TV with better contrast, check out the Roku Pro Series QLED instead.
The TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there are no lighting zones. This means there's no blooming around bright elements against a dark background, but the entire image looks gray and washed out.
This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.
Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.
The TV's black uniformity is alright, but there's no local dimming feature, so the entire screen is blueish and cloudy in darker scenes.
The Roku Select Series TV has inadequate SDR color volume. It lacks the color volume in DCI-P3 to fully display dark colors, and the TV doesn’t come close to showing light colors as well as it does pure white. This is even more pronounced in the wider BT.2020 color space, where its coverage is less than half overall.
| Volume ΔE³ | DCI-P3 Coverage | BT.2020 Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| L10 | 79.39% | 56.41% |
| L20 | 78.44% | 55.03% |
| L30 | 77.08% | 54.10% |
| L40 | 75.27% | 53.65% |
| L50 | 73.30% | 52.34% |
| L60 | 70.36% | 49.91% |
| L70 | 65.64% | 42.30% |
| L80 | 64.13% | 39.54% |
| L90 | 63.92% | 39.27% |
| L100 | 74.89% | 50.27% |
| Total | 69.90% | 46.98% |
The color volume of this TV is sub-par. Without local dimming, it can't display dark saturated colors well, and its low peak brightness limits its ability to display bright and vibrant colors.
The Roku Select has excellent accuracy after changing just a few settings. Its color accuracy is superb overall, with no obvious accuracy errors. Its color temperature is a tad cold but still good overall. Its white balance is also superb, as it accurately portrays all shades of gray. As for gamma, it's exactly on the 2.2 target for moderately lit rooms.
The TV is easy to calibrate. The TV already looks excellent before calibration, so there isn't much to do. After calibration, the TV has nearly perfect color and brightness accuracy, and its color temperature is now almost exactly on the 6500K target, neither too warm nor too cold.
You can see our full calibration settings.
The Roku Select Series TV has okay HDR accuracy before calibration. Blues, and to a lesser extent reds, are overrepresented in mid to bright shades of gray, which makes the TV's color temperature cooler than the 6500K target. It has alright color accuracy overall, but there are numerous inaccuracies in most colors.
The TV has decent HDR accuracy after calibration. While the TV's white balance is noticeably improved, blues are very underrepresented in mid-grays, making the TV's color temperature worse than it is prior to calibration. Color accuracy is much better now, but there are still some inaccuracies across its range of colors.
The TV has decent PQ EOTF tracking with Dynamic Tone Mapping set to 'Off.' It tracks the curve very well, although not perfectly, as most scenes are a tad overbrightened, much more so in very dark scenes. There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness to retain detail in highlights in all mastered content.
Unfortunately, this TV's processing with low-quality content is poor. It just doesn't smooth out macro-blocking and pixelization well. If you're looking for an affordable TV with better low-quality content smoothing, check out the LG UT7570.
The TV has disappointing upscaling capabilities. The Sharpness slider doesn't seem to affect the TV's sharpening much, making it hard to improve the TV's overall image quality in upscaled content. The cheaper TCL S3/S350G has slightly better upscaling performance than this TV.
Sharpness processing was calibrated for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, and had the following setting:
- Sharpness: 60
The TV has good HDR gradient handling. There's some banding in dark grays and greens, but other color gradients have minimal banding, if any.
This TV has low input lag at 60Hz, but it doesn't support 120Hz and above at any resolution, limiting its usability when it comes to responsive high refresh rate gaming.
The Roku Select Series 4k supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 60Hz. It displays chroma 4:4:4 signals properly at all of its supported resolutions, which is essential for clear text from a desktop PC. If you'd like a TV with a faster 120Hz refresh rate, look up the similarly priced TCL Q5/Q550G QLED.
This TV doesn't support VRR to reduce screen tearing.
The Roku Select Series TV's CAD at its maximum refresh rate of 60Hz is acceptable. This model does struggle when going from very dark shades to very bright ones and vice versa, leading to some noticeable blur.
This Roku Select Series TV doesn't support a 120Hz refresh rate.
The TV's CAD at 60Hz is acceptable. This model does struggle when going from very dark shades to very bright ones and vice versa, leading to some noticeable blur.
This TV can't take full advantage of the PS5. It supports HDR but doesn't support VRR or 1440p resolutions and is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.
This TV can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X. It supports HDR but doesn't support VRR or 1440p resolutions and is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, Dolby Vision isn't supported on the TV, so gaming in Dolby Vision isn't possible.
The TV's good response time results in an overall decent stutter performance when watching movies, but there's some noticeable stutter in slow-panning shots.
The TV removes 24p judder from external sources, like DVD or Blu-ray players, but not from internal apps. It can't properly remove judder from any 60Hz source.
The Roku Select Series TV has a decent response time. It performs best in transitions between similar color shades, but it really struggles when transitioning from darker shades to brighter ones. This leads to noticeable motion blur in a wide variety of content.
Unfortunately, the backlight flickers at a low frequency with anything below the max backlight setting. This flicker causes a noticeable image duplication, and it can cause headaches and eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker.
This TV doesn't have a backlight strobing feature, also commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI). It always flickers at a fixed frequency unless you have the backlight at max. This low-frequency flicker acts similarly to a BFI feature and helps reduce persistence blur, but it also causes a noticeable image duplication.
This TV doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.
The TV's direct reflections handling is sub-par. While it does reduce the intensity of direct reflections to a small degree, they're still very obvious, leading to an unpleasant viewing experience when you have bright lights or windows shining directly on the TV.
The Roku Select Series TV does a fantastic job retaining its black levels in a bright room. Blacks are barely raised as more light is added to your room, so you get very similar blacks regardless of your lighting. That said, the TV has poor black levels to begin with, so you never see deep blacks on this model.
The Roku Select Series TV does an okay job reducing the intensity of reflections, but they're still quite noticeable in brighter rooms. Fortunately, there's no artifacts like rainbow smearing or light banding.
The TV has sub-par color saturation when used in a well-lit room. There’s barely any difference with the vibrancy of colors whether you’re in a dark room or a bright one, although darker colors look slightly more washed out. Still, the TV has limited color volume to begin with, so colors lack vibrancy regardless of your lighting conditions.
The off-angle viewing of this TV is okay. As you move off-center, colors appear dim and washed out, and the image takes on a slightly green tint. Overall, it's not terrible, but it isn't the best choice for a wide seating arrangement. If you want a TV with a wider viewing angle that also runs the Roku OS, check out the Sharp AQUOS FS1 OLED.
The TV's gray uniformity is middling. There are noticeable uniformity issues across the screen on large areas of bright, uniform color. There is obvious vignetting on all of its edges, and there's also a pink hue in the lower left of the screen, with dark bands in the middle. These uniformity issues are distracting when watching sports or browsing the web.
The TV uses a BGR (blue-green-red) subpixel layout. For multimedia usage, this doesn't cause any issues, but it causes text clarity issues when you use this TV as a PC monitor. There are easy workarounds for these issues, however.
The TV uses color filters to produce red and green light, but there's very little separation between those colors, which contributes to the TV's inability to display a wide range of colors.
This TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports.
Unfortunately, this TV can't passthrough advanced DTS audio formats over eARC, which is disappointing as many UHD Blu-ray discs use these as their main audio track. It also can't pass any 5.1 audio formats through optical, like DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1, but they work fine through ARC.
The TV doesn't support Dolby Vision. However, it supports HDR10+ instead, which is similar overall but not as widely supported.
The Roku Select TV has a basic design, and it doesn't look very premium. It has thin bezels on three sides, with a much thicker bottom bezel.
The feet are basic, but they support the TV well. They're wide-set, so you'll need a wide TV table if you're not planning on wall-mounting it.
Footprint of the 65" stand: 51.6" x 13.2".
The feet raise the screen about 3.3" above the table, so pretty much any soundbar fits in front of it without blocking the screen.
The back is plain, mostly flat with raised lines, with a raised middle section on the bottom where the inputs are. As all inputs are near the center of the TV, they're hard to reach when the TV is wall-mounted, although the side-facing ports are slightly easier to access than the bottom-facing ones. The TV has a tie wrap clip on the TV for the power cable but doesn't come with any other clips for cable management.
The Roku Select Series has okay build quality. It's not made of premium materials, but there are no noticeable issues. There's a bit of flex on the back panel around the inputs, but this is common and won't cause any problems.
This Roku Select Series TV runs version 12.5 of the Roku TV smart interface, which is very simple, with fewer animations and a simpler user interface than you'll get with more premium TVs. It's very fast, though, and quite intuitive.
Unfortunately, like all Roku TVs we've tested, there are large ads on the home screen, and you can't get rid of them.
This Roku Select Series TV comes with the voice remote found with most premium Roku devices. You can access voice controls through the remote or the Roku companion app. There are a few quick access buttons for popular streaming services, and the remote also comes with two extra shortcut buttons to which you can assign apps, which is a nice touch. You can also plug in headphones into the remote for private listening.
The power button is on the bottom bezel of the TV below the Roku branding, and you can change inputs with it, too.
The Roku Select TV has a disappointing frequency response. There's next to no bass response, as the low-frequency extension (LFE) is incredibly high. Above the LFE, the frequency response is well-balanced at low-volume settings, and most dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It can't get very loud, though, and there's noticeable compression at max volume.
