When buying any electronic product, it’s important to consider how long the manufacturer will support it. Among the forefront of tech products are smart TVs, making it crucial to figure out whether any given TV will become outdated and force the customer to buy another new TV to enjoy the same services.
Do smart TVs become outdated like other products?
Smart TVs do get outdated. As with any electronic product, smart TVs have an effective lifespan where they’re supported with software updates by the manufacturer. After this lifespan, the smart TVs don’t receive any more updates and quickly become unable to run the apps and services they used to.
This article will take a closer look at how smart TVs work and why they become outdated.
What Are Smart TVs?
You’ve likely heard TVs described as ‘smart’ before, but you may not be aware of what the term actually means–considering every other device these days is called ‘smart.’
Smart TVs are televisions that connect wirelessly to the Internet, and the standout feature is the ability to install apps on them, similar to smartphones.
The main apps available on these smart TVs are video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus, though apps for TV channels are often available too.
Some models of smart TVs offer video game apps or the ability to ‘cast’ a user’s smart device screen onto the television.
This functionality is nearly identical to streaming sticks like Amazon Fire Stick, Google Chromecast, and Roku. Streaming sticks are small USB flash drive-like dongles that can be plugged into a compatible TV to access the same streaming and casting abilities baked into smart TVs.
Most TVs being produced today are smart TVs, with no clear delineation between standard television sets and new ‘smart’ variants. Smart TVs have been gaining ground, accounting for about half of all current televisions in the U.S as of 2021.
This has resulted in some criticism over the lifespan of these products because they aren’t supported for as long as streaming sticks, causing concerns about planned obsolescence.
Do Smart TVs Get Outdated?
All electronics have an effective lifespan.
Since technology is annually increasing at an exponential rate, next year’s electronics will have increased abilities compared to products released this year.
Apps and services are also continually updated so as to keep up with hardware capabilities, which eventually become incompatible with older technology.
We’re all familiar with rapidly changing tech affecting our smartphones; you see features like USB-C, wireless charging, fancier cameras, and higher screen refresh rates becoming standard.
If someone deliberately chooses to keep their older device, they just don’t gain access to all those features. Yet older devices can still access streaming services in some form.
However, when smart TVs become outdated, consumers can lose access altogether. For example, in 2019, older Samsung TVs from the early 2010s lost access to Netflix.
This is devastating enough for consumers who just want to binge Netflix after a hard day at work, but it’s made even worse because one has to try and justify replacing something that essentially still works fine.
Consumers are often urged to update their devices with new versions of the same devices being released yearly; think about how many iPhones there have been.
This is technically due to hardware limitations, but the cynical deem it planned obsolescence.
Planned obsolescence is when a product is designed to last for a shorter period of time than it should, forcing customers to buy the latest version to enjoy the same benefits they used to.
Computers, phones, and other smart devices from the last decade are long outdated and relegated to fates at recycling centers, where they’ll be broken down and readied to become next year’s model.
There aren’t any laws about planned obsolescence, but it’s clear that it’s a force at work when thousands of new devices come out every year, and articles like this one are telling people that it’s economically necessary to replace your phone every year.
Are Smart TVs Worth It?
When buying any electronic, doing your due diligence as a customer and considering pros and cons of products is essential. Smart TVs have convenient features at a glance, but are they worth it?
Convenience
This is the main appeal of a smart TV – we want to watch our Netflix and Hulu as quickly as possible, and a TV that connects to the internet directly and cuts out the need for a separate device is very attractive, especially for those without much free time or experience with electronics.
Simply type in your WiFi password and the TV does the rest of the heavy lifting for you!
This convenience factor only grows when you add features like hands-free interfaces thanks to built-in microphones and voice recognition.
Some models even support social media, connections to home security networks, and food delivery apps for when you can’t be bothered to get off the couch.
Security Risks
Any smart device connecting to the Internet is vulnerable to security exploits, and smart TVs are no different.
Software updates have been a constant criticism of these platforms, and a big part of this security vulnerability is due to updates.
Smart TVs receive updates more sparsely compared to smartphones and computers, making their outdated software an attractive target for malicious hackers.
Many TVs don’t receive regular software updates, which would make them a weak point in your home network. Considering that most smart TVs have cameras and microphones nowadays, this opens the possibility of hackers accessing your TV and spying on you, not to mention getting into your Internet network.
Bad Interfaces
Browsing on TVs isn’t as intuitive as scrolling away on a smartphone screen, and manufacturers of smart TVs have done little to fix this since smart TVs made their debut.
The main points of interface with a computer or smartphone are typing and cursors (or touch). TVs do not offer any acceptable substitutions to these, requiring you to use the provided remote, or at best, hands-free navigation.
Typing in a show or movie is easy with a touchscreen, but with a TV remote, it’s an exercise in patience.
Hands-free navigation with voice recognition is nice but imperfect–accents, lisps, and unclear speech easily confuse even the best hands-free systems, and smart TVs are no exception here.
Without voice recognition, navigating a smart TV’s interface can be maddening.
Plus the dozens of buttons on a TV’s remote, you’ll have to wrestle with slow menus and make sure the TV actually reads the remote’s input. Add to this that important settings are often hidden behind menus of nonsense categories, and you have a recipe for frustration.
All in all, it’s an inferior experience compared to just unlocking your phone with a touch and firing up your favorite video app.
Alternatives to Smart TVs
If the risks don’t seem worth it to you, there are alternatives to smart TVs available in the form of streaming sticks, such as Amazon Fire Stick and Google Chromecast.
These dongles produce most, if not all, of the same effects that smart TVs do, with fewer downsides.
The interface problem is mostly minimized by the option of controlling the device from other smart devices like phones and computers.
While new hardware is still being added to new generations of streaming sticks, they provide more flexibility to users in that they can be removed and added to virtually any TV with a USB or HDMI port.
Do smart tvs get outdated? Final Thoughts
Smart TVs, like any electronic product, will become outdated within a few years of their release. Poor and sparse updates plague the products, and poor interfacing makes them hard to use compared to smartphones, computers, and streaming sticks.