Premium TVs ship with bargain-bin networking speeds, and it's getting harder to ignore
Many premium smart TVs continue to ship with outdated 100Mbps Ethernet ports despite their advanced features and increasing use for high-bandwidth applications. While Wi-Fi improvements can surpass these wired speeds, the expectation that Ethernet should provide reliable, stable connectivity makes the slow ports feel like a design flaw. As consumers use TVs for local media streaming and high-bitrate content, the mismatch between performance capabilities and networking hardware is becoming harder to overlook.
- ▪Premium smart TVs often come with 100Mbps Ethernet ports, a speed considered outdated for modern networking needs.
- ▪High-bitrate 4K content from local servers or media apps like Plex can exceed the limits of 100Mbps connections.
- ▪Modern Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E can outperform 100Mbps Ethernet, but wireless performance is less reliable due to environmental factors.
- ▪Manufacturers justify the slow ports by noting that most streaming services operate well under 100Mbps.
- ▪The underpowered Ethernet undermines the expectation that wired connections offer stable, high-performance reliability.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": "1", "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"2", "name": "Entertainment", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/entertainment/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"3", "name": "Premium TVs ship with bargain-bin networking speeds, and it's getting harder to ignore", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/premium-tvs-bargain-bin-networking-speeds-hard-to-ignore/" } ] } Premium TVs ship with bargain-bin networking speeds, and it's getting harder to ignore By Jeff Butts Published May 1, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT Jeff's been involved in the IT industry since before the Internet and spent more than 20 years working in…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at XDA Developers.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from XDA Developers
