Review: Roku Pro Series 4K

When my husband and I swapped out our Vizio OLED for Roku’s Pro Series QLED and switched it on, both of us gasped. Even my two children (7 and 9) were mesmerized when they turned on Steven Universe. “Why does it look so much better now?” my daughter asked.

The difference between OLED and QLED is palpable (as you can also read in our How to Buy a TV guide). OLED technology is beautiful, but it lends itself to truly black blacks; it’s best if you’re watching movies or gaming in an optimized, dark, home-theater-like environment. A QLED is just … brighter. That makes a huge difference when you’re 7 and 9, watching cartoons while jumping on the couch and waiting for dinner, or when you’re a mom who is trying to catch a bit of the Copa America games on the couch with her dog while working.

This is the first of Roku’s in-house-made TVs (Roku TVs made before last year were made by other companies, just with a Roku brain). My colleague Parker Hall tested the entry-level Roku TV, the Plus Series, and was very impressed. For a month now, my family and I have been testing the upgraded Roku Pro Series and have also been thrilled.

User Friendly

Specs and performance aside, one of the main reasons you buy a Roku anything is because of how easy it is to use. I really liked my Vizio OLED and just accepted that every time I turned it on, I'd have to spend five minutes sorting through the Vizio Smart interface and fiddling with cables if I wanted to play on my gaming PC.

It was with a deep sigh of relief that I plugged in my Sonos soundbar, PS5, and gaming PC into the Roku TV and watched everything just … show up in the Roku interface. (It has two HDMI 2.1 ports, HDMI eARC, USB-A, USB-C, and cable inputs.)

Although you can mount it, I just placed it on our console table with the two included feet and it fit easily. Adding all your apps—Netflix, Disney+, Fubo—takes about as long as clicking on the Add Channels button and signing in on your computer, which is basically zero time unless you’ve forgotten your login information.

Having an easy-to-navigate interface also makes it much easier to figure out other things to watch. Vizio’s interface was so cluttered that my kids often just went straight to Steven Universe. On Roku’s, the CuriosityStream and PBS Kids tiles are so easy to find that they ended up watching more educational content just out of, well, curiosity. That was an unexpected gift in summer, when all the neighborhood kids just end up watching TV at our house in the air-conditioning.

I also liked that the TV itself is relatively slim, without a big chunky gyat, as the youth say, and a slim bezel that is almost unnoticeable.

Not So Smart

As I said before, QLED with mini-LED backlighting isn’t what you’d want if you have the perfect dark room to watch and play video games in. At night, in what I would consider the optimum TV viewing environment, the TV was sometimes so bright that my eyes burned.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Roku Smart Picture Max is an AI-enabled feature that’s supposed to optimize the picture and the content for your TV, but I very rarely agreed with it. It had a tendency to max out the QLED colors and nothing looked quite real.

More naturalistic shows like Alone looked way too vivid—I’m sorry, but pine trees just do not come in shades of teal—and the green of the pitch while watching the Copa America and UEFA was obnoxiously bright. Luckily, it was an easy fix; I just changed the picture settings to Movie and Sports. I do have to say that Roku Smart Max did occasionally get it right; the blues and greens of the kirtles in My Lady Jane looked right, or maybe I was just predisposed to accept it in a show that also has magic.

You also get notifications when Dolby Vision is available, like when we watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Dolby Vision IQ optimizes for ambient light and content type, and it was much more accurate. We caught all the zippers and chrome gleaming in the darkness of the Citadel in Furiosa (may the stars be with you).

The Pro series now has a 120-Hz refresh rate for gaming, which made Horizon Forbidden West play smoothly. While we’re at it, Lego Ninjago also looked incredible. I annoyed both of my children as well as all of their friends by refusing to leave the room and remarking continuously on how beautifully the water was rippling and how everyone was doing so great shooting missiles while the helicopter was spinning around.

The speakers are side-firing, which in theory means that they should sound OK and fill the room. In practice, it is still not a comparison with having an actual soundbar. When I turned off our Sonos home theater system to test the sound, my children immediately ramped up the volume from 30 to about 60 while we all wondered aloud if we were going deaf.

Finally, I loved the Roku remote. It’s rechargeable via USB-C, so it was easy to hop over to the kitchen and recharge it when the battery was getting low. I know this is not a new feature, but I also loved the Find Remote button on the side of the TV, which pierces your ears with a shrill chime and makes the remote buttons blink with a backlight. No more panicking when we can’t find the remote!

Everyone watches different things, at different times, and under different circumstances. An OLED is breathtakingly lovely if you’re watching Dune with your spouse at night with a cocktail on the table in front of you. Unfortunately, as a working mom with two kids, that happens only every so often.

Instead, our TV is in a living room with a whole wall of windows. We’re not always watching on Movie Night with the blinds closed—the neighbor kids are coming over to play PlayStation, or putting some cartoons on so that everyone can get a break after lunch. In these circumstances, you don’t need a TV with super deep blacks. You just want something that looks great from every viewing angle, will stand up to a lot of light, and is easy for a 7-year-old to navigate. You also want to be able to find the remote when your second grader loses it in the couch cushions. The Roku Pro Series fits that bill nicely, and it doesn't cost childless-adult prices.