Battle of the sub-$500 TVs — I watched 3 movies on the cheapest Samsung TV and second-cheapest Amazon TV, and this is the best bang for your buck

The amazon ember 4-series TV and the samsung u8000h TV.

Can you get a decent TV for under $500? Surprisingly, yes. I have both the brand-new Samsung U8000H and the new(ish) Amazon Ember 4-Series at Tom's Guide's testing lab at the moment, so what better time to put them in a head-to-head battle?

I watched three movies on 4K Blu-ray in Filmmaker mode: "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)", "The Batman (2022)", and "Top Gun: Maverick (2022)". For this test, I used an HDMI splitter, so both TVs had the same input material. I put the Samsung TV at max brightness and the Amazon TV at 50% brightness (as 100% was much too bright).