This is as close as we’ll get to a dumb TV anytime soon

When it comes to “smart TV”, you’ll often find that people fall into two distinct camps. There are people who say: “Connect me to everything!” And there are those who just want a display to which they can connect other devices, like one of our picks for the best streaming devices.

Neither of these is necessarily the right path. It’s a matter of preference, and what you are comfortable with. Some people want to limit the devices on their home network for privacy reasons. Other people don’t worry about it so much. For the former group, there has been somewhat of a resurgence in the desire for “dumb TV”. That is, a television that allows you to connect peripherals – like an Apple TV box, or a Roku or Amazon Fire TV stick. Or perhaps an over-the-air antenna. But that’s it. There is no built-in operating system to manage. And there’s no worry about what kind of data it might be calling home.

This is almost impossible to do in 2023. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a television that doesn’t have an operating system built from Roku, Google, Amazon – or even the manufacturers themselves. Of course, LG and Samsung are big players in that field.

But while setting up a new TCL TV, I noticed something that was honestly a little surprising. The TCL Q6 uses Google TV for its operating system. And early in the setup process, you get the option to go for the full smash – sign in with your Google account and get everything the smart TV platform has to offer. Or you can opt for “Basic TV”.

It’s also interesting to see how the options are presented. The entire Google TV options logo is shown with apps and channels. It is colorful and very pleasing to the eyes. Why wouldn’t you want that, right? The Basic TV option, on the other hand, eliminates all the logos and leaves you with just monochrome text that highlights what you get: live TV and external devices via HDMI.

After that, you will still be presented with the option to enable the network connection (via Wi-Fi or Ethernet). And you will still have some terms and conditions to agree to or not. (Some are optional. Some aren’t.) And you can opt out of some Google tracking.

And despite all that, you’re still not actually presented with a dumb TV interface. TCL has its own Live Guide built into the OS (in addition to Google’s own Live Guide, if you choose to log in initially and use that full interface) that is also available in basic mode. It combines multiple FAST channels (that is, free, ad-supported television) with one antenna, if you prefer.

So it’s not really “dumb”. At least not unless you disconnect your network connection, which you can do in Settings. It’s not difficult or anything – it just takes a few clicks from the remote control. It’s not really what people want, which is to have a sizable computer monitor on their wall without the sizable price tag that usually comes with that kind of thing.

But what you get with relatively current TCL TVs — the option to use the full Google TV system, or not — is probably as close as we’re going to get any time soon.