Hisense is launching absurdly cheap new Xumo 4K TVs with Comcast and Target
- Xumo TVs launch nationwide next week
- Two models: 55-inch and 65-inch
- $249.99 and $359.99
If you look at our guide to the best TVs you can buy right now, our budget pick is very cheap: it's Amazon's Fire TV Omni QLED, which has an MSRP of $799.99 for the 65-inch 4K model. But if you head to Target or go online from next week you'll be able to get a 4K TV of the same size for just $359.99. And if you want to go slightly smaller, you can have a 55-inch 4K TV for $249.99.
The new TVs come from Xumo, a joint streaming venture between Comcast and Charter. Xumo has teamed up with Hisense and Target to launch what It calls "a budget-friendly, content-forward 4K UHD Smart TV."
Xumo Smart TVs: cheap and cheerful
The Xumo TVs run the Xumo streaming platform, and the included apps and services include Apple TV+, Disney+, Max, Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, Prime Video and YouTube. It's effectively the Xumo streaming box built into a TV in much the same way Amazon has built its Fire TV streaming platform into Fire TV models.
Xumo essentially isn't much different than other examples of the platforms that power the best streaming devices, so we already know how to use it: it's easy to navigate and the included voice remote offers easy searching. And we know what to expect from Hisense: decent quality TVs for a very low price.
One thing we don't know yet is how well the OS runs on these new TVs; as we said in our Xumo preview, "it's how it performs that really matters: the hardware needs to be powerful enough to run the software smoothly". If the Xumo TV has cracked that, we could see these new TVs flying off the shelves.
