Toshiba 50LF621U19 50-inch Smart 4K UHD TV - Fire TV Edition

Firstly, YOU *CAN* CHANGE THE SETTINGS SO THE TV DOES NOT ALWAYS START AT THE HOME SCREEN when it turns on. I almost did not buy this TV because of all the negative reviewers who said it sucks so bad because there's nothing you can do about it......... that is simply not true. The TV does factory default to start/turn on at the Amazon Fire home screen, but THERE *IS* A DISPLAY SETTING for you to set the TV to turn on/start at the last input/channel you were on when you turned the TV off last. (See picture).Now that being said, this really is a great TV; I am entirely happy with my purchase (and I have never really been that excited about buying a new TV). I remodeled my bedroom and I was looking to replace my 20-year-old tube TV for relatively cheap. This TV fit my budget, it sits great on my dresser, and because of the angle of my roof/ceiling I really could not fit a bigger TV even if I wanted.At the same time I also "cut the cord" and got rid of cable in my house. I wanted a smart tv so I could use my streaming apps (DirectTV Now, Netflix) and I already had a Fire stick in my living room, so having the "Fire" platform built into the TV is a great option. There are certain things I don't like about Amazon Fire but having used other platforms (Roku, GooBang Doo/ MXII & XB-III/Android Box), Fire is the best option for my bedroom. And I didn't want to have additional hardware/boxes & separate remote controls to deal with in my room, so I love that it is all integrated into the TV and I only have 1 remote to deal with.I have a fairly large master bedroom, and I have my desk at the other side of the room with a PC/router and a separate amp/speakers for the PC. Before setting up the TV I ran some wiring (3 wires) along the baseboards from my desk to the TV -- a Cat5 (wired network for TV), HDMI (video from computer to TV), and a RG6 coax (digital sound FROM the tv back to my amp). The TV itself doesn't have a digital coax output (it does have SPDIF out); a 50-foot fiber optic cable would have been way too expensive, so I bought a $20 SPDIF to coax converter for the back of the TV. I like that the TV has a wired ethernet connection, because I'm not a fan of streaming over wireless, especially when there are like 20 other wireless devices already on the network.With my cabling in place, I was ready to rock-n-roll. Opened the box, plugged the tv & wires in, turned it on. We had lift off. There was a first-time setup video that played; I skipped past it but for the novice user it might be informative. On screen programming was fairly simple and straight-forward. The biggest decision was whether to set the TV to "Full" or "Basic" mode (which was probably explained in the video but I skipped past it). BASIC mode is just native OTA channels, inputs, and 6 built-in apps (NetFlix, PSVue, HBO, etc). FULL mode gives you access to the entire Fire application and app store, but you will need to already have or create a new Fire account. Obviously I chose Full mode.From there, I was determined to show all the reviewers wrong by finding the setting that controls start up behavior. I knew it had to be there. It is. Settings > Display & Sounds > Power On > Last Input. GOOD, because I am one of those people that likes the TV to turn onto the last channel/input I was watching. So there we have it, my only real reservation to initially buying the TV was found and fixed. I went through all the other settings and set them to my preferences. Then I went to the App store and downloaded the apps I use. I also deleted the pre-installed apps that I will never use.I also bought an OTA digital antenna. Since I've had cable for the last 20 years, I never dealt with that analog-to-digital conversion that happened 10+ years ago, and I never experienced all the new .2 and .3 digital channels there are now. Wow. After scanning stations, I had 84 OTA channels available. Honestly, there's enough on regular TV for me to watch that I don't really use the streaming apps. Why didn't I get rid of cable 10 years ago???THE ONLY CON I have with this TV, is the way it displays OTA channels in the guide and in the quick-view bar.1) The guide sorts by channel ID (alpha). I wish it sorted by channel number, or gave me the option to sort by channel #. In fact, it doesn't even show the channel # until you select a channel. I know in the modern era we are getting away from #'s. But I still like my channel #'s. If I want channel 9, I want to go scroll to channel 9, but instead I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find WGN.2) I miss having channel up and channel down buttons. Everything is through the "guide" now. You can press the down button, and you get a quick-select menu, which I find more convenient that the "guide." I would still rather flip from one channel to the next with 1 click and not have to go through menus.3) YOu can set stations as your "favorite" and then show only favorites. But that only applies to the guide. The quick-select menu still shows every single station available. Since the quick select menu shows recently viewed stations first, my solution was just to go view each of my favorites, and then they show up first before all the other channels.Given the few "cons" which are negligible, I would still buy this TV again, and I may end up buying a larger version of it for my living room the next time my projector lamp goes out. Definitely 5 stars for value received to cost.

So first, let me point out by far the two worst things about this TV. 1) It is meant for the cord-cutters, if you primarily use only streaming apps then it's great, but if you want to use HDMI input or something like that it's not as good, although a new setting does promise to default to your last input I haven't tried it. 2) It is thick, many other posts have mentioned this, but even though I'd read those I didn't expect it to be as thick as it is, it's literally inches thicker than the old samsung it replaced, like whatever you're thinking on thick, just add a few inches, cause it is seriously thick, so thick that I want to buy another one of these for my main living room, but I'm not going to put a TV this thick into such a prominent public space. I thought people were just complaining about it being thick, but that "thick" had to be okay still cause it was many years newer than my old TV. Anyway, not a problem for me cause I use this as a TV in a back bedroom anyway, but I wouldn't be happy with how thick it is in my main living room.Now that all that's out of the way, I still give it 5-stars. Why? Cause it's freaking amazing. First off the picture is 4k which was an upgrade for the TV this replaced, and the picture looks great. I am also just using the stock TV speakers for now, and they're surprisingly decent for built-in speakers. But what I love most about it, is how gosh darn quick and responsive the interface is. When I power it on, it powers up near instantly, and when I open an app it acts like it's just alt-tab switching to it like it was already open, and when I navigate the apps, they move so quick. I primarily use Plex, and on my old TV I had to wait for Roku to boot up, took forever, then I had to launch the plex app, which also took forever, then Plex was slow to navigate and would sometimes crash. All those issues are gone with Fire TV built-into this TV. Plex just opens instantly and navigates flawlessly, so quick, I love it, and since I primarily just use that one app where this TV is, this is perfect for me.Also, I didn't expect to care at all about the alexa-enabled feature, as I already have a bunch of echo dots and a lot of home automation... however, I actually love the alexa remote. I often ask alexa to do something, like set an alarm, or adjust lighting, ect... and when the TV is on this can make alexa not hear me well. However, with the alexa remote it automatically pauses the video while I press-to-talk to alexa, and automatically unpauses when I let go, and this surprisingly works out really well for me.This TV was seriously cheap, I got the 50" for under $300. That was a huge plus. Also the whole reason I got it was it was one of the only 4K TV's on the market with Fire TV built-in. That was important to me because I had having several remotes just to use the TV, I want to just always use the native TV remote, so buying a 4k TV and then adding an external Fire TV box wasn't an ideal solution for me. Plus being alexa-enabled I can turn it on by voice with the other echos in the house, not a huge deal, but it is nice to be able to turn it on by voice as I'm walking towards the room it's in so it's ready to go when I get there, even though it does turn on extremely fast anyway.Overall, I just love how fast the menu is. That's something you never really know until you get your hands on it, and it's such a stark contrast to the TV it replaced, that I want to replace more TVs with this for their 4k Upgrade, however, the thickness bothers me for a main living room. I'd pay three times as much if they'd make a thin 65" version of this and I'd buy it for the main living room.