Roku 75-Inch Pro Series TV

Roku made a respectable foray into first-party TVs last year with its budget-priced Plus Series. The Pro Series is its new flagship line that puts out nearly three times as much light as the Plus and adds gamer-friendly variable refresh rate (VRR) technology with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. The 65-inch Roku Pro Series TV we tested has a retail price of $1,199, but it's frequently available at $999 (similar to how Hisense's actual TV prices are typically lower than the MSRP). At $999 for 65 inches, the Pro Series stands alongside the Hisense U8N ($1,149 for 65 inches) as an excellent value. The U8N has a significant edge in brightness and offers more features than the Pro Series, so it remains our Editors' Choice, but Roku isn’t far behind it if you simply want a great picture.

Editors' Note: This review is based on testing performed on the 65-inch Roku Pro Series TV. Apart from the screen-size difference, the 75-inch model (listed for $1,699, but frequently available for $1,499) is identical in features, and we expect similar performance.

Design: Nearly Bezel Free, With a Fancy Remote

The Pro Series has a very slight bezel around the sides and top, measuring just 0.2 inches wide for an almost, but not quite, bezel-free appearance. A wider 0.8-inch strip runs along the bottom edge of the screen, a typical configuration for high-end TVs. The strip and bezel are both matte black anodized aluminum that look and feel unassuming, a bit more premium than the glossy or semi-gloss black plastic typically found on lower-end TVs but not quite showing the flair of a more visually metallic surface. The TV sits on two black T-shaped legs made of sturdy black plastic.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The power cable plugs into the left side of the back of the TV, with all other connections sitting in an L-shaped recess on the right side. Four HDMI (two 4K120, one eARC) ports, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port (surprisingly rare on TVs, though serving the same function as USB-A) face right, while an optical audio output, an Ethernet port, and an antenna/cable connector face down.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The Pro Series comes with Roku’s second-generation Voice Remote Pro. It’s a candy bar-shaped black remote featuring Roku’s signature big purple plus-shaped direction pad near the top and a small, purple fabric tag on the bottom end. Power, home, and back buttons sit near the top of the remote alongside a pinhole microphone, while the space below the navigation pad holds menu and playback controls, a quick settings button, and dedicated service buttons for Apple TV, Max, Netflix, and Paramount+. A volume rocker and mute button sit on the right edge of the remote, while a sliding switch to mute the built-in mid-field microphone is on the left edge. The buttons are backlit, a nice upgrade from Roku’s other remotes.

This version of the Voice Remote Pro lacks the headphone jack we’ve enjoyed seeing in the previous Voice Remote Pro. But even though you can’t use wired headphones with the remote, you can still pair Bluetooth headphones with the TV itself.

Roku TV: Content-Focused, With Few Extras

As you might have guessed, the Roku Pro Series uses the Roku TV smart TV platform. It’s a fairly simple and accessible interface built around a main menu with large, easy-to-navigate app tiles. Most major streaming services are available, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube, though Twitch is missing. It also supports streaming from iPads, iPhones, and Macs over Apple AirPlay and from compatible Windows PCs over Miracast/WiDi.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Roku TV is focused specifically on finding content you want to watch and accessing the streaming services that offer it. The platform doesn’t offer a ton of extra features beyond that. It lacks a full voice assistant like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, though you can use your voice to search for content and control the TV itself and a small range of Roku’s own smart home devices.

Performance: High Contrast and Wide Color

The Roku Pro Series is a 4K 120Hz QLED TV with a mini-LED backlight system. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) in Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It has an ATSC 1.0 tuner for over-the-air TV. It does not have an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p or 4K OTA broadcasts. 

We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. Out of the box, the Roku Pro Series gets incredibly bright. With an SDR signal in Movie mode, the TV shows a peak brightness of 436 nits with a full-screen white field and 813 nits with an 18% white field. With an HDR signal in HDR Dark with the Brighter preset, those numbers jump to 806 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,621 nits with an 18% white field, with an 0.001cd/m^2 black level. It doesn’t reach the record-breaking light output of the Hisense U8N (2,755 nits, 18% field) or TCL’s 98QM851 (3,836 nits), but it’s still plenty bright. For comparison, the lower-end Roku Plus Series puts out only 650 nits under the same conditions, and most HDR content is mastered for 1,000 nits. We also perceive changes in light levels on a curve, and the visual difference between 1,600 nits and 3,800 nits, while visible, isn’t nearly as pronounced as the difference between 400 nits and 1,000 nits.

Thanks to its mini-LED backlight system, HDR black levels are very strong, with 0.001cd/m^2 resulting in a 1,621,000:1 contrast ratio. In fact, measurements that low are just as likely to be the colorimeter picking up minimal ambient light from the surroundings and not the TV’s panel. Blacks are effectively perfect because mini-LED backlight arrays have hundreds if not thousands of lights that can be individually dimmed or turned off. Because there are still exponentially more pixels than LEDs on these TVs, though, pictures can suffer from a bit of light bloom where slight haze can appear along the edges of bright objects against very dark or black backgrounds. To overcome this, you’ll need to spend significantly more for an OLED TV like the LG Evo G4; OLED panels control the light levels on a per-pixel basis, though the trade-off is they aren’t as bright as high-end LED TVs.

(Credit: PCMag)

The above charts show the Pro Series’ color levels with an SDR signal in Movie mode compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards, and with an HDR signal in HDR Dark mode compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. SDR colors are largely very accurate, though cyans, greens, and whites lean a touch cool. HDR colors are much wider and not as cool, with whites almost perfect. Magentas run a little warm, but this is a common result we’ve seen on QLED TVs. The Pro Series doesn’t quite cover the entire DCI-P3 color space and yellows are just slightly undersaturated, but not significantly. Overall, this is a vivid, balanced TV.

BBC’s Dynasties looks very good on the Pro Series. The greens of the grass and tans of the lion fur in the “Lion” episode are crisp and look natural, with accurate color saturation that complements the documentary footage. Views of a lion silhouetted against sunset and trees silhouetted against a cloudy sky show strong contrast, and the musculature of the lion and the leaves of the trees are easily discernible and even preserve their color without appearing washed out.

The stark blacks and whites of the party scenes in The Great Gatsby also show off the Pro Series’ strong contrast. The cuts, contours, and textures of dark suits can be clearly seen, and the lighter shirts and balloons are also very detailed with no crushed highlights. Some light bloom can be seen along the letterboxing, particularly in shots where bright objects like the spray of a fountain cut into the edge of the picture for only part of the frame. In those moments, a slightly uneven haze can be seen, but it's fairly minor thanks to the mini-LED backlighting. Skin tones are also balanced and saturated.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Nature footage on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc looks accurate, with bright clouds and snow. Some light bloom can be seen on the edges of very bright objects set against black backgrounds, but it’s again relatively subtle and mostly visible only along extremely high-contrast edges of white or relatively cool objects.

Due to testing conditions, we were unable to measure the Pro Series’ input lag. Otherwise, the TV has a strong feature set for gaming, with a 120Hz panel that supports variable refresh rate (VRR) including AMD FreeSync Premium Pro.

The Verdict: A Strong Midrange Value

Roku’s Pro Series stands as the company’s top-tier first-party TV, and one of the best currently on the market featuring the Roku TV platform. It’s very bright, it shows wide and generally accurate color, and it simply looks great. Roku’s interface keeps the TV focused almost entirely on watching what you want, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on whether you want your TV to simply be a TV, or whether you want it to be your portal to a full voice assistant with additional features like cross-platform smart home device controls. It’s a good value either way, though the Hisense U8N remains our Editors’ Choice for its brighter picture and bigger feature set with hands-free Google Assistant, Google Cast, and Apple AirPlay.