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This 32-inch Insignia Fire TV is a steal at $100

Back on sale at Best Buy, this smart TV includes Amazon's Alexa-enabled remote.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read
insignia-24-inch-fire-tv

This 32-inch TV has built-in Amazon Fire TV smarts, and an Alexa-powered remote to go with it.

Best Buy

To my thinking, any TV you buy today should have either Amazon Fire TV or Roku built in. Thankfully, you don't have to pay a premium for those awesome "smart" interfaces.

Proof positive: Today only, and while supplies last, Best Buy once again has the Insignia 32-inch LED TV with built-in Fire TV for just $99.99 (plus tax). That's $70 off the regular price, and a repeat of a sale from about a month ago.

So, Fire TV or Roku? The latter gets more attention these days, but Fire TV is arguably just as good and may be even better. It affords most of the same streaming apps: Netflix, Hulu , HBO and so on. (Alas, if you want YouTube, you have to access it via a web-browser app.) And it comes with an Alexa-enabled remote, so you can bark orders at the TV.

Fire TV also affords access to various Alexa skills and a huge library of Amazon apps. For example, you could play the excellent party game Quiplash -- something Roku can't do.  

Read more: The best TVs for 2019

There's a built-in tuner should you wish to connect an antenna, and three  HDMI  inputs for things like cable boxes and  game consoles .

Here's the only real hedge: The TV tops out at 720p (that is, 1,366x768-pixel) resolution, meaning it's definitely not suited for computer use. Some would also argue that 720p is a bit low for a 32-inch screen. I'd say it's the cutoff point: Anything larger and you'll definitely want 1080p. But here it's probably sufficient.

Indeed, look no further than the 1,300-plus customer ratings, which average out to 4.6 stars. Few people appear to have an issue with the 720p resolution.

Your thoughts?

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Originally published on April 5, 2019.
Update, May 10: Item is back on sale.


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