Your smart TV’s USB port is vastly overrated

Most people buy a TV to watch things, but you might not realize it’s capable of a lot more than that. Your TV is actually packed with ports that you can plug various things into. Most TVs today have an assortment of HDMI, USB, and Ethernet ports, and how much those mean to you varies by situation. I don’t get a lot out of the Ethernet port, mainly because my TV is too far away from my modem for that to make sense.

I get some use out of my USB ports, but it’s only with one of my TVs, and that’s because I have a Roku Streaming Stick plugged into it. With the newest model, you can get power directly from the TV’s USB port instead of having to be plugged into an external source. It’s nice to have the power coming directly from the TV, but even that has limitations. On my old Samsung TV that the stick is plugged into, I have received numerous error messages saying the USB port is not giving the stick enough juice, but it hasn’t actually meant anything yet. The stick continues to work, but it has made it clear that these USB ports aren’t actually powerful enough to do much aside from powering a low-powered device. They might look appealing to use, but I don’t think there are many real-world applications that truly move the needle for most people.

Your TV’s USB port is overrated

It works, but just barely

If you sit back and think about it, how much do you really plan on plugging into your TV? Sure, you have a couple of USB ports available, but I can’t imagine you’d be interested in charging a phone or laptop from it. Even if you did plug in a device, it wouldn’t have enough power to be more than a trickle of a charge — and don’t even think about fast-charging.

These TV USB ports aren’t designed for things like that, and you’d have more success plugging in smaller devices like a mini fan. Even then, I wouldn’t recommend that, mainly because a little fan won’t make much of a difference if you’re sitting several feet away on a couch. The USB port comes in clutch when you need it, like plugging in a flash drive for a family slide show, but moments like that are so far and few between that it’s almost like the port doesn’t exist for the majority of the time you’re using the TV.

I see people recommend plugging an external hard drive into ports like this, but I don’t see why you’d want to do that. If I were doing that, I’d rather pick up an actual streaming device like a Roku Ultra or Apple TV and put my files on that. That’s a much more reliable way to watch things, and it’s something I know my TV is meant to handle. There would be no worries about wondering if my flash drive was formatted correctly or if the video files could be read by my TV if I have them already loaded onto a Roku.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself a simple question: how often am I going to be using my TV’s USB port for anything other than a streaming stick? The answer for most people is not much at all, so while I think TVs should continue to have USB ports included, I don’t think they’re a major selling point. They’re nice to have when you need them, but the problem is that I don’t think people need them all that often.

It’s a cool novelty, but that’s about it

It works better as an idea

Plugging things into your TV, such as game controllers and keyboards, is cool, don’t get me wrong, but they end up collecting dust after a few minutes. A keyboard vastly speeds up putting in a password, but how often do you need to enter a new password? With my Roku Streaming Stick, it automatically imported all of my Roku Ultra apps, and I didn’t have to log into any of them.

Bias lighting is a common thing people plug into their TVs, and it seems like it’s gaining popularity as of late. These lights connect to the back of your TV and are powered by your TV’s USB port. I’m a fan of them, but they aren’t for everybody, and I find they don’t look as good during the day as they do at night. I like to turn mine on when I’m watching a movie at night, and I leave them off while I’m watching TV. This means I get a few hours a week out of them, if that.

The power provided by these ports is so low, that I can’t think of many ways to use them outside of these niche uses. Of course, they are designed to be like that, because nobody really needs a TV to power external devices. If you’re like me, your TV is plugged into a power strip along with many other devices, and I would use that to charge my phone or laptop way before I’d rely on my TV to do the job. I’d be worried about the TV working too hard to charge my devices and potentially overheating them, so I’d only do that as a last resort.

I don’t want to make it sound like the USB port is completely useless, because it’s not. I named quite a few ways people use it, but I don’t think it’s fair to call this an underrated part of buying a TV or tout it as something it’s not. All it does is give your TV a little more versatility, the vast majority of your time will be spent with nothing plugged into the port. This isn’t a bad thing, however, as I don’t really need anything plugged into my TV’s ports. Having an HDMI eARC port is far more important if you ask me, and even an Ethernet port would have more use than additional USB slots for many people.