Your smart TV's unused port can make streaming significantly better

Your smart TV is probably the most ignored device on your home network. On the surface, there isn't much going on with the TV — you sit down on your couch, fire up a streaming app, and watch a movie or show for a few hours. Everything works fine most of the time, so you never think much about your TV's place in the home network or how to improve its streaming performance.

With that in mind, most people also ignore the Ethernet port on their TVs, which can instantly elevate their TV's streaming performance. With Wi-Fi issues resolved, your TV can offer a more consistent internet connection and access to your local Plex or Jellyfin library. Plus, other devices on your wireless network are no longer held back due to your TV's older Wi-Fi capabilities.

Ethernet eliminates wireless shenanigans

Wi-Fi is convenient, but there's always a cost

Running your smart TV on Wi-Fi is undoubtedly more convenient. After all, if your TV were close enough to the router, you would probably have hardwired it already. Most of the time, your movies, TV shows, and other media run fine on Wi-Fi, but sooner or later, the wireless shenanigans start to show themselves. Streaming apps adjust the video bitrate on the fly based on the strength of your Wi-Fi signal.

This is why you sometimes see the content buffering or video quality dropping out of the blue. Your TV is probably located away from the router, behind concrete walls, which can severely degrade the signal unless you have a mesh network or another access point nearby. Besides, it also suffers interference from other 2.4GHz devices if it's an old model with dated 5GHz capabilities.

Launching a heavy 4K uncompressed file on Plex can be too much for your TV on Wi-Fi, resulting in stuttering and reduced quality. All of these drawbacks can be solved if you can manage to route an Ethernet cable to your TV, supercharging it with a stable wired connection. It may take some effort, especially if you need to install a new cable inside the walls, but the payoff is worth it. You will enjoy a much snappier streaming experience, near-zero buffering, lossless video quality, and no stuttering when streaming uncompressed media from your local library. Your TV already has a built-in Ethernet port that you should start using to your advantage.

Your TV's Ethernet might be capped at 100Mbps, but that's fine

Netflix streaming doesn't even need half of that

Most smart TVs don't have Gigabit Ethernet; they have a 100Mbps port. However, that's not a problem at all for video streaming. Watching 4K content on Netflix or Disney+ doesn't use more than 25Mbps, which is well below the 100Mbps cap of your TV's Ethernet connection. Even if your uncompressed Plex media demands nearly 100Mbps (or more) bandwidth, Ethernet will always perform far better than Wi-Fi.

Despite your home Wi-Fi being capable of delivering 300Mbps, 500Mbps, or 1Gbps to your TV, the Ethernet connection wins out in stability and consistency. Moreover, if you really want to, you could plug in a USB-to-RJ45 adapter for even higher Ethernet speeds. Even if your TV's USB ports are all 2.0, you can still achieve a real-world speed of 200–300Mbps, which is at least double that of the 100Mbps Ethernet port.

Other devices on your Wi-Fi start to breathe better

Your TV is a bottleneck

Most smart TVs have terrible hardware when compared to every other device in your home. The outdated Wi-Fi standards on TVs result in missing features, such as OFDMA and MU-MIMO. What this means is that your TV essentially brings everything else down to its level, not in terms of the Wi-Fi standard other devices use, but by creating airtime fairness issues.

Faster devices like smartphones, laptops, and desktops have to wait for slower devices like your smart TV while they communicate with the router. Separating the smart TV and other slower devices, such as home automation products, on a dedicated VLAN can resolve this situation, but most people either don't go to the trouble or have an ISP router that doesn't support it.

Even though everything else in your home is using Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 to connect to the router, the smart TV's network load is noticeable. And not all wireless devices in your home may be able to stay on the 5GHz or 6GHz band, due to range limitations caused by their distance from the router. Switching your TV to Ethernet removes this bottleneck on your network, allowing your devices to enjoy a much smoother connection. You could also optimize your router's QoS settings, but they might be locked down by your ISP.

Switch your smart TV to Ethernet today

Streaming over Wi-Fi is convenient, but Ethernet can provide a significant boost with a little upfront effort. Ethernet allows your TV to enjoy a much more stable, consistent connection to the router, eliminating Wi-Fi issues like buffering, degraded video quality, and stuttering when streaming heavy files. Plus, offloading your TV from Wi-Fi removes the drag on other devices caused by the TV's outdated Wi-Fi hardware. It's a win-win for your TV and other devices in your home.