My smart TV gets Gigabit speeds over Wi-Fi, but its Ethernet port is stuck in the past

Published Sep 27, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek, Joe has been writing about technology since starting his career in 2018 at KnowTechie. He's covered everything from Apple to apps and crowdfunding and loves getting to the bottom of complicated topics. In that time, he's also written for SlashGear and numerous corporate clients before finding his home at XDA in the spring of 2023. He was the kid who took apart every toy to see how it worked, even if it didn't exactly go back together afterward. That's given him a solid background for explaining how complex systems work together, and he promises he's gotten better at the putting things back together stage since then. I've owned three smart TVs over the last decade or so, and each one has taught me the same lesson about Ethernet. My current TCL QM9K has a Wi-Fi 6 radio that links at up to 1.2Gbps, which is gigabit space. The Ethernet port on the back? TCL's spec sheet won't even tell you what it runs at, and the rest of TCL's 2025 lineup is still stuck at 100Mbps. That's the same speed as the port on the Wi-Fi 5 TV I bought around 2014, and it reminds you that premium TVs ship with bargain-bin networking speeds. So the old advice to always plug your TV into Ethernet isn't the automatic win it used to be, and whether that matters depends entirely on what you're watching. Why smart TVs still ship with 100Mbps Ethernet ports The chip inside the TV makes the call Most smart TVs use Fast Ethernet, which means 100Mbps at best and roughly 94Mbps once protocol overhead takes its cut. Fast Ethernet was standardized in 1995, and gigabit followed only four years later. Gigabit has been standard on PC motherboards for well over a decade, so this isn't a new or exotic technology. The difference is what's running the show. A smart TV runs on a single system-on-chip that handles picture processing, smart TV software, and networking, and the Ethernet side is usually a basic 10/100 controller built into that chip. Gigabit costs more and takes more board work. That's a tiny amount per TV, but TVs are a thin-margin business, and tiny amounts add up across millions of units. And streaming gives manufacturers the perfect excuse. Netflix recommends 15 Mbps for 4K, so a 100Mbps port clears that bar six times over. Even TCL's 2025 refresh, which moved several models to Wi-Fi 6, kept the old port, with FlatpanelsHD noting that "the Ethernet port is still limited to 100Mbps." Spec sheets rarely tell you You'd think this would be easy to check before buying, but it usually isn't. TCL's QM9K spec sheet proudly lists Wi-Fi 6, then lists a single Ethernet port with no speed. LG isn't any better. When a shopper asked about the LG C5's port speed on Best Buy's Q&A page, LG's own support rep said the rated speed wasn't in the product specifications. So most people find out after the TV is already on the wall. The TV's network status screen shows the link speed once a cable is plugged in, and that's usually the first time anyone sees "100Mbps" and wonders why. Why the Wi-Fi on the same TV is faster Three TVs, one Ethernet speed My own TVs tell the story better than any spec sheet. The TV I bought around 2014 had Wi-Fi 5, which tops out at 867Mbps on a typical two-antenna setup, and a 100Mbps Ethernet port. My 2023 TCL Q7 had Wi-Fi 5, the usual 100Mbps Ethernet port, and only USB 2.0 ports. The QM9K moved up to Wi-Fi 6, and the wired side still isn't worth printing on the box. TV Year Wi-Fi Max Wi-Fi link rate Ethernet My old smart TV ~2014 Wi-Fi 5 Up to 867 Mbps 100Mbps TCL Q7 (Q750G) 2023 Wi-Fi 5 Up to 867 Mbps 100Mbps TCL QM9K 2025 Wi-Fi 6 Up to 1.2 Gbps Not listed The reason is fairly simple. The Wi-Fi radio is a commodity component shared with phones and laptops, so it advances whenever they do, and "Wi-Fi 6" is a spec that sells TVs. Nobody picks a TV because of its Ethernet port, so the Ethernet side has sat still for more than a decade. Yes, those are best-case numbers Sure, we understand that a Wi-Fi link rate is a theoretical ceiling and not what the TV will use. Walls, distance, and your neighbors' networks all take a bite, and real-world Wi-Fi speeds land well below the number on the box. But the ceiling is the point. Even a fraction of 1.2 Gbps clears 100Mbps, while the wired port can never go past 100Mbps no matter how good your cable or switch is. That's how you end up with a TV where the "slow" wireless connection is the fast one. When a 100Mbps port actually holds your TV back Streaming apps never come close For most people, your TV's Ethernet port might be slower than its Wi-Fi, but it doesn't matter. Streaming services compress their 4K streams heavily, and Netflix's 15Mbps recommendation leaves a 100Mbps port loafing along with plenty of headroom. You could run a few of those streams at once and still not fill the pipe. Ethernet still wins where it always has. A cable doesn't care about interference, walls, or the microwave, and it delivers steadier latency than Wi-Fi ever will. So if you've wired your TV for streaming, you haven't made a mistake; you just haven't made it any faster. Local 4K remuxes are a different story Things change once you play your own media. A 4K remux keeps the Blu-ray's video untouched, and the Ultra HD Blu-ray spec allows data rates of up to 144Mbps. Most films average well below that, but peaks in busy scenes can exceed what Fast Ethernet can carry. That's when you see buffering in Plex, Jellyfin, or Kodi on a TV that's supposedly on the "better" connection. It's the same problem that makes your Plex server feel slow even on Ethernet, and it's easy to blame the server when the bottleneck is sitting behind the TV. Big app and firmware downloads crawl along at the same 100Mbps limit, too. Gigabit is out there, just not usually in the TV The frustrating part is that streaming boxes have already made the jump. The Apple TV 4K (the Ethernet model), the Google TV Streamer, and the Nvidia Shield TV Pro all have gigabit Ethernet. The Roku Ultra is the odd one out, still on a 10/100 port. Some TVs also have a USB 3.0 port that can take a gigabit USB Ethernet adapter, which is the idea behind this $10 fix that made a smart TV's internet way faster. It only helps if the port is USB 3.0, though. My Q7's USB 2.0 ports would have capped an adapter well short of gigabit, while the QM9K has at least one USB 3.0 port. Plugging your TV into Ethernet isn't automatically faster anymore A 100Mbps port is fine for Netflix and every other streaming app, and a cable still gives you the steadiest connection. But on a modern TV with Wi-Fi 6, wired is no longer the default fast option, and it becomes a real bottleneck the moment you start playing 4K remuxes from your own server. So before you run a cable across the living room, check what your TV's network screen reports. If you're building a local 4K library, the upgrade you need might not be a better cable, but a streaming box with a gigabit port that matches the rest of your network.