Last Updated on September 9, 2023 by Dave Farquhar
Insignia is one of Best Buy’s house brands. Best Buy doesn’t manufacture any products, but they contract manufacturing out to other companies. So who makes Insignia TVs for Best Buy? And how long do they last? Should you buy one?
Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand for various consumer products. Insignia TVs are currently made for Best Buy by Hisense.
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Who owns the Insignia brand?
Insignia is one of Best Buy’s house brands. They use the trademark and logo on products they source from other manufacturers, including televisions and major home appliances. Although some retailers have manufacturing operations, Best Buy does not, they are strictly a reseller.
Who makes Insignia TVs?
There are many rumors about who makes Insignia TVs for Best Buy, some of them based on old or incomplete information. Currently, Insignia TVs are made by Hisense, a Chinese manufacturer of televisions. Insignia TVs are not made by TCL, Sharp, or LG. Some of those rumors may be based on old information, or from whoever was making Insignia TVs at the time sourcing some components from other manufacturers.
Hisense is an established manufacturer of inexpensive television sets and you will frequently find Hisense branded sets at other big box stores. Best Buy using their own brand can give them some flexibility when it comes to price matching, presumably with something in it for Hisense as well, such as a guaranteed number of units ordered.
Sears employed this model successfully for decades, so it’s not surprising that Best Buy adopted the same practice.
How long do Insignia TVs last?
Hisense TVs tend to last between 4 to 10 years depending on how heavily you use them. Since Hisense makes Insignia TVs, we can expect life expectancy to be similar.
I haven’t had one break yet, so I can’t tell you my own experience, except to say they’ve all lasted more than four years. So that’s good. I had an Insignia computer monitor break after 10 years, for whatever that’s worth.
Are Insignia TVs good?
With consumer electronics, you tend to get what you pay for. They are priced somewhere between what Westinghouse and LG would charge for a comparable set, and you can expect the quality and longevity to be somewhere between the two as well. Better than Westinghouse, almost certainly. And probably not as good as LG.
If you have your heart set on a certain size of TV, and Insignia meets your budget when another brand is too expensive, it’s not a bad option. And when family members have mentioned that they’d like a small TV set for a bedroom or kitchen, I’ve bought Insignia TVs for them as gifts. And they’ve been fine. They’ve all lasted longer than four years.
One other thing I like about them is they usually have a good number of connectors. So if you want to connect older devices to them like a VCR or an older game console, they’re more likely to have legacy RCA composite and/or component inputs than many of the bigger brands do now. That can save you the expense of a $40 RCA to HDMI adapter for those types of devices.
Another trick to consider when buying a TV: if you plan to mount it on the wall, the markup on those mounting brackets is really high. You can save some money buying the bracket at Harbor Freight. Harbor Freight frequently puts its brackets on sale just before the holidays. I picked one up last year the week before Thanksgiving, and the store manager told me they do that every year, so people will buy the bracket from them for the TV that they’re planning to buy the day after Thanksgiving.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.