Sceptre makes a good dumb TV. I use one personally and other than taking a few extra seconds to boot up, it's fantastic. No WiFi info to load, no pop ups, just a big dumb pane of LEDs and ports to use them.
💯 I bought a Sceptre as a smaller living room TV, which became our main TV, and it’s great. A smart TV is just a good TV with a crap computer built into it. I’d rather just have the good TV.
VA has gotten really good over the years and I‘d prefer it over a similarly priced IPS, if neither has local dimming or quantum dots or something like that. VA has so much better contrast. Of course, it’s nothing against OLED, QLED, microLED, etc but it’s also in a very different price class.