We buy a new Smart TV, it comes home, we open the box, carefully take it out, place it on the cabinet and start the process of connecting the cables.First the DTT antenna, then the HDMI cable from the console, then the power cable and… how do we connect it to the Internet?Here begins the dilemma that will make us have to choose between the wired connection via ethernet network cable or the wireless connection via WiFi technology.Although it may seem like a simple decision, the truth is that we must take into account several things, first of all.Smart TVs are already the connected multimedia center of the home and, for this, they need a quality Internet connection.This connection will be key to offering good performance in applications such as Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime Video... but also in any other connected service that the television offers us.To give us an idea, Netflix in 4K needs 25 Mbps to work, YouTube in 4K will work with 20 Mbps and Amazon Prime Video with 5 Mbps will be able to play HD content.Before going to assess the pros and cons of wireless technology, we must know the WiFi standard with which our Smart TV is equipped.The normal thing is that we have WiFi 4 or WiFi 5, the new WiFi 6 being reserved for the most modern and highest-end models.The theoretical speed of these modalities is 300 Mbps, 1.3 Gbps and 9.6 Gbps, although in practice we will have much less speed.The speed offered by a WiFi network is greatly influenced by several factors.First of all, the already mentioned WiFi standard, both the one we have in the router and the one that is capable of supporting television.It will be useless for us to have a brand-new wireless router of the latest generation if our television does not support that technology.Another aspect that influences the speed we receive from the wireless network lies in the location of the router.If it is very far away, if there are many obstacles in the way such as walls, if there are household appliances "contaminating" the frequency spectrum... and so on for a long etcetera of reasons that make it not the most stable type of connection in the world.WiFi networks also depend on WiFi channels.If you are in a community with many neighbors, it is possible that this connection does not perform as well as it should due to the saturation of the channels.Current routers are capable of choosing the best channel, but this does not always work perfectly.On the other hand, when it comes to latency, it is higher in wireless connections than in cable, so it is not the most recommended option in online games or where you want to reduce it to minimum levels.Although the connection is of good quality, it is something that can make a lot of difference in certain situations.The latest standards such as WPA3 offer many improvements at the security level, but there have already been known cases of vulnerabilities that allow these networks to be attacked.Wireless networks suffer from these problems and, without going any further, the study published in May 2021 under the name "Fragment and Forge: Breaking Wi-Fi Through Frame Aggregation and Fragmentation" reveals that vulnerabilities that affect from WEP to WPA3.You can always take additional steps to improve the security of your WiFi network and they are very simple, but generally the average user does not worry too much about them.Changes as simple as changing the access and password to the router manager (which by default is usually admin or 1234), or changing the name of the network or SSID.In addition, it may happen that the router you have at home is very old and is not compatible with these encryption technologies, so if you have your Smart TV or more important equipment, perhaps you should consider changing the model.Finally, if our home is large, we may have resorted to some type of WiFi amplifier or other alternative solutions such as PLCs or mesh networks.Due to the distribution of these in the home, it is possible that we have the television connected to them instead of the router, something that we should know to improve security.In fact, newer mesh network devices or signal boosters often come with new features that make them safer to use, and are activated via an app in just a few steps.Despite all of the above, WiFi is much more convenient.It is enough to check that the signal reaches the device in question and proceed to the connection by entering the password that we have defined (or that we have defined by default in the router).No need to wire your house or figure out how to run a cable from your router to your TV.In some cases, due to range issues, we may need a WiFi repeater to boost the signal, but this investment will also be useful for mobile phones and other portable devices.Something that we also have to take into account is that it may happen that for convenience we have decided not to use a single cable in all the equipment we have at home.It is true that it is much simpler, but depending on the type of traffic that these generate or the use that we are going to give them, we may have WiFi connection problems.If your intention is to have the television connected by WiFi, it is best to have other equipment connected to the router by cable, mainly those that are closest to the installation, or those that are going to use a greater volume of traffic (such as computers and consoles). , mainly).Now that we know what we win and lose using a wireless WiFi connection, it's time to see what a network cable connected directly to the router offers us.In this case, we must have the television close enough to the router, choose to wire the house with ethernet cable or invest in a PLC system that takes the connection from one side of our home to the other through the use of the electrical network.The cable always guarantees us the maximum speed that the device is capable of “receiving” based on its network card.The big problem with Smart TVs is that they have Fast Ethernet ports that support a maximum speed of 100 Mbps.This means that, even if we have contracted 300 or 600 Mbps, the television will not be able to use more than 100 Mbps. Luckily, in the most current and leading models, Gigabit Ethernet is being incorporated so as not to have this type of inconvenience.Beyond that speed problem due to the type of ports that manufacturers choose, the cable is the most stable connection since it is not affected by as many factors as WiFi.We have to look at its category first before connecting the cable between equipment, since this will determine the speed it can offer us.It is useless to have a 600 mb connection and have a category 5 cable, for example.Keep in mind that the maximum range of these connections is about 100 meters, something that should not be inconvenient in a conventional home.Latency is an aspect that we must not ignore since, beyond what the television itself offers, in online games or where it is required to reduce latency to the maximum, to obtain 100% performance, only the cable ensures it. , no matter how much we have high-quality WiFi.The security of an ethernet cable is the maximum possible since, unless the router or Smart TV information is "accessed" while it travels through the cable, it is (almost) impossible to hack.If we prioritize security above all else, the cable will be our ally and we will leave WiFi for cases in which we have no other option, such as mobile phones.In addition, WiFi networks are much easier to "intercept" through devices called jammers or signal inhibitors.These can cause our signal to stop working directly, or have the possibility of accessing more computers on our network.The cable, on the other hand, carries the data from one device to another without intermediaries, so in that sense there is "no color" between the two methods.If WiFi was the paradigm of comfort, cable can pose many more challenges.In case you have the router at the same point as the Smart TV, connecting by cable will not have any mystery.However, if we have the router in one room and the television in another, we will have to opt for other types of solutions that we have already briefly discussed.The first would be to wire the house with network cable, running it from one room to another.This is not complicated if we have some basic notions of facilities, being able to take advantage of the existing ones at home for television.The second option is to use a PLC by placing a plug in the room where we have the router and the other next to the Smart TV.However, connecting the TV by cable is much faster than doing it by WiFi.In general, it is enough to connect the cable and everything will be configured automatically.In the case of the wireless connection, we will have to search for the WiFi network and enter the password, a tedious process with the remote control in case of having a long password.Within this possibility of connecting your Smart TV to the Internet through the network cable, as we have said, you have another option which is to connect through an Ethernet cable to the router, but this time using a pair of PLC adapters as an intermediary.These will manage to convert the electrical connection of the house into an extension of our network cable.The truth is that it is quite useful for situations in which the television is in a room very far from the router and where the wireless connection does not arrive with adequate power.In addition, as advantages, it has that it is a system that is carried out in a very simple way.This is because adapters are usually very easy and quick to install and configure.The drawback of this type of system is that the speed obtained will not be as good as in the previous case and we will be exposed to the typical drawbacks of PLC adapters.That is, small occasional cuts in the connection and certain speed drops can occur.Of course, these will always depend on the state of the electrical network and the use that is being made of it at all times.An example would be when we turn on an appliance, there the performance of this system could fluctuate.Reading all of the above, my conclusion is that you should always go for cable when possible.However, it is also true that, under certain circumstances, WiFi can offer us great performance.If we only have cable available and it works fine, we will do nothing.If we don't have cable and WiFi works well for us, we won't make any decisions either.But what if I have both options?Well, the best thing to do is to carry out a speed test of both technologies to check their performance.If the television is limited to Fast Ethernet, a quality WiFi connection may perform better.However, my personal recommendation is that, whenever we have the possibility, we connect the Smart TV by cable (applicable to all types of devices).In the event that we want to transfer files between devices at maximum speed, the most suitable is the Ethernet network cable.You need to get the most out of the cable.This is true for NAS servers, streaming servers, or shared hard drives at home.We have talked about comfort, but it is also key to talk about mobility.If we are going to move from one place to another, travel, move from one place to another in the house, perhaps the most advisable thing is to connect by WiFi or do it by cable at the time we have this nearby connection.If we want to connect a Samsung TV via WiFi, we will access:To connect by cable we will go to:The manufacturer notes that “Your TV's wired network connection is configured automatically when you connect it to a network that supports DHCP.The TV will try to connect to the network.A confirmation message will appear once the connection is established.The manufacturer offers us these instructions to connect their televisions with webOS to the Internet:The instructions indicated by Sony to connect their televisions over the Internet are:In the case of wanting a WiFi connection, the instructions provided by the manufacturer are:By using Android TV as the operating system, we can configure the WiFi connection at the time of initial configuration.It will be enough to do the process with Google Assistant by logging in with our Google account.In this way, the WiFi password is automatically shared.If we want to do it later, we will follow these steps:If you want a wired connection, simply connect the network cable and the TV with Android TV will use this mode by default.