Exactly what I did. I bought a sub $200 40" TV that probably have the worst embedded OS I've ever seen. But leave it disconnected from the network and put a Chromecast or whatever, then you have a decent TV for cheap.

I have a Samsung Smart TV that I've never connected to the internet. It still spends about 3 minutes "optimizing for your device" whenever I plug something into an external input, and changes all the settings for that input.

My Fire Stick froze the other day, had to unplug it and plug it back in. "Optimizing for your device..." 3 minutes later it turned HDR off for some reason. It also improperly labeled it as a Roku this time, which doesn't affect anything but is kind of annoying.

I only use hdmi 3 for my gaming PC, but not all the time. Whenever I plug into that, another 3 minutes of waiting and it always disables game-mode for some reason. Which is immediately obvious when my mouse has like 200ms of latency. It also labels it "AT&T U-Verse Device" for some reason. I don't get why it can't just call them HDMI 1,2,3,4. Instead my input selector says "Blu Ray Player, Roku, AT&T U-Verse Device, Game Console"

It's unable to track me or show ads but the "smart" features still make it act really dumb. Even without internet access.

Oh wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.

I had Hisense, Vizio, LG, and Roku smart TVs that were fine if left unplugged. I guess the Samsungs are more finicky.