Portable TVs spawn in residential zones. That means apartments, living rooms, and similar indoor spaces. You’ll rarely find them out in the open.
From experience, the best places to check are:
Shelves and corners of living rooms
Near broken furniture or electronics piles
Inside multi-room apartments rather than single shacks
They don’t spawn every run. Some residential sweeps give you none, others give you one or two. If you’re farming specifically for Portable TVs, it’s better to clear multiple small residential buildings instead of fully looting one large structure.
The Portable TV weighs 3.0. That’s heavy for something that doesn’t stack and can’t be used directly.
This weight matters a lot in real gameplay:
Carrying one limits how much combat loot or high-value items you can take
It competes directly with batteries, weapon parts, or armor components
If you’re already near your weight limit, it’s often the first thing players drop
Most experienced players only pick up a Portable TV if they have a clear plan to recycle it or if they still have plenty of carry capacity.
You can sell a Portable TV for coins, but in most cases, recycling is the better choice.
Selling gives you a flat coin amount, which looks fine early on. But once you start crafting regularly, the materials you get from recycling are worth more than the coins.
In practice:
Early game players sometimes sell it to fund basic upgrades
Mid and late game players almost always recycle it
Coins are easy to earn in other ways. Batteries and wires are not.
When you recycle a Portable TV, you get:
2 Batteries
6 Wires
If you salvage instead of recycle, you only get wires and fewer of them. That’s why most players recycle rather than salvage.
This material mix is the real value of the Portable TV. Batteries are a common bottleneck for crafting, especially when you start upgrading gear or building utility items.
Batteries are used across many crafting recipes. Players often run out of them before anything else.
Portable TVs are one of the more reliable ways to get batteries without relying on pure RNG. Two batteries from one item is solid, especially when you’re crafting items that consume them quickly.
In actual play, many experienced players think of Portable TVs as “battery containers” rather than loot to sell or display.
There are plenty of situations where you should leave it behind:
You’re deep into a run and already carrying valuable gear
You’re expecting PvP or heavy ARC encounters
You’re close to extraction and overweight
A Portable TV is replaceable. If taking it risks losing better loot, it’s not worth it.
Veteran players often skip it unless they are intentionally farming materials.
Farming Portable TVs can work, but only if you do it efficiently.
Good farming habits include:
Running light gear to keep weight low
Focusing on residential routes
Extracting early instead of staying too long
Bad farming habits include:
Carrying heavy weapons while farming
Chasing fights while holding TVs
Ignoring extraction timing
Portable TV farming is slow but steady. It’s not flashy, but it supports consistent crafting progress.
Over time, crafting becomes less about single items and more about material flow. Portable TVs help smooth out battery shortages, which in turn keeps your crafting queue moving.
Some players shortcut progression by trading or buying schematics instead of farming everything themselves. You’ll sometimes see discussions about cheap arc raiders blueprints for sale when players want to skip early bottlenecks. Even then, you still need materials, and Portable TVs remain relevant.
They don’t lose usefulness just because you unlock more recipes.
Newer players often make the same mistakes:
Selling every Portable TV without checking future crafting needs
Carrying them too long and dying before extraction
Salvaging instead of recycling
Another mistake is overvaluing them. They’re useful, but not rare enough to risk your entire run.
In real gameplay, the decision is usually fast:
If inventory is light and extraction is nearby, pick it up
If inventory is heavy or danger is high, skip it
There’s no perfect rule. It’s about context, not item rarity.
The Portable TV is a practical item, not an exciting one. It exists to feed the crafting system, especially battery-heavy recipes.
Experienced Arc Raiders players don’t chase Portable TVs, but they don’t ignore them either. They pick them up when it makes sense, recycle them quickly, and move on.
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