Tuesday, March 2, 2021

realme Smart TV (43″) Hands-on

Finally, realme Philippines has launched in the country their Smart TVs to bolster the brand’s ecosystem. This Android-powered TV comes in 32-inch and 43-inch models. What we have here is the latter, so check out our initial thoughts below.

The realme Smart TV looks like your typical but nice-looking LED TV. It’s got a slim top and side bezels with a glossy finish, while the thicker chin has a brushed finish with the realme branding printed in the middle. Found just below it is the infrared port with an LED indicator.

At 43-inches, it’s a decent size for small living rooms or bedrooms. You can put it on a stand or mount it on a wall. From the side, the TV looks chunky compared to more expensive TVs in the market, but not really a disadvantage.

At the back, you can see the three HDMI ports, two USB-A, AV, LAN, digital audio out, and antenna.

Found underneath are the 24W quad stereo speakers with Dolby Audio. The sound quality is clear and crisp. There’s noticeable bass but not that powerful. That’s why realme is also offering the realme 100W Bluetooth Soundbar, which we’ll discuss in a separate hands-on.

For the accessories, the realme Smart TV comes with an AV cable and a wedge-shaped remote with a yellow circle accent in the directional pad. It connects to the TV via Bluetooth and has dedicated buttons for launching Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Assistant. It also has a built-in microphone for voice commands.

Powering the TV is a MediaTek ARM Cortex A53 quad-core CPU, Mali-470 MP3 GPU, which supports Chroma Boost technology, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage.

Set up is pretty easy. Since it’s an Android TV (version 9), you can set it up like any Android device, which means connecting it to WiFi and entering your Google account. You can also do it the easy way and set up the device from the Google Home app to automatically transfer your credentials.

Apps include Netflix, YouTube, YouTube Kids, Amazon Prime Video, Media Player browsing content in your external hard drive, Pango Browser, Midiacast for casting content from your smartphone, and TV Manager, an optimizer for the TV. You can add more apps that you might need from the Google Play Store.

Quality is good for a TV of this caliber. It has a decent resolution at Full HD, has accurate colors, and good viewing angles at up to 178-degrees, a peak brightness of 400+ nits, and has support for HDR10 and HLG formats. Even though we’re not getting really deep blacks since it’s not an OLED panel, the contrast is still okay for most content we watch.

At PHP 18,990 SRP for the 43-inch model (PHP 15,990 on Shopee 3.3 Mega Shopping Sale), the realme Smart TV is affordable but great for binge-watching on Netflix, YouTube, and other streaming sites. There’s also a more affordable 32-inch model at PHP 11,990 SRP (PHP 8,990 on 3.3).

We don’t have to purchase an Android TV Box or a Chromecast, and we can connect our own external hard drive to watch our video collections. If you’re on the hunt for a new Android-powered Smart TV in this price range, make sure to put this on the list.

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