With the start of another year, our smartphones have started morphing into ‘Intelligent phones’. As we knew this would happen eventually, we didn’t expect the day and age where our TV would be evolving itself into something smarter too. Having seen an evident boom in the internet facilities across the world, it was only a matter of time when all of our devices would have eventually connected and started speaking with each other. Our TVs instead of deciding whether to retire or not, have been getting updates as per our changing needs and likes or dislikes. With our houses being contracted more each day, our tech has been increasingly compacted and shrunk along as well. The many useful devices have come together to contain the functions of all of them in a single device and thus take the most useful form like in any Power Rangers episode.
Known as the ‘Apple of China’, Xiaomi understood and knew the change towards an effective design and functionality would eventually come for all the devices; therefore, they created the Xiaomi Mi TV 4 and Xiaomi Mi TV 4A. These devices, in multiple variants of the 32-inch screen, 43-inch screen, 50-inch and 55-inch screen are a power and design unit containing more than just the ability to play our favorite TV shows. It is filled up to its brim with pretty decent performance, even though the brim is rather too slim for anything to exist. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the design then:
Design:
The new Xiaomi Mi TV 4 is just beautiful. The entire reason why most people would pick up this angelic looking TV is the way it looks. Arguably slimmer than most smartphones of our time, this device is absolutely a masterpiece with its thickness resting at just 4.9 mm. The entire dimension of the TV whereas is at 1232.1 x 730.6 x 48 mm. The thin bezel also gives it an infinite look when playing a rather dark picture. The upper rear part of it has been given a metallic finish which makes it look like a tad bit futuristic.
The wall mountable and the table placing dual feature bless this TV. The table stand, however, looks rather more mean and impressive with its 4 legs set too far away from each other to make sure maximum stability. The front legs are made to be a little longer so as to ensure maximum stability when given a light brush from its rear side which happens fairly too often trying to get different connectivity active.
Connectivity and Features:
As mentioned before, this device is power packed with specs that allows it to give an optimum viewing experience. The 55-inch 4K HDR TV has a LED-backlit frameless design. The optimum resolution comes to rest at 3840 x 2160 pixels and the refresh rate of 60Hz while a response time of 8mS is rather quick. The two downward facing 8W speakers are inbuilt and have a Dolby certification.
The 3 available ports HDMI ports including one that can return an audio channel, an Ethernet port, one S/PDIF out, one AV port, one USB 2.0 while another USB 3.0 port provides a wide range of options to the TV. At the same time, the 2.4 and 5 GHz running WiFi working on 802.11 a/b/g/n. Frankly, an 802.11 ac would have made quite some significant difference but since heavy packet transfers aren’t required, it does perform fairly well. Another port to connect antenna provides an additional connectivity option along with a Bluetooth 4.0 LE.
Getting in the more performance-based outlook, the Mi TV 4 is powered with an Amlogic T968 chipset, running a 64-bit quad core processor resting on a Mali T830 MP2 GPU while clocking at 1.8 GHz which is quite fast. The 2 GB RAM and the 8GB storage space will still not let you store your TV shows on the internal storage though and the internal storage rests solely for the purpose of storing applications and the in-built software.
You also get an option to pick up an additional accessory. This accessory is the Mi IR set top box controller which can be used to unify the smart TV UI and the Set Top Box interface control using the Mi Remote. This although has to be bought separately.
User Interface:
The Android 6.0 based OS that’s installed on the system is called Patch Wall. Patch Wall was designed and implemented so as to cut out on the additional search you had to make while deciding the channel. The streaming service along with the type of content you want to watch will automatically be decided according to your viewing-habits. This has been dramatically simplified by the Patch Wall. It allows you to only watch the content regardless of the streaming service it’s being streamed from. It’s no-nonsense more enhanced viewing software which is said to learn along with your viewing habits; as you go along and leave behind a few series or attain a new habit of watching cooking shows, it will learn and let your homepage be flooded with only the content you wish to watch. Now that is a delight.
Performance:
Xiaomi promised a viewing angle of am extremely linear 178 degrees which is a lot; however, it does seem to somehow deliver on that. The viewing angles are great and you can watch the TV from wider angles with quite some ease. The speakers are decent if not great and yet seem to not lose their form and distort unlike many which do the same at high volume levels. Due to the better Bluetooth connectivity, you can connect them to Bluetooth speakers or headphones as per your need. It can help you watch those football matches late at night while not losing on the commentary. The streaming seems to be great too as you notice no real lag due to the great 802.11 a/b/g/n standard. Since it supports 4K viewing you can amp up the viewing experience significantly too.
Thus with all that considered, the Xiaomi Mi TV comes at a rather great price. While the lower variants cost really low, the higher variants, especially 50-inch and 55-inch stand at somewhere around 2199 CNY (around $350 dollars) to 2999 CNY (around $470); which is a steal if you ask me.
It has been introduced to the Asia-Pacific market recently and has been doing quite well. Overall we think it’s a great product at such a price range and would rather be another revolutionary addition to the otherwise innovative product range offered by Xiaomi, including their cell phones and their other products which usually do great in the above-mentioned markets.
