Xiaomi has slowly and steadily increased its foothold in the Indian television market. The company which started its operation in the TV segment in 2018 is now slowing strengthening its position in the market by adding some more models at different price bands. The company started the new year by adding two new models to its Smart TV range with its flagship 55-inch Mi LED TV 4X Pro and a budget-centric model Mi LED TV 4A Pro.
The Mi LED TV 4X Pro comes with a price tag of Rs 39,990 and it is available for purchase from different online and offline stores. With this, Xiaomi is slowly moving towards the premium segment, which is dominated by the likes of Sony, Samsung and LG. However, will it be able to create an impact in this segment? Let’s dig in.
Slim design, Oddly placed ports
The latest Smart TV from Xiaomi has a standard design language, which is almost similar across its range. The TV has a plastic housing with the borders surrounding the display painted to give a brushed metallic finish. It can be placed on a table or wall mountest. However, if you are planning to place it on a table stand it should approx 4ft in length.
Coming to the port placement, the Xiaomi Mi TV 4X Pro features an ample amount of connectivity options. You have three HDMI ports (one of them is ARC), two USB ports, an ethernet port and an S/PDIF port. The company has placed the HDMI, USB ports at the right side of the back panel, while AV input, S/PDIF and ethernet port is loacetd at the base of the rear panel.
If you place the TV on a table you will not face any difficulty in reaching out to all the ports. However, if you choose to wall mount it, then all hell will break loose. It becomes a tad difficult job to reach the ports from the side and the bottom ports are almost inaccessible. Most of the time, we felt that the Smart TV would fall from the mount if we tried to reach to the desired ports. Furthermore, Smart TV misses out 3.5mm Headphone jack support, which just means that you need to attach your speaker via Bluetooth.
Display and Picture Quality
The Mi LED TV 4X Pro has a 55-inch 4K UHD display with a screen resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. The display supports HDR 10 content and it comes with a 10-bit colour depth panel. During our testing, we found out that the display quality of this TV is on par with the rest of the competition available at this price range. 1080p Full HD content looks sharp and colourful and you will enjoy the viewing experience. However, this is a 4K TV and to some extent, it delivers on this claim.
We played a bunch of 4K videos and the results were decent, although we felt that in some scenes contrast and colour reproduction was slightly oversaturated in nature. On the downside, the screen is reflective. So, if you are planning to place in your room, you should probably set it at an angle where the reflection of light is kept minimal.
Finding the settings to adjust the colours is another painstaking tasks as it is buried deep down the Settings menu. Every time you need to change some settings you need to go Android Settings > Pictures > Custom Settings and then adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness and hue according to your own need, meaning you need to apply hit and trial method to get the desired results.
User Interface, Remote Control and Audio
With Xiaomi Mi LED TV 4X Pro you get the best of both worlds. The Smart TV runs on PatchWall OS, and italso runs the Google Android TV operating system as well. Xiaomi’s PatchWall applies content-first experience and it neatly presents all the prominent shows, different Source, Apps, Popular TV Shows, Popular Movies, Popular Music, Popular Originals and more with the title-style format, which is quite easy to navigate. The user interface extracts all this from key video streaming platforms including Hungama, Voot, Vio, Sony LIV, Hotstar and more.
However, the user interface misses two crucial applications – Amazon Prime and Netflix. Many users may not like it because the two applications provide descent dose of HDR content and both of them have a vast library of original shows, movies and more. Although there is no news when Xiaomi will partner with the streaming joints to provide the apps, one always has an option to side-load them.
Coming to the remote control, it is one of the strong points of Xiaomi Mi LED TV lineup. The company has kept the remote control with minimum buttons and you only get power on/off, voice search, volume controls, back, Home and there is a button to switch between PatchWall and Android TV. Setting it up is simple and unlike traditional remotes, which rely on the Infrared port, this one is connected via Bluetooth. This means you don’t have to point out to TV to switch to your favourite channel. This is one of the best remote control we have seen in this price range.
On the audio front, the Xiaomi Mi LED TV 4X Pro features 2 x 10W speakers, which delivers good output in a medium-sized room. You will certainly enjoy the daily soaps and certain movies on this Smart TV. However, in some cases, you will find that the audio could have been better.