Xiaomi TV 5A review: Feature-rich budget smart TV
Within a few years of making its debut in India, Xiaomi managed to top the smartphone market. Later, it followed with the smart TV, and remarkably, Xiaomi become the numero smart TV brand in the subcontinent. And, that too in a far lesser time span and continues to dominate the segment.
Two primary reasons are that the TVs are feature-rich and yet come at an affordable price tag. Like Reliance Jio did in the cellular network industry, Xiaomi disrupted the market and forced the rival brands to lower the price range of the products. However, being on top is a tough job, particularly in India.
Now, the Chinese company, in a bid to maintain the lead, has launched a budget Xiaomi TV 5A series. Here are our thoughts on the new smart television.
Design and build quality
Our review model is 43-inch Xiaomi TV. It has a thin sturdy bezel around the display. It is very lightweight and has a slim screen panel.
Setting up the television was easy. It took me barely 15 minutes to pull the TV from the retail box and dock the two base stands with a screwdriver. The base stands are made of plastic but have to say they are sturdy and ensure the TV doesn't wobble on the flat surface of the table.
Xiaomi TV 5A comes with two 24W speakers tuned with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and DTS Virtual: X technology. More on the sound quality a little later in the copy.
As far as the connectivity is concerned, it supports Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz) 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2x2 MIMO). It also comes with two HDMI 2.0 ports, two USB ports, one ethernet port, one AV port, one optical, and a 3.5mm audio jack port. This is more than enough for a smart TV consumer to connect to accessories such as a pen drive, portable SSD storage hard drive, or an external display or a computer. Also, with dual-band Wi-Fi support, there will less internet connectivity issues with the Wi-Fi router to stream high-quality media content.
Performance and user-interface
Once you switch on the TV, it asks the user to connect their Google account to the Android phone to speed up the setup process.
The procedure took around 15 minutes to complete starting with connecting to the Internet, linking Gmail ID, setting preferences, and finally arriving at the home screen.
As you can see the photo (below), the home screen is very clean. It doesn't look cluttered and instead, offers nice card-like information about the contents and apps the TV support. It runs Android TV 11 OS-based PatchWall interface. It offers a universal search. It comes in handy when you have installed multiple OTT apps, you just have to say the keywords such as the actors, movie name, or TV series name. This helps people with forgetful people who most often forget which OTT app has the right to stream popular TV series or movies.
You just have to mention the name of the actor or word of content's title, it will list all the matching titles and easily narrow it down to the right movie and start watching it without wasting much time. And, with the IMDb rating feature, users can make an informed decision before investing a well-deserved break to watch a movie or a TV series and not regret it later.
Add to that, based on understanding the viewing pattern over time, PatchWall will start to recommend movies, TV series, and other content that match the particular kind of genre, the owner likes to watch more.
Also, PatchWall offers Kids Mode with parental control feature that ensures children do not get access to any of the age-inapproriate content on the Xiaomi TV 5A.
It supports more than 15 regional languages such as Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, etc, and offers 300 plus live channels, which include several news channels and this makes you rethink on having a cable connection or not.
The TV comes with 1.5GB RAM and 8GB storage. Also, it should be noted that the Xiaomi TV 5A comes with an in-built Chromecast and support Google Assistant. The latter can also be invoked by pressing the dedicated button on the TV remote.
As far as the display quality is concerned, it features a 43-inch full HD (1920 x 1080p) ready display with 95.7 per cent screen-to-body ratio and supports 60Hz refresh rate. Inside, it comes with Vivid Picture Engine backed by Cortex A55 quad-core chipset, Mali G31 MP2 graphics processor. It does a pretty job of replicating the natural colours of the subjects and scenes on the display. Really impressive for a budget TV costing less than Rs 24,000.
Also, it supports up to a 178-degree viewing angle. There is less glare and reflection when viewed from the sides.
And, it comes with auto low latency mode, which kicks in once you start playing a game on the TV and ensures a better gaming experience in terms of lag-free, uninterrupted viewing and interactivity. It also supports ARC (Dolby Atmos Pass-through), which ensures clean distortion-free sound passed through from the TV to an audio accessory such as a sound bar or home theater system.
And the sound delivery is again excellent. Very loud and can be heard clearly without any distortion even at the far end of the living room.
Xiaomi TV 5A remote controller
The TV remote continues the minimalistic design legacy of the predecessor. It has a power button followed by Google Assistant, a navigational dial keypad along with a back key, and a volume button. There is also a grid view button, which comes handy to switch between connected devices such as a cable set-top box, hard drives, or a computer or the home screen, which houses OTT apps.
Also, as you can see in the picture above, Xiaomi is offering four dedicated OTT app shortcuts for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+Hotstar, and Other apps (customisable) on the TV remote.
It is compact and very easy to handle and even a person like me with a small hand can reach all the buttons with fingers effortlessly.
Final thoughts
Overall Xiaomi TV 5A is a well-packaged value-for-money smart TV for the salaried class. It checks all the basic features in terms of display quality, connectivity, support for a vast number of free live channels, decent audio output, and feature-rich TV remote.
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