Realme has entered the Smart TV division in the Philippines launching their first Smart TV. The Realme Smart TV runs Android TV and comes in two sizes – 32″ and 43″. Let see Realme TV how it holds against the competition. Today we have the 43-inch Realme FHD TV for review.
Is it worth consideration? Let’s find out.
DESIGN
There is nothing striking as it has a standard look that has a minimalistic design, with the screen surrounded by skinny 8.7mm black bezels on the top, left, and right sides. The bottom bezel is considerably thicker, though, and it has the Realme branding. Below there are LED and IR receivers. The TV is light and can be mounted even place on the desk and will hold TV firmly in place. Bundled with screws along with wireless remote control and pair of AAA batteries. In the connection slot, you get three HDMI ports, one supports ARC, two USB 2.0 ports, SPDIF audio out, headphone out, A/V in, and LAN port. The two HDMI ports and one USB port with LAN port are placed at the bottom of the rear module, the rest of the ports can be found on the left side. Ports are not so difficult to reach even if you wall-mount it.
FEATURES
The realme Smart TV has a 43 inch VA panel with a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a 60HZ refresh rate. Personally, it is fine with full HD on a screen this size. The difference in the quality is barely noticeable when comparing to the 4K panels. It has a brightness of 400 nits and supports HDR10 and HLG.
The TV is powered by a Mediatek chipset that has a quad-core processor with four ARM Cortex A53 cores and Mali – 470 MP GPU. The performance of the TV is sufficient since it is designed for entertainment. You get 1GB RAM for viewing Full HD content smoothly and 8GB ROM internal storage but take up some space with the Android 9 OS. Sound output is rated at 24 watts RMS with DOLBY MS12, which is ok.
It has Chromecast built-in and lets you cast content to the other screen from a compatible app on your phone. The wireless remote control is compact and minimal and displays important keys. The remote has keys for settings, input selection, and mute. It operates both IR and Bluetooth sensors. It is voice-enabled so you can bring up the Google Assistant by pressing the dedicated key and trigger voice commands. It has hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube with home and back keys, input selection, volume control, and mute button, settings, and D-pad. It has a yellow ring on the side with the Realme design signature. Other than that, this is probably the ideal remote for an Android TV, with just the right number of keys that cover all the necessary functions.
USER INTERFACE
With the realme TV runs on Android 9 OS it has the stock user interface that can be seen on most official Android TVs. It is simple and easy to use. There is a row of the favorite installed apps, there is a shortcut for adding, removing, or shuffling. Other rows display last used or suggested apps. The TV comes with preloaded apps like Netflix, Prime Video, and other known Google services and Google Play store that gives access to thousands of apps. You also hear a sound when pressing a key. UI settings have various modes including Picture and Sound preset when in HDMI mode.
PICTURE
The overall picture quality of the TV is good for the price but not the best in the segment. Panels are bright enough but don’t feel as bright. The color reproduction of the TV is pretty good but needs a bit of tweaking maybe in future updates. The contrast is acceptable for the segment, but the black levels could have been better. Some of the details in darker areas in high-contrast scenes in our test videos were not visible, and they appeared a bit too dark. Regular 1080p (Full HD) content looks sharp and vibrant on this TV, with accurate colors (after tweaking). 720p videos were perfectly watchable, though not as sharp.
Anything lower than 720p looks washed out. The upscaling engine here isn’t the best. But since this is realme’s first TV release, I am willing to give them a pass.
AUDIO
The two pairs of speakers deliver Dolby-certified audio. Speaker has a range to take care of mids and lows and hand the high frequencies. The audio output is impressive one of the best in the segment. It is loud at 25 percent volume level and clarity in the vocals and decent frequency separation. The speakers are tuned well out of the box and a good amount of sound modification. The TV speakers take care of most of your general audio needs from watching news or sports to listening to music. You can plugin a soundbar or speaker system for extreme audio output on HDMI ARC, SPDIF, Bluetooth, and a 3.5mm jack.
PERFORMANCE
The TV takes about 38 seconds to boot up when switching from the main. The TV comes back on in just a couple of seconds from standby mode. A nice experience to see the fast resume and wake feature. At times you cannot wake the TV up from standby using Bluetooth mode. I don’t know if it is a bug or what. Not a big issue. TV is always booting up to the Android home screen when switching on from the main, not in the previous input source. On the brighter side, despite having 1GB of RAM you hardly notice any lags. It managed to play most videos with codecs.
REALME SMART TV SPECIFICATIONS
- Display (32″ model): 1366×768 pixel, LED panel, 60Hz refresh rate, 16.7M colors, HLG and HDR10 support, 400 nits peak brightness
- Display (43″ model): 1920×1080 pixel, LED panel, 60Hz refresh rate, 16.7M colors, HLG and HDR10 support, 400 nits peak brightness
- Sound: 24W Quad Stereo Speakers (2x full-range speaker, 2x silk dome tweeter), Dolby Audio
- Chipset: MediaTek SoC, 4x 1.1GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Mali-470 MP3 GPU
- OS: Android TV based on Android 9 Pie
- RAM: 1GB @ 2,133MHz
- Storage: 8GB
- Connectivity: Infrared, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only), DLNA, 3x HDMI, 2x USB, 1x LAN, 1x SPDIF, 1x AV, 1x Antenna, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
- Remote: AAA-size battery operated, IR and Bluetooth connectivity
- Dimensions (32″ model): 730 x 469 x 161 mm (with stand), 730 x 432 x 88 mm (without stand)
- Dimensions (43″ model): 967.5 x 604 x 233 mm (with stand), 967.5 x 560 x 87 mm (without stand)
- Weight (32″ model): 3.7kg with stand, 3.6kg without stand
- Weight (43″ model): 6.8kg with stand, 6.7kg without stand
CONCLUSION
This is a very good TV from the company considering its first attempt in the area. realme has done a decent job with it by providing minimalist design, lightweight comfortable remote with all necessary buttons, stock Android, smooth performance, and HDR10 support. realme has got enough things right to build on for their next release, which I look forward to.
