At Androidpure, we have reviewed Android Smartphones, gadgets and apps till now. Today we are adding another category of products which we review i.e. Smart TV. In this post we talk about our TCL L43P1US (43 inch) Ultra HD Smart TV Review. TCL sent us a review unit and we tested it for more than two weeks. This review is based on our experience with TCL L43P1US (43 inch) Ultra HD Smart TV during those two weeks.
TCL L43P1US Ultra HD Smart TV Specifications
- Ultra HD (Resolution: 3840 x 2160), Refresh rate: 60 Hertz
- Audio: 8 W x 2 output
- Special Features: Cinema Mode, Sports Mode, Multiple language display, Dolby Digital Plus Speaker, Adaptive Backlight dimming
- Warranty Information: 18 months (1.5 years) provided by the manufacturer from the date of purchase
- Operating System : Android 5.1
- ROM : 8 GB (~5.5. GB is available for user)
- RAM : 1.5 GB
- Connectivity : 3 HDMI, 2 USB ports ; WiFi with WiFi Direct, Bluetooth
- Comes with an App store from TCL
TCL L43P1US is 43 inch Ultra HD Flat Smart LED Television priced at Rs. 31,990, available exclusively on Amazon India. IN terms of design and build quality, it looks sleek and stylish with a minimum thickness of 12 mm at the sides, though it is more thick when you move away from side to middle. It has an overall thickness of 69.6 mm. The Flat screen comes with resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels i.e. 4K or UltraHD along with wide viewing angles up to 178 degrees in both horizontal and vertical directions.
The Smart TV is powered by 1.5 GHz Quad core processor with MALI450 MP2 GPU and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. But unless someone tells you that it runs on Android, you wont know, as the user interface is quite different from Smartphones Android interface. TCL L43P1US comes support for WiFi with WiFi direct and Bluetooth connectivity letting you connect the TV to smartphone or tablet using Wi-Fi. Using this features, you can share and view photos and videos on the big screen.
The Smart TV comes with features such as Cinema Mode, Sports Mode with HDR Technology, screen mirroring, Adaptive Backlight dimming, Multiple language display and App Store. In terms of Audio, it comes with 2 Dolby Digital Plus speakers with 8W + 8W output and Prologic II surround sound processor. In terms of connectivity it comes with 3 HDMI ports, 1 USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.0 ports. It includes a PVR mode that can record programs, games, and movies to the USB.
You can attach your Pendrives, portable hard drives using the USB 2.0, USB 3.0 ports, browse the files on these drives and play them on the TV. You can watch video formats such as MPEG-(1/2/4)/H.264/H.263 and we were able to play most of the videos available with us except 1-2 where even though video was playable, but the audio codec was unavailable. Yet most of the formats it can play with. Using the App Store, you can also install applications such as MX player and Codecs which can help you play more formats on your TCL TV.
You can mirror your smartphones to TV using Wireless mirroring and use it as a bigger display for your smartphone for playing games, watching videos etc. You can use the cast feature from your phones to connect to TV very easily just by connecting to same WiFi network. Even if you do not have a WiFi network, the TCL TV converts itself to a WiFi node and then you can connect your smartphone to that WiFi and then achieve the mirroring. You can also use the nScreen App to use your smartphone as remote.
It comes with a big remote, but with hard keys which lets you access all the features on the TV. You can access the smart features of the TV using that remote e.g. apps such as YouTube to watch videos online, play games after installing them from Appstore. The app store that comes with TV has some limited number of apps that can be installed. But TV manufactures or Android needs to find a solution for Keyboard for TVs as its very difficult to use keyboard with apps on the TV. Even though an onscreen keyboard appears with the apps on TV, typing is very difficult as you need to move arrow keys on remote to type individual letters. We just hope that keyboards evolve with Smart TVs soon. Similarly, its difficult to play games using the remote on TV even though you can install them easily from those available in the store.
The speaker output is decent enough but gets low with some apps or videos that you play through external hard drives. For TV channels the speaker output is good and you wont need additional speakers. We used a Tata Sky connection with HD channels & Dolby Sound while our testing. The HD channels were quite good in terms of display and speaker output. The color reproduction was good and produced vivid colors. For SD channels, we did experience blurred display but that’s not the fault of TV but the quality of the SD channels. We still are far away from a scenario when most TV channels are HD instead of SD. We ran few Ultra HD video samples on the smart TV and were amazed at the quality of UHD videos and the sound.
While using smart features such as running YouTube or using other apps, if your WiFi connection is great, you will enjoy using it. If it’s slow, then you won’t. Also the games that are available in store are just basic games from Android such as Angry birds. Even though you can install some additional apps through APKs, yet we are not sure if every APK will run correctly on the TV.
Conclusion
For a Price of just Rs. 31,990 the TCL L43P1US (43 inch) UltraHD Smart TV is a great buy. We didn’t face any issues during our whole review period of two weeks. It offers great features such as Ultra HD display along with smart TV features of app store and android apps at very affordable price. In terms of after sales service, TCL has 171 service center, 121 service depots and 61 service branches in India that can help you out in case of any issues within the 18 months warranty period and after expiring the warranty.
