Realme brings more AIoT products in the market and this day they’ve launch the newest first ever Smart TV in the Philippines. It has a simple design, it is very minimalist, it comes with 32-inch and 43-inch TV–the unit we have is the 43-inch with FHD or 1080p resolution. The question is, is it good enough considering it is their first-gen smart tv?
Pros
- Edge-to-edge Bezels
- Featured-pack
- User-friendly remote control
- Great Performance
Cons
- Stand mode is wobbly
- Hard to access the settings while watching
- Lacks bass
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Table of Contents
What’s in the box?
Realme is expanding its ecosystem and their AIoT products such as wearables, gadgets, and even appliances are out now in the market. The realme Smart TV is their first-gen Smart TV so we dive into its features and upon unboxing we get a free remote with triple-A batteries included, then a free AV adaptor, manuals, then the stand, and the TV itself.
Design
The design of the realme Smart TV is very minimal and simple with a great screen-to-body ratio. It has an Edge-to-edge Bezel on the sides and top. The bottom bezel is bigger with the realme logo in the middle, then underneath is the simple power button. It also has a bottom-firing quad-speaker for surround sound with Dolby Audio certification and the screen itself is FHD or 1920×1080 pixels, the smaller 32″ inch variant only has 1366×768 pixels.
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The build is plastic from the bezels up to the back and weighs 6.8kg and it can be moved by one person. It also has a plastic stand with a rubber cushion texture underneath it to have more grip on the surface.
We did experience some difficulties while screwing the stand to its body because the screw hole is so tight, but giving it a force will do the job. Though if you placed them on the table and giving it a little push it does wobble a little bit. Good thing it has a VESA mounting for wall mount but you will need to buy it separately.
Ports and Connection
The realme Smart TV has 10 ports at the back, on the right side it has one HDMI port, an antenna port for television signals, AV port for audio, and as we mentioned it has a free adaptor for audio-video ports which is nice. Then it also has one USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
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On the bottom part that I can’t easily reach especially if you wall mount the tv, it has a USB 2.0, two HDMI ports, and 1 LAN port for wired internet connection.
All the necessary ports are on the right which is a clever idea and it can be easily accessed in case you need it, the bottom ports are for permanent use.
For wireless connection, it has Bluetooth 5.0 for pairing other gadgets or controllers. It also has infrared for the remotes, 2.4ghz Wi-Fi, and a DLNA-compatible device for wireless transfer.
The realme Smart TV also comes with a built-in Chromecast which will cast screens from your compatible phones and devices. It does have a lesser quality though compared to playing the video on the tv itself but it gets the job done.
It has useful and reliable hardware features that make the realme Smart TV flexible.
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Remote Control
It is a simple minimalist plastic remote with the realme signature circular yellow ring on the Dpad. It also has hotkeys or shortcut buttons for Youtube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video. It has a built-in mic for voice command and it has a google assistant button, located between the volume buttons. We experienced accidental touches while tweaking the volume which is quite a hassle but the buttons are very clicky and it has a good design.
Also thanks to its Bluetooth component, we can easily operate the tv even if you don’t point the remote straight to the TV which is nice and easy. If you don’t want to use it you can use the infrared instead but you will not see the remaining battery life of your remote unlike if you pair it with Bluetooth.
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Display
Again the display is a FHD (1920×1080 pixels) display with HDR, 400 nits brightness, and a 43″ VA panel. It has good contrast as it is a VA panel. It does get a little color shift when viewing at extreme angles, but the color reproduction is great thanks to Chroma Boost that improves the overall picture quality.
It also has a picture mode to tone the colors and brightness and other technical settings to better improve the viewing quality. It is great and flexible however you have to exit the app to access the settings which is quite frustrating since you need to see what’s changed.
The realme Smart TV has a good sharp display if you are watching from afar, but if you have a bright light on your back or if you’re behind the windows, you will see the reflection of it in the panel when the tv shows some dark clips. It is quite distracting but you can increase the brightness or place it next with no lights at your back to have a great viewing experience.
Overall it has a great viewing experience not the best but it is not also the lowest quality.
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Performance
The chipset that’s powering the Smart TV is a MediaTek quad-core processor, with Mali-470 GPU, it has 1GB of ram and 8GB of storage. It has smooth navigation in the entire OS which is great and the google assistant is very responsive as well.
In the features, since it is a Smart TV, it runs with Android 9 pie on top of stock Android TV and it has pre-installed apps like Netflix, Youtube, or even web browser. It also has a Google Play Store built-in so you can install more games or apps. Games with complex controls require a gamepad, but some games with easy controls can be easily controlled by the remote.
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Audio
As for audio, again the realme Smart TV speakers are Dolby Audio certified. The sound at 25% volume is fair in a small room. However, it needs some bass more, probably you can have an external speaker or soundbar for better audio, though the built-in one is within the standard.
Verdict
Overall, it may not have that very impressive picture quality and sound is fair but considering that this is realme’s very first generation of Smart TV, what can we expect from upcoming successors of this device? This device’s features already impressed us and the qualities are acceptable and great.
Realme TV is priced at P11,990 for the 32-inch model and P18,990 for the 43-inch, available in realme Official Flagship Lazada Store. The price is just right as it gives impressive features, flexibility, and design.
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