Xiaomi has made an impressive contribution to providing high-quality smart TVs to a wide audience in India. Through its own and Redmi brands, the company has introduced numerous television models that feature capable hardware at reasonable prices, effectively establishing a competitive smart TV market. The latest TV to join the club is the Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro series. This one is part of Xiaomi’s mid-premium X series that costs less than Rs 50,000. The new Smart TV X Pro comes in 43-inch, 50-inch, and 55-inch sizes that are priced between Rs 32,999 and Rs 47,999. These new smart TVs boast Dolby Vision IQ, up to 40W speakers, and a bezel-less design, among other things.
I spent some time with the 55-inch Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro and here’s why I feel this 4K TV under Rs 50,000 will find quite a few buyers.
The lowdown
- Pretty much any brand that comes out with a smart TV today has to mention the word “bezel-less” in their marketing material, and Xiaomi is one of them. Yes, the Smart TV X Pro does come with slim bezels around the screen, especially the top and the sides. The bottom bezel, however, is thick enough to house the Xiaomi branding. The frame itself is metal and you can see the thin silver border around the screen to make it look more premium. The metallic base stands also give a premium look while offering sturdy support.
- The back of the TV looks clean. Xiaomi has employed a carbon fibre finish on the bottom arch to give it some character. As far as the ports are concerned, you get 3 x HDMI 2.1 and 2 x USB ports.
- Before we proceed, it’s essential to understand why purchasing a 4K TV in 2023 is a wise decision. The majority of popular streaming platforms, including Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon Prime Video, are increasingly offering 4K and Dolby Vision content. Popular shows such as The Mandalorian, The Last of Us, Farzi, The Family Man, and many more are available in 4K or Dolby Vision. Owning a TV that supports these formats provides an immersive viewing experience with sharper images, improved contrast, and vibrant colours. Now, back to our review.
- The 55-inch Xiaomi Smart TV Pro comes with an LED panel and supports 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. The TV also supports HDR10+, 94 percent DCI-P3 wide colour gamut, MEMC (motion smoothing), and adaptive brightness, among other things. The highlight features of the TV are the Vivid Picture Engine 2, Xiaomi’s proprietary image processing technology that improves the colours, contrast, saturation, and brightness of the screen, and Dolby Vision IQ, which uses AI to adjust the brightness and contrast of Dolby Vision content.
- To put it simply, the Xiaomi Smart TV Pro 55-inch delivers attractive picture quality for its price. That said, you will need to tweak the Picture setting to truly get the best out of it. My personal preference is keeping the backlit setting at 0 instead of its default 100. This ensures that the darkened parts of the scene don’t look washed out, since this is an LED panel and not OLED. Setting the contrast to around 70 is the sweet spot for me. If you prefer vibrant colours, you can switch to the Vivid mode and keep the backlit and contrast settings as I mentioned.
- Certain TV shows and movies, such as The Mandalorian or Spider-Man: No Way Home, are equipped with Dolby Vision support. When viewing this content, the TV’s picture settings automatically switch to Dolby Vision IQ, which increases the brightness of the picture and tries to deliver accurate colours. Personally, I found the washed-out effect of Dolby Vision IQ to be less than satisfactory and preferred Dolby Vision Black instead. This setting manages to preserve the integrity of black hues in darker scenes.
- I also watched some old shows like Bones and House MD, and the Xiaomi TV did an extremely satisfying job in upscaling 1080p content to ensure the picture looks clear and darkened areas don’t look grainy or pixelated.
- The Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro’s sound quality is stellar. The 50-inch and 55-inch models come with 40W speakers placed on the back of the TV. The speakers deliver rich sound with good clarity and a wide sound stage. The TV also offers impressive depth and bass response when watching Dolby Atmos content and setting Dolby sound to Movie. It also gets plenty loud, and I never felt the need to keep the volume over 50 in my room. Overall, I was quite satisfied with the speakers on the Smart TV X Pro 55-inch.
- Under the hood is a quad-core A55 processor paired with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. While general browsing on the Google TV and PatchWall interfaces is smooth, I did find the occasional lag when switching between apps. The TV could have used an extra GB of memory to make it run more efficiently, but this is not a deal-breaker.
- Xiaomi’s newest Smart TV X Pro series runs on the Google TV platform. This relatively new UI from Google is increasingly being seen on several Smart TVs and streaming devices. While it is still very much based on Android, Google TV is slightly different from Android TV in that the former shows you recommendations based on your taste (with the help of AI and machine learning), whereas the latter tends to show recommendations based on your streaming subscriptions. Google TV, in such a scenario, has a more personalised content discovery that is tuned to your viewing habits. The user interface is also designed in a way to put content in the spotlight. You will see the top picks sections change based on what you like to see more. So, if you’re a Marvel or DC fan, you’ll see comic book movies or shows being recommended from across different streaming platforms.
- Of course, since this is a Xiaomi TV, you also have the company’s own PatchWall OS as well. The idea behind PatchWall is also to show you content based on your interests, and classify it as per languages, genres and artists. That said, I can’t say I found the ‘Recommended for You’ section in PatchWall extremely relevant.
Verdict
The Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro 55-inch delivers an excellent 4K LED display that makes watching 4K or Dolby Vision content enjoyable. What’s more impressive is the 40W sound output that offers superb clarity and depth, making the whole watching experience all the more immersive. A few issues like the occasional lags when switching between apps and Dolby Vision IQ washing out darker scenes by boosting brightness a bit too much. However, these are rather minor concerns and can be ignored for what is otherwise a solid 4K TV under Rs 50,000.
Editor’s rating: 4 / 5
Pros:
- Excellent audio output
- Stunning 4K display
- Premium build quality
Cons:
- Interface can be laggy
- Dolby Vision IQ tends to wash out dark scenes
