Toshiba, the brand that was known for personal computers unveiled Android-powered LED TVs in India back in 2015. Fast forward to 2020, the company launched a range of QLED, Full Array UHD, and Smart televisions in India that includes the U50 Series Smart TV. We have been using the Toshiba 55-inch 4K model (55U5050) for a few days and here are our first impressions.
The Toshiba 55U5050 sports a large 55-inch 4K LED panel with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and features Toshiba’sCEVO 4K HDR Picture Engine. The aspect ratio is 16:09 and the TV has a viewing angle of 178 degree. It also has support for Dolby Vision HDR and Toshiba says that the colours are highlighted up to 40 times brighter than the standard quality. You can also watch HDR content on this TV as it supports different formats like HDR10+ decoding, HDR10, and HLG.
As for the design and build, it has ultra-slim bezels and the choice of materials used on this television is quite good as well. The back panel is made of good quality plastic and didn’t feel cheap either. You get a table stand and a wall mount bracket as well. In my limited time with the TV, I liked the panel quality- The content viewed on this TV was sharp and the colours were vibrant as well. In videos like COSTA RICA, the details and the colour reproduction was very good and thankfully, the display is not too saturated out-of-the-box.
That said, Toshiba does give you a range of display modes to choose based on your preference. Further, there is Ultra Dimming technology on this TV that analyzes images and divides them into small areas, and then applies different contrast enhance curves to different areas of that content. Moving on, I did not notice any sorts of screen bleeding on this panel and it is one of the important things to note while purchasing a television. On the whole, in my limited time with the TV, I liked the quality of the 4K display, but I’ll reserve verdict in the full review.
Under the hood, this TV is powered by a Quad-Core 64-bit Cortex A53 processor paired with 1.5GB RAM and 4GB onboard storage. There are 3x HDMI ports (one of them has ARC support), 2x USB-Type A ports, 1x headphone jack, LAN port, Digital Audio Output, and RF Connectivity Input. As for the connectivity, there is support for Wi-Fi (2.4GHz) and Bluetooth.
Coming to the software, the Toshiba 55U5050 TV runs on VIDAA OS which is a Linux-based operating system and it features a unified icon design, faster channel search compared to conventional TVs and more. There is a Toshiba App Store as well that allows you to download OTT apps like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and more. While it is too early to judge the UI performance, it felt snappy during my usage for a limited time. I’ll have more to say in the full review. Lastly, on the audio front, the speaker unit has an output of 30W with support for Dolby Atmos and there is support for Alexa voice assistant as well.
The Toshiba 55-inch 4K TV (55U5050) is priced at Rs. 37,999 and is available to buy from Flipkart and other e-commerce platforms. It has a range of features that users can explore, and I’ll have more to say about the performance, software, etc, in the full review. Stay tuned for that!