LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, but less on performance

The LeEco Super X50 Pro looks good, high on features, but less on performance.

By GizBot Bureau
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Chinese brand, LeEco made a name for themselves in the Indian market in a short span with some affordable products in the mobile space such as the LeEco Le 1S, LeEco Le 2, LeEco Le Max 2, etc.

 

Rating:
3.5/5

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

A little five months ago, the company entered into the home entertainment space, with their 'Super' range of 4K TV's under which the company is offering 4K TV at an affordable price tag and way better than that of LG, Samsung, and others.

 

Back in August 2016, we reviewed the LeEco Super 3 X65 Smart TV and were impressed with the offering. When compared to same TV's from Samsung and LG in the same price range as LeEco's Super 3 X65 Smart TV, it was the best offering by then, but with some flaws as well.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

However, things were going well with the Chinese vendor at that point of time when they launched the first array of TV's in India. Of late, the company has been going through several issues, especially after entering the US market. LeEco's CEO Yueting Jia days after expanding their portfolio to the US in an unusual letter to the employees of the Chinese company mentioned the 'shortage of cash' and quick growth.

Since then, numerous rumors were saying the LeEco is cutting jobs, and recently there was a rumor that the company allegedly broke its partnership with Eros Now, who was providing exclusive online content to the firm, which later on was confirmed to be true.

However, these reasons were not stopping the company to expand their product portfolio. The company came out with yet another 4K TV and the successor to Super3 series, dubbed the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro.

The Super4 series features improved design, upgraded features internally. And, LeEco kept the pricing minimal, this time around. Will the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro worth the asking price? Or will it further increase the company's problems? Let's find out.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Design and Build

The all new LeEco Super4 X50 Pro doesn't feature many design changes when compared to the previous Super3 range of TV's.

However, there are some changes, which are quite evident from the first glance itself. For example, LeEco has gone with a different stand design for the Super4 series, which is better than the previous Super3 series that came out with an aluminum stand as its base.

Visually, the design of Super4 X50 Pro looks similar to that of the Super3 series. The relatively thin bezel display along with the slim form factor makes the TV look different from Samsung's and LG's offering.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

The TV weighs 16.7 kg along with the stand, which is also an improvement over the Super3 series as they weighed over 20 kgs. The TV is entirely made up of plastic, and it doesn't look cheap. Only the two stands provided are made up of aluminum.

That said, there are some brushed patterns in the TV, which indeed make the TV look premium. Overall, the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro brings in some improvement in the design department over the Super3 range, and that's a welcome change.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Connectivity and Ports

The LeEco Super4 X50 Pro comes with various hardware ports along with a slew of wireless connectivity options. There are two HDMI 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports (one at the rear side and one at the top of TV), AV Input/Output port, Audio Output port, and an Ethernet cable port. Apart from one USB 3.0 port, all the ports are placed at the rear side of the phone.

The TV also comes with several wireless connectivity options that include, Wi-Fi 802.11/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1. Do make a note that the TV supports only Wi-Fi networks of 2.4GHz, but not 5GHz. In our review period, we haven't faced any Wi-Fi related connectivity issues.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

However, casting your mobile phone screen with the TV was a painful task. Also, if you are successful enough to mirror your screen, the output will mostly disappoint you as the video plays fine on phone's display, but lags a lot in TV's display, which we found to be annoying.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Display

As the name itself suggests the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro comes with a 50-inch display with a resolution of 3840*2160 pixels, with a contrast ratio of 4000:1 and refresh rate of 60Hz. The display type used the TV is LED and interestingly, it also has support for 3D and LeEco has optimized the software for enhanced 3D viewing.

The display has decent viewing angles. However, the TV struggles a lot while playing 4K content. The 3D experience was okay, and you can also watch a regular content in 3D mode, but that's useless. Nevertheless, it's a good feature to have around.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Hardware

The TV comes with an advanced 64-bit Smart TV chipset, MStar 6A938, which is a quad-core chip with two ARM Cortex A72 cores and two ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz. Also, the chipset is coupled with a Mali-T820MP3 GPU along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which means that you can store files on your TV and use them later.

Speaking about the real life performance, the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro performed well in simple tasks. However, we faced several lags with the user interface. And while accessing a third party storage device connected to the USB 3.0 port, the TV goes irresponsive for a little period.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

The X50 Pro ships with two Harman Kardon speakers with support for Dolby Audio and DTS-HD Sound Enhancement. The speakers were loud enough and filled an entire house.

The bundled remote is well designed and ergonomic. It offers several functions and that too boasting of limited keys.

SEE ALSO: LeEco might soon exit India, says report

One of the interesting feature, which we liked the most is the support for motion-based control. Yes, you can control the TV remotely with the help of cursor present on display and, this feature makes navigating through menus easier.

Overall, the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro is a good option if you're looking for a TV with high-end hardware at a low price.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Software

This is the only segment in which the LeEco Super4 X50 Pro mainly disappointed us. Yes, the Android TV experience still not up to the mark with the X50 Pro. We faced several issues with the LeEco Super 3 X65, and most of them still exist. The OS used in the X50 Pro is the Android TV on top of Android Lollipop with LeEco's EUI skin.

One of the major downsides of this TV is the lack of Google Play Store and Google Play Services, which several people complained, but that isn't enough to convince LeEco to add them. The lack of Google Play Store means you don't get enough apps to play around. Yes, the TV comes with LeEco's apps store, but you can barely find an interesting app over there.

LeEco Super4 X50 Pro 4K TV Review: stunning looks, buggy performance

Although the Google Play Store and Services can be sideloaded easily, that just don't enough for the apps to run. Having said that, the native YouTube application, which we sideloaded along with Google Play Services always says 'Google Play Services requires to run this app.' And we were left with only 'YouTube for Android TV,' which works flawlessly.

This is an area where LeEco needs to address quickly. And, in the mid-way through our review, the 'Livedi' TV content stopped working due to some unknown partnership issues with 'Eros Now.'

Conclusion

The LeEco Super4 X50 Pro has several improvements over its predecessor series of phones, but still, the major issues that existed in the previous Super3 series of TV's are present on this TV as well with the major one being the 'Software' side. Also, LeEco's issue with providing the Live television and Supertainment content seems to be over now.

However, this Super4 X50 Pro is still ahead of other TV's with similar hardware, and it has even better features such as 3D support makes it a great buy. Another issue with the previous generation LeEco TV's was the lack of availability.

So, if LeEco addresses this issue as well, then it will be a great affordable alternative for the huge priced TV's out there.

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