Thomson 43TH6000 Smart TV review: A decent offering for the budget conscious

Design and Build

In terms of design, we must say that the TV looks decent and comes with narrow bezels on the side. Though Thomson won't win any design awards for the TV we must say that the design looks decent. It comes with easy to install table stand, which can be easily installed by a non-professional. Moreover, you can also mount the television on the wall of your drawing room easily.

As far as build quality is concerned, the edges are made out of plastic and colored in the glossy black finish. On the rear side, the company has managed to keep the design slim as much as possible. On the bottom, there are two 20W speakers attached with the Thomson TV.

Specs and Features

Specification wise, the tv comes with a 103cm 4K UHD LED display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. It supports AVI, MKV, MOV, MPEG-1, VOB and DAT video formats. As far as the connectivity is concerned, it has a built-in Wi-Fi support, 3 HDMI ports, 1 VGA port, headphone jack, LAN-port and audio-video output ports. Under the hood the Thomson 43TH6000 is powered by ARM Cortex CA53 64-bit Processor, Multi Core Mali-T720 x 2 Graphic Processor clubbed with a 1 GB RAM.

We have noticed that the TV is not an officially certified Android TV, but it does come with some preloaded apps. However, users do get the option of downloading the apps from the Play Store. The interface looks interesting and gives you options like Home, File Manager, Media Center, Setting, Download, My Apps, Applications, Aptoide TV, Browser, Facebook, Gmail, Netflix and more.

The remote of the TV also comes with a hotkey called Q-view that directly takes users to the internet explorer from where you can easily browse whatever you want.

The Thomson smart TV comes with onboard storage of 4GB, which can be used to store media files including PDFs, music, movie and pictures. Along with internal memory, it also sports Wireless Display support, which allows users to cast their smartphone screen to it.

Performance

The company claims that this is a 4K Ultra HD TV but when we tried testing the quality by streaming YouTube 4K video, we observed that the quality was limited to 1080p. We have fired up the Planet Eart II series in UHD but didn't get the proper 4K support.

Not only YouTube, we have also tried streaming 4K videos from Amazon Prime but here also the video quality was limited to 1080p. We even tried playing some offline 4K videos on the TV but we got a pop-up saying video format not supported and the video started playing in the 1080p only.

The company has also mentioned the availability of HDR, but we just couldn't spot it in the TV settings. But we must say that the 1080p video does seem to be very clear. On the audio part the TV support Total Surround, Automatic Volume Level (AVL), Audio Equalizer, Audio, Digital Media Player (DMP) Content - Music, Music Alone Mode, Noice Reduction 3D and Sports Mode. However, the speakers are not that great but get the work done. It would be best to invest in a mini soundbar to club with this TV to get the best sound experience.

Apart from the video quality, we also connected a keyboard and mouse with the TV which seems to work well. While we installed some apps like Amazon Prime and some games, we didn't find any difficulty in launching and running the app. However, we did notice a lag when we played some games on it. Moreover, it went on to screen-freeze, and to resolve that we had to completely shut down the tv and restart it again.

Performance-wise the remote of the TV lacks the feel, as it takes a lag of 2 to 3 seconds in responding, which might annoy some of the impatient users. For a proper response, you have to point straight at the IR sensor.

We have also tried Screen mirroring feature with the TV and it took a couple of clicks to get our Android smartphone connected to the smart TV.

Verdict

According to the company, this will be the cheapest smartTV with UHD 4K at Rs 27,999. After playing a while with the TV we must say this comes with a smart interface and a genuinely useable browser mode. But on the flip side, calling this TV as a 4K TV doesn't justify the tag as we have tried every single option to play 4K but it didn't work.

On the other side, app-wise the Thomson TV comes with a lot of apps which are used in our daily life, but still lags partnership with apps like Hotstar and Amazon Prime. However, you can still download it with from the Google Play store.

If you are looking for a large-display TV and ready to ignore some quirks of the Thomson TV, then this will be a good deal for you. But if you don't want to compromise with the resolution and opt for a true 4K TV then there are many brands who have come up with 4K TVs in the market.

Thomson smart TVs are exclusively selling on Flipkart since April 13, you can visit the website and explore some over there.