Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch review: big screen at a competitive price

When I reviewed the Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro 55-inch, I mentioned that the company was doing a great job in offering high-quality TVs to the masses. The ever-growing range of Xiaomi TVs (including Redmi TVs) means you will be able to find a smart TV from the company in pretty much every price range out there. With the addition of the new Xiaomi Smart TV X Series, the brand has expanded its lineup further, in a way that one is spoilt for choice within Xiaomi’s catalogue. Today, I’ll be talking about the Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch model, which is the biggest TV in this particular range so far.

The lowdown

• Starting off with the design, the Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch comes with pretty standard looks. The bezels on the sides and top are slim, offering a largely uninterrupted viewing experience.
• The metallic frame and body come together seamlessly, which is something one can appreciate upon a closer look. Unlike the Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro which has a silver-coloured frame to accentuate the premiumness of the TV, the Smart TV X Series is pure black. It doesn’t look as premium but you can stay rest assured that the build is solid.
  

• Similarly, the stands (included in the box) are plastic rather than the silver metal ones that come with the Smart TV X Pro, as is the bottom bezel that houses the Xiaomi branding. This mix of metal and plastic likely allowed Xiaomi to price the 65-inch TV competitively.
  

• The TV features 3 HDMI ports, 2 USB ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an optical port and one for Ethernet.
  
• A 65-inch TV is rather big and can take up quite a lot of space if you’re planning to prop it on a TV unit. A TV this size is better off mounted on a wall, something that I wanted to do as I didn’t have any piece of furniture wide enough to place the TV on. You can purchase a wall mount separately from Xiaomi’s website.

• Another point to note here, a 65-inch TV is best viewed from a distance in a large room. The closer you are to a TV this size, the easier it is to notice grains and pixels on the screen, especially when watching full HD or lower-resolution content.
• The 65-inch display supports 4K Ultra HD resolution (3,840 x 2,160), Dolby Vision, 94 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut, and Xiaomi’s proprietary image processing technology Vivid Picture Engine. There’s plenty of 4K UHD and Dolby Vision content to see on OTT platforms these days, such as Ahsoka, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Family Man, Jailer, and much more.

• By default, the Standard picture setting has the backlight at 100 and aspects like brightness, contrast, and saturation at 50. In this default setting, SDR and HDR pictures can look a bit saturated at times. It’s always ideal to change the picture settings to your taste. For the Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch, I tweaked the backlight to 25, contrast to 65, saturation to 40, and sharpness to 10.

• Reducing the backlight is important if you want dark scenes to actually look dark on an LED panel. You can switch Picture modes without having to exit the content you’re watching by long-pressing the Patchwall button on the remote.
• Coming to the picture quality, the Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch leans towards delivering vibrant and punchy colours, which is why I found myself reducing the saturation levels by a few notches. The TV does an adequate job at upscaling SDR content, but you’ll still notice a lot of noise when watching shows like Seinfeld.

• 4K Dolby Vision content looks bright and crisp. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Avatar: The Way of Water on this TV as it delivered rich and stunning colours and an immersive viewing experience. Dolby Vision has a specific preset with the backlight set at 100. This tends to affect the blacks in darker scenes. I switched to Dolby Vision Dark so that black levels are better in night scenes of the sky.

• Overall, the picture quality should be quite acceptable for most buyers, with crisp resolution and vivid colours. You should largely buy this to watch UHD and Dolby Vision content as SDR content won’t deliver the best experience on such a large screen.

• The TV is equipped with 30W stereo speakers that support Dolby Audio, DTS X, and DTS Virtual: X. The speakers can get quite loud in a typically-sized room and I found no issues with the clarity even at higher levels. However, if you’re looking for a wider soundstage, depth and bassier output, I was more impressed with the Xiaomi TV X Pro and it is clearly the better choice, provided you don’t mind downgrading to a 55-inch model.
  

• The Xiaomi TV X Series 65-inch is powered by a quad-core A55 chipset that’s paired with a Mali G52 MP1 GPU. The TV is offered with 2GB RAM and 8GB of storage. During my time with the TV, the performance was decent but not extremely snappy. There was some lag when switching between apps after prolonged usage or when jumping scenes or pausing and playing content. It wasn’t alarming but don’t expect a lag-free experience either.

• Much like the Xiaomi TV X Pro Series, the new lineup also ships with Google TV. Based on Android TV, Google TV is a relatively newer OS that aims to deliver a more curated UI experience. I prefer Google TV’s UI over Android TV as it offers better content on the main screen, showing me shows and movies from OTT platforms or YouTube based on my taste.

• The TV also includes the new PatchWall Plus app that allows you to watch over 200 free-to-air live channels without paying anything extra. I largely used it for live news, and you get a bunch of Hindi and regional news channels to choose from.
• The familiar Xiaomi TV remote comes with hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, and YouTube. You also get your standard volume controls, home button, Patchwall button (which can be long-pressed to tweak Picture and Sound settings without having to exit the screen), circular navigation pad, and Google Assitant button.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch is priced competitively at Rs 61,999. While you can find more affordable 65-inch options from brands like Vu, OnePlus, TCL, Acer, and others, the Xiaomi TV offers a little more bang for the buck. With Dolby Vision support, Google TV OS, and good 30W speakers, the Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch is sure to please the masses.

The 65-inch TV from Xiaomi should be considered if you plan to watch UHD and Dolby Vision content largely as SDR content won’t look great here. If the size of the screen doesn’t matter as much, I would recommend the 55-inch Xiaomi Smart TV X Pro which comes at a more affordable price point of under Rs 50,000 and offers better Dolby Vision quality and a more impressive 40W sound output.

Editor’s rating: 8 / 10

Pros:

• Good UHD and Dolby Vision content
• Loud and clear speakers
• Google TV is intuitive
• Value for money

Cons:

• Sluggish performance
• Average black levels

The post Xiaomi Smart TV X Series 65-inch review: big screen at a competitive price first appeared on 91mobiles.com.

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