Daiwa 55-inch Quantum Lumit 4K Ultra-HD Smart TV Review – A Surprise Package
Lakshmi Rajan
Daiwa is a TV brand owned by homegrown Videotex International Pvt Ltd who have a long history spanning 33 years in TV industry. They have a wide portfolio that includes Smart TVs , non-smart TVs both in various screen sizes. Their recent launch comes with what they call as Quantum Lumint display technology (which is not to be confused with Quantum dot display from Samsung). The Daiwa Quantum Luminit 4K TV threw couple of surprises when I started using it and more about that keep reading the review.
Pricing:
The Daiwa TV with Quantum Luminit display is avaible in 55-inch, 49-inch and 42-inch screen sizes. Priced aggressively the 55-inch TV is priced at Rs 39,990, the 49-inch at ₹31,990 and the 43-inch scren at ₹23,990. The Televisions are availabe from their website and PayTM mall.
What you get with the TV?
The LED TV
Remote
“AAA” battery – 2 nos
TV stand
Wall mount
User manual
Design
Like any products design is a very subjective term. The Daiwa TV doesn’t boast of being razor thin but it doesn’t look very bulky either. The borders are in black so are the leg stands. The finishing is decent. The TV also comes with a built-in sound bar with a 20 watts speaker. The TV could blend easily with any decor of your room.
The metal leg stands have a solid build quality, the box also comes with a standard wall mount fixture if you want to mount it on a wall.
Vertically stacked at the back are optical out, one HDMI port (out of the total 3), earphone port, SD card input, two USB ports.
Below that horizontally at tha back are the RF in, AV in, two HDMI ports, ethernet port, Line out (L and R).
Picture and Sound
Size
140cm
Screen Resolution
UHD 3840*2160
Panel
A+ Grade (Zero-Brt Dot)
Panel Make
Samsung
Display Color
1.07 Billion
Wide Colour Gamut (NTSC +/- 5%)
95%
Backlight Type
D-LED
Viewing Angle
178° / 178°
Response Time
8mS
Color Temperature
Normal / Warm / Cool
Picture Enhancement
Yes
Noise Reduction (NDR)
Yes
When I first turned on the television, what took me by surprise was the picture quality. I have earlier tested one of their TV from a different range but this QLED TV screen is nothing like that. Simply put. the Quantum Luminit display they have used here is outstanding for the price it comes at. Daiwa has used a Samsung A+ grade panel and the panel type is D-LED backlight with 4K resolution.
The display is very sharp, crisp and vivid. Even though Youtube doesn’t handle 4K resolution, even the Youtube videos at 1080p were stunningly clear. The colors are poping out, a little bit tilted to rich scale of saturation but this would be something consumers would like. The HDR display really comes alive and one of the best television display out there and watching movies is a wonderful experience. What am testing here is the 55-inch variant and simply bowled by the visuals. Thanks to HDR-X technology, it has a good contrast ratio, the blacks are very deep and the viewing angles are great too.
Standard / Dynamic / Soft / Vivid / User / Eyesafe
Image Freeze
Yes
De-Interlace
3D
Comb Filter
3D
The second biggest highlight of the Daiwa 55-inch Quantum Lumit 4K Ultra-HD TV is the sound qualit. It boasts of built-in 20 watts soundbar and you would not normally require an additional soundbar to go with since it punches above its weight.
Audio Output
10W*2
Music Mode
Yes
ARC
HDMI3
Surround Sound
Yes
Bass/Treble Control
Yes
Auto Vol Control
Yes
Equalizer
NO
Sound Bar
Yes
Dolby Digital
Yes
The built-in 20W soundbar can easily fill up your room and gives a full and rich bass and you will enjoy music on it.
Daiwa QLED TV Remote
The TV is accompanied with a unique tv remote. On one side you have the standard layout with numeric keypad and other stuffs like home, back, volume controls, media button. There is also a mouse curson on the remote to navigate through the menus, a dedicated M cast button to cast your smartphone display to the TV screen.
The back side has a alphabet keyboard which comes handy filling passwords or to type on the browser. Trust me, this makes life easy if you use the smart features extensively.
One problem which can get frustrating at times is the remote many a times doesn’t work unless you point it directly at the receiver in the TV. The keyboard part though works well coz it is paired via Bluetooth.
UI Smart Features of Daiwa QLED TV
The homepage has many apps and videos pulled from Youtube to get going immediately. The top layer has a preview of your AV input, adjacent to it shows trailers and random video tiles. Below that there are list of hot apps preinstalled. There is a row of sports, music content and then you can also add your favourite apps in the last rows. The UI is fairly good to use and navigate. Pressing the remote to the left takes you to apps, network, media and settings. Being a smart TV connecting to the internet gives the optimum use.
CPU
Cortex A73 Dual Core 800MHz
GPU
Dual Core Mali450-540MHz
RAM
1GB
ROM
8GB
Android Version
7.0
While most of the Smart televisions in the market especially in the budget or low cost high value propositions still run on Android Kitkat, the Daiwa QLED TV runs on Android version 7.0 with Cortex A73 dual core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB of storage.
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Netflix and Amazon Prime are preinstalled. While there seem to be some optimization issue with the Neflix app making it way too difficult to use and can be fixed with some updates, Prime app works perfectly well.
At times, I did come across lags and even few times there was some hanging issue while on apps and I had to restart the TV. Clearly there is some issue with the optimization which need to be addressed.
Verdict:
At ₹ 39,999 for a 55-inch 4K HDR display Smart TV, the Daiwa QLED is a definite buy. The brilliant display and rich audio makes this a compelling proposition if you are looking for an affordable big smart TV. On the other hand, there is some optimization issue with the apps, occassional lags and the TV remote is frustrating and needs a direct point to work. If you are going to binge on FireTV stick or stick with Youtube or your regular dish TV contents, this is the best display you can find at this price.]]>
