Daiwa 55-inch Quantum Lumit 4K Ultra-HD Smart TV Review – A Surprise Package

Lakshmi Rajan — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 04:22:48 +0000

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.

Contrast Ratio	6000:1
Brightness	450nits +/-10%
Display Color	16.7M
Aspect Ratio (Panel)	16:09
Sensi	Yes
HDR	HDRX
4K Enhancer	Yes
Video Decode	H.265 / H.264 / VC1 / VP8 / VP9 / MPEG1,2,4 / WMV / WEBM
Picture Mode	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. [gallery link="file" columns="5" ids="14450,14451,14452,14453,14454,14455,14456,14457,14458,14459,14460,14461,14462,14463"] 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.]]>

Daiwa QLED TV – Tech Raman