Good price for a 50" UHD tv with 3 year warranty.
TCL have a pretty good reputation for a budget brand, at least in the USA
This comes with bonus visa $90 card so effectively the price is 669
Add in cash rewards and the effective price comes down to $657
I'm leaning towards the 50E5900
OzB member TheButLover confirmed here https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/248060?page=4#comment-3748…
That TCL are worthy.
Updated the deal - that is super good value! Can't justify the extra cost for a lounge the size of mine
I can now see this selling out and me missing out if I don't jump quick
Yep can confirm FTA TV is solid, that being said, Australian TV isn't pristine in the first place. But I watch 9HD for NRL and it's a nice smooth picture. SD is fine, obviously not beautiful but even a $5000 TV wouldn't fix it.
FTA is FTA, it's a digital signal so you just need a good antenna. TCL, Hisense …. all huge brands in China, just not here in Australia.
What you get as the price goes up is extra refresh rates, e.g. instead of 50hz its 100 or 200 but it's how the content was encoded that also effects how the image updates anyway.
problem in sth store they are all set with different contrast, saturation, etc …. play around with those and they look the same.
smart TV ….. it's like android phones ….. haven't seen an update for a 4 year old android mobile phone to Android 6 …… you won't see updates to the smart part of the TV after a couple of years ….better off with a $40 TV box and run Kodi, Netflix and Youtube off that. ……. you are buying a monitor / panel more than the smart part.
My conversation in the store is "what is the cheapest TV in this size" …..
Thank you for the feedbacks. I saw it on GG, watched some AFL and NRL, not bad indeed. Just have to convince the Mrs now. The biggest gripe tends to be if the source is no good, it makes the picture very obviously pixelated. Coming from a HD plasma, the low expectation kinda hides it.
Any comments on the sound quality? Better than Aldi's 4K Bauhn series? https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/247868
If it's as good or better than my cheapie FHD changhong you will be happy enough with FTA.
TCL is a lot better than Changhong, but not better than other major brands.
Then most should be happy with FTA. I have a sony, LG and a toshiba at home as well.. the other 3 are better but I have the changhong in the bedroom and its more than bearable watching the footy or what have you.
I got the TCL L55S4700FS 55" Full HD LED LCD Smart 100Hz less than 6 months ago.
I cannot comment on this series, but be aware the "smart" tv features on my fairly recent TCL are basically unusable:
-It takes minutes to load a youtube video, if it doesn't crap itself completely and turn the whole tv off.
-The youtube app tries to line up a few videos to play, it will probably not get through one of them before crashing, and if it does you have to wait a fair while for the next one to start.
-You will be lucky if there is only a 20-30 second delay after pressing the pause or stop buton on a youtube video, and if it does pause or stop it probably won't start again, the whole system will freeze and you more than likely will have to unplug the tv from the wall to restart it.
-Also, the TV can't go from the Playstation hdmi back to FTA without freezing and then remote commands do nothing until the system just……turns itself off.
In short, the "smart" features on my TCL are pathetic, amateurish and a gigantic pain in the ass.
However…..I love the picture/panel, and am willing to overlook the "smart tv" nonsense. The picture is not very customisable, and there is a bit of motion blur on occasion watching AFL etc, but on the whole I reckon it looks magnificent, especially on the HD channels. It also plays every format I've thrown at it on the usb.
tl;dr Be wary of TCL quality/technology if "Smart TV" features are an important criteria when purchasing. It may have improved since I purchased mine, check in store maybe to be sure.
Smart features are better on this newer model, but it's really not enjoyable to use. Buy a separate box or a chromecast. This TV is a great panel to connect your devices to.
Also on the 5900US it doesn't crash or freeze when disconnecting from a playstation (I have both and checked) so fear not
How is the tV guide?
Is it pretty usable or is it rubbish? Does it keep the guide in memory or do u need to flock through channels each time you turn the tV off then on again?
Appliances online dropped their price to $769
whoops, i was looking at the wrong model U50E5800FS
The price now seems to be $949, am I missing something?
Nvm, I am a doofus, forgot about the 20% off. negging myself.
I went into the goodguys today to check them out before pulling the trigger. A FTA station was on all the tv's and the picture on this tv compared to 95% of them just looked poor (ie depth of colour, blockness around moving objects, almost no sharpess). I was a bit disappointed, unless there are settings that can somehow manipulate it into looking like uhd tv?? Or is it just because it was a tv station? Can anyone enlighten me?
Can anyone comment on free to air quality? Saw one in store but they didn't have TV antenna setup, the rep saying signal is bad because it is shared among all the TVs in store. Or was he just avoiding the issue?