Xiaomi is widely known for its high-quality, yet cheap smartphones, but the company has released numerous other products on the market. Last year, Xiaomi announced their new smart TVs, in a series code-named "Mi TV 4" for 2017, which range from 32’’ to 65’’. In this review, we will have a closer look at one of them, the Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’, which is one of their smaller models.
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Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’
First of all, let's get one thing straight. Despite all of the recently available Xiaomi smart TV models, the company is not new in the smart TV market. In fact, they released their first TV back in 2013.
Since then, the Mi TV line expanded significantly, with Mi TV 2 in 2014 and Mi TV 3 in 2015.
In 2016, the company announced the Mi TV 3S line, with four more products at up to 65 inches. In general, we noticed that the company focused on large diagonals and didn’t offer any model lower than 43 inches, until last year.
Thus, in 2017, we had eight new Xiaomi smart TVs, the smallest being 32 inches, and the largest going all the way up to 65 inches.
Those models split into two lines, the 4 and the 4A, with the first having a more premium design and higher specs.
The Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’ is the one we tested, and we must say, for its price, it performed beautifully. Let’s see its features in detail.
Price
In Gearbest, the Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’ costs only 400$, which is a really low price, compared to what it offers.
You can also find the smaller model with 32 inches for about 200$.
Unboxing
The box we received was huge and heavy, which was to be expected if we consider it contained a 43’’ TV. In fact, the TV came in two boxes, with the outer one being as thick as two inches to protect the TV during transportation.
The inner box had Xiaomi's logo on it, and it was a simple cardboard box, with some specs on the side.
Inside the package, there’s -naturally- the TV with the power adapter, a very stylish remote controller with its batteries, as well as two stands with screws to mount them on the TV.
The TV’s dimensions are at 38 x 22 inches, and it is 2.7 inches thick.
The frame is made of aluminum and plastic; it looks and feels lightweight, yet “cheap.” The TV is rather light, and it seems it was the boxes that added a lot of weight to it at first.
The bezels on the screen are very thin, and the design is minimal, modern, and elegant.
The power button is placed at the bottom, while we can find all the available connectors at the back.
Specifications
More specifically, there are two HDMI ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an antenna port, Ethernet, and RCA connectors for composite input. The first HDMI port refers ARC support (Audio Return Channel), which is helpful when we want to connect any external audio systems.
We've already mentioned that the TV has a 43-inch diagonal, or 42.5’’, to be exact. The resolution is FullHD (1920x1080) on this model; Xiaomi used a 4K resolution only on the 55’’ and 65’’ models, as well as on the entire Mi TV 4 line.
The viewing angle is at 178 degrees, with a refresh rate of 60Hz and a contrast ratio of 3000:1
The Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’ is powered by Amlogic T962, with the four-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU at 1.5Ghz, and Mali-450 for the graphics. It also has 2GB of RAM, along with 8GB of eMMC storage space.
The specs may not sound that impressive compared to a smartphone, but a smart TV doesn’t need more processing power anyway.
OS Android 6.0
Xiaomi Mi TV 4A runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with Xiaomi’s MIUI TV skin to top things off.
The experience with the user interface was smooth for as long as we used it, but it has a huge disadvantage: it’s only in Chinese.
This means it doesn’t have Google Play or any other Google services. There’s a Chinese app store which we can use to download apps, but we can fortunately also install APK files from a USB stick, or directly from the TV’s browser.
There’s currently no official way to change the user interface to English or any other languages. There’s a trick we can use to change the settings to English, but the MIUI environment remains in Chinese.
Change the menu to English
First things first; we just had to change the menu to English, if we wanted to have a chance at understanding what we were even doing.
Thus, we downloaded this file that Gearbest suggests on their website.
It is a compressed RAR file, which we extracted on our desktop. The folder contains a small APK file.
All we had to do was transfer the APK to a flash drive and plug it in our TV. Then, we navigated to the USB drive’s contents, and we managed to run the APK.
After the installation, we went to the language settings...
...and switched to English.
Most of the menu options were translated, but there were still some Chinese entries.
Final impressions
The Chinese UI wasn’t that helpful, as it offered only some Chinese apps, videos, and movies. Naturally, we weren't able to use it to its full potential.
Furthermore, Xiaomi Mi TV 4A doesn’t support digital TV; it can only receive an analog signal from the antenna, so you need to use it with a TV Box or a digital to analog converter to have a digital signal.
However, when it came to movies and videos from external storage devices, it worked great. The sound was good, the image quality looked perfect, and the viewing experience was excellent.
All in all, we enjoyed using the TV for about a month, and we didn’t notice any problem at all. If it allowed an English UI, it would be the best option for this budget - no doubt about it.
If you already own a TV Box, we highly recommend this TV. Without that, you'd miss out on the whole smart TV experience, since most of the apps would be useless.
Pros
- A big diagonal of 43’’
- Great image quality
- Smooth UI
- Beautiful design
- Perfect for movies and TV shows from external drives
- Affordable price for what it has to offer
Cons
- Chinese interface
- No digital TV
Did you like the Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 43’’?
We had a lot of fun using this product, and overall, we enjoyed the viewing experience for movies and shows.
Did the review help you decide? Do you have more questions about this model? Feel free to leave a comment below.
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