First Impression: Xiaomi Mi TV 4

Chinese technology giant, Xiaomi is expanding its smart products offering in India. After launching its smart air purifier and smart routers in the past, the company has now launched a 55 inch 4K HDR smart LED TV in India. This is the world's thinnest LED TV with 4.9mm thickness. Xiaomi is using customised Samsung's frameless panel for this TV.

India is the first country where Xiaomi has launched the Mi smart TV, outside China. Hence, the company has customised the TV for the Indian audience. With one HDMI port usually reserved for set-top boxes, Xiaomi has added 3 HDMI ports, 2 USB ports along with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Xiaomi's TV comes with PatchWall user interface that focuses on fetching content which is ready to stream. The company claims to have reworked on the UI for India and has tied up with ten partners for streaming content on the TV. The names include Hotstar, Voot, Hungama Play and TVF. As soon as you turn on the TV, the screen is full of content recommendations. The PatchWall UI is somewhat similar to the Amazon Fire TV Stick UI with multiple screens. Content is categorised into home, VIP, movies, TV shows, music, among others, making it easy to browse. Over time, the UI learns and recommends relevant content.

The Mi TV 4's Bluetooth remote resembles Amazon Fire TV Stick remote. It has 11 controls and yet the remote is intuitive to use. I was able to control the Tata Sky using the Mi TV's remote. This was enabled by Sensy's sensor. One end of the cable plugs into the USB port of the TV whereas the sensors (at the other end) need to be placed in front of the set-top box.

Xiaomi has added a 4k HDR panel to its smart TV. Usually, an HDR panel makes colour look bright and vibrant. This TV comes with adaptive brightness setting tuned on, which was a bit of a spoiler as everything appeared dull. However, once we increased the brightness and adjusted the display settings, it looked better. The content we streamed on this TV was sharp and offered rich colours. In terms of picture quality and colours, this TV might fall a little short in front of the expensive offerings from LG and Sony but then there is also a huge price difference. The Mi TV 4 easily justifies the price tag of Rs 39,999.