Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has made good on its promise to enter the television market, debuting a pair of Android TVs, the OnePlus TV Q1 and the OnePlus TV Q1 Pro.
“We wanted to make a TV that would meet the highest standard in the industry," Pete Lau, OnePlus’s chief executive officer, said at a launch event last week.
The “highest standard” is of course quite a claim and if we’re being honest, the TVs are probably some distance behind the latest premium models from companies like LG and Samsung. But then again, OnePlus’s TVs can’t be considered slouches either.
The OnePlus Q1 and Q1 Pro TVs both feature 4K LCD panels with quantum dot technology, similar to Samsung’s QLED TVs. They’re powered by a MediaTek MT5670 system-on-chip that’s also used by brands such as Philips and Sony, run the Android TV platform and support all four major High Dynamic Range formats, including Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG. Moreover they also feature Dolby Atmos sound processing, and voice controls are supported courtesy of built-in Google Assistant and compatibility with Alexa devices.
All well and good but it remains to be seen how good the actual picture quality will be. The 4K LCD panel is unlikely to set new standards, and although OnePlus says it has local dimming, it’s probably restricted to less than 100 zones. If so that’s less than a lot of other LCD TVs and no match for even the more affordable OLED models.
Perhaps then, OnePlus is confident that the uniqueness of its TVs will help win over more consumers. For example, both models have ultra-thin bezels, which results in 97% screen real estate, the company said. Design-wise, the sleek aluminium remote looks and feels a lot like the Apple TV remote.
There’s also “seamless integration” with OnePlus smartphones which can double as a second remote control. The TVs also come with OxygenPlay, a cross-platform application for discovering new content to watch.
Both of the TVs come with 4 HDMI ports, 3 USBs, one optical port, one composite port and an Ethernet port. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 5.0 and 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi support.
The OnePlus TV Q1 and the OnePlus TV Q1 Pro are both on sale in India now, priced at around £800 and £1,150 respectively for the 55-inch models. The company is also planning to release 45-inch, 65-inch and 75-inch versions. OnePlus has also promised the TVs will go on sale in the U.K. in due course, but a release date is yet to be announced.
