Kodak 55 inch (4K) Ultra HD LED Smart TV (55UHDXSMART) Review: 4K in Budget

The supremacy of Samsung, Sony and LG like brands in TV segment especially in India might be in danger. And the proof of that is the Kodak’s latest 55 inches UHDXSMART TV which is one of the cheapest 4K Tv available right now in the Indian market. The Kodak renowned worldwide as a camera and lens brand but in 2016 they have partnered with Super Plastronics Pvt. Ltd. (SPPL), a Noida-based company to manufacture Kodak TVs in India.

Although, the TV market is full of competition with few big names including the LeEco whose l553l2 smart UHD TV also priced around INR 45000 in India. But after winding up its smartphones business form the Indian market they have completely lost their faith in India consumers and in that situation the Kodak can play their game.

The Kodak 55 inch 4K Ultra HD LED Smart TV priced in India at 45,999 and available on Flipkart. It’s not only 4K but also a smart Tv running on Android platform.  After using this TV about 2 weeks, here is our review on Kodak 55UHDXSMART to tell you whether its worth to buy or not?

Also, you can see the review of the Kodak 50UHDXSMART which is a little buddy of Kodak 55 inch UHD…

 

Design and Build Quality

In spite of low price and manufactured locally, the LED TV doesn’t cheap from any angle. We know that when you are planning to buy a big screen TV like Kodak 55 inch then the design does matter to enhance the overall decor of your big room. And at this price, Kodak has done justice in terms of design too.

 

The LED Tv has a very straightforward design with minimal bezels around the stunning 4K A+ Grade Samsung panel. Yes, all the Kodak TVs including this one comes with the Samsung’s Panel. The whole Tv is in black color, glossy around the panels and matte at the back.  The plastic used to build the back panel is strong without any suppleness. The panel and the frame of this TV are fairly thin, the back bulges out quite a bit.

In contrast to the TV’s black color, the stand comes in the silver made of aluminum and shaped in “Y” form. Its tabletop stands are enough strong to handle the TV without any stumble movements. You can also mount this LED Tv on the wall by using its wall mount kit comes along with the TV in the Box.

At the lower panel, the TV has Kodak branding in the center and on the extreme right side, you will find the red color indicator also work as a remote sensor. It is not the slimmest Tv in the town, moreover, you can’t expect it to be at this price. The dimensions of the TV are 1244.6 mm x 711.2 mm without the stands.

Overall the TV’s design is not something to drool upon but also not ugly and will not spoil your room decor.

Ports and Connectivity

The Kodak 55UHDXSMART features all basic connectivity that a smart tv required.  The majority of ports are at the left bottom side while the few regular usage ports such as USB, HDMI, and SD card slot are on the left side placed vertically. These vertical ports can easily be accessible but like other TVs, you may face some problem to access them if the TV is mounted on the wall.

 

This Kodak 4K Tv features following ports and connectivity:

• HDMI
• USB
• Component In (RGB Cable) or Y Pb (Cb ) Pr (Cr )
• Headphone Jack
• RF Connectivity Input
• Digital Coaxial Audio output
• RJ45 port
• SDcard slot
• Built-In Wi-Fi
• 3G Dongle Plug and Play
• Miracast

Now let talk about them in detail. The left side vertical space assigned for ports comprises a Headphone jack, 2 USB 2.0, SDcard slot for using Memory cards, RF Connectivity Input (TV -in) and HDMI port (3rd in sequence).

If you look at the ports give at the bottom side you will find  RJ45 to connect LAN Ethernet cable to provide the internet connectivity,  AV-IN for Audio and Video, Component In (RGB Cable): 1, Component/Y Pb (Cb ) Pr (Cr ): 1, HDMI1, HDMI2, and COAX– it is a digital coaxial audio out port usually orange in color & used to provide audio to surround sound systems. The things which we felt missed out by the Kodak in terms of the port are VGA connector and USB 3.0. If you want to use PC or Laptops having only VGA output connector with this smart TV you need an HDMI to VGA converter.

The Wifi and Miracast options can be enabled or disabled using the TV remote those reside in the TV settings.

To control Tv manually the volume, channel, source and Menu button are give at the  lower right side.

 

Kodak 55UHDXSMART Display

The 55 -inch Ultra high definition (4K), 3840 x 2160 display panel of this LED TV gives 550 nits of brightness which almost double than the Kodad 50 inch FHDXSMART Tv launched in the last year. As we already said the panel is manufactured by Samsung which is A+ grade type and provides contrast ration of 6000000:1 (Dynamic) (Static). Brightness is up to the mark and enough bright to see the dark movies like Batman without any problem. Also, the LED display appears backlit properly without any darkness or light leaks around the edges at least in our review unit.

The color reproduction is good and natural but not very eye-catching. The black levels are also not in much favor of the TV and appear not deeper, moreover, at this price, we can’t expect the OLED typed black levels but still, it should be a bit more deeper. On another hand, if you talk about the picture sharpness then to test that, we have played a couple of different resolutions movies on it– 720, 1080P and 4K.

If you see the Tv from near, the sharpness is average even in the 4K but maintaining a distance of  3-4 meter it appears good and sharp. Also, the videos appeared a bit noisy on the screen even the Kodak’s digital noise filter feature doesn’t help us much, however, that also depends on your media content quality.

The Kodak claimed that the TV offers a 178-degrees viewing angle and its true. A person can easily watch and identify the elements without any color shift. The refreshing rate of TV is 60Hz.

Overall, if you see the price and size of the TV, the display is enough good to enjoy the latest movies and TV shows.

 

Kodak 4K Software and User Interface

The TV runs on a customized version of Android 4.4.4 Kitkat and very old,  as the final version of Android Oreo is about to come. The Android version is running on Dual-Core 1.4GHz  CPU – Cortex A53 with 1GB RAM and 8 GB storage capacity. Out of 8GB ROM, around  4.50 GB is available to use.

 

Sadly, there is no Google Play store but it can be installed using external Google Play store APK file. However, the TV has preinstalled third-party app store Aptoide App Store which also works like Play store and provides all latest Android applications to install.

 

The interface of the Tv is quite simple and easy to understand. Once you press the remote home button you will find a black color screen with few options as shown in the screenshot.

The options are:

Source: To select the source of video input for the TV

App store: It contains all the apps available for the TV

 

File Manager: To manage all the internal files available on internal storage or external storage.

Media Center: One place to access all the media files stored in internal or external storage.

Settings: This option allows to control different settings of the TV such as Date & Time, Language, Network, System, Wireless Display, System Upgrade, Restoring the factory settings, and About.

 

Network Settings

For Network connectivity it has a Wired connection, Wireless connection, PPPoE connection, and Wireless Hotspot.

 

 

Few other settings are: Enable or disable the non-Appstore applications, Theme Style settings, Home display time, Cache cleaner and Google Account Manager.

 

The TV comes pre-installed with apps like Hotstar, Netflix, Youtube, Miracast, Aptoide TV, Facebook and more.  However, there is only 4.50 GB storage is available in the internal memory of the TV for apps installation.

 

Remote

The remote of the Tv is big and has lots of buttons and shortcuts. It has shortcuts for the screenshot, Hotstar, YouTube, Netflix, Miracast, Browser. Apps, Sound mode, Picture Mode, Subtitles, Vision mode and other standard buttons and shortcuts. The Vision mode has further three modes: High, Mid, Low those uses to set the brightness level of the TV to reduce the eyes stress. The remote connectivity does have some issues and buttons are also hard, and have to press some time repeatedly to perform some functions.

Average Audio Performance

Although, the two 20W speaker output of this TV is enough loud to fill the room or hall easily, yet the quality of the sound is not that much great. The vocals are good and treble too but when it comes to bass everything becomes flat. Generally, all the Smart TV requires an external sound system to deliver best of it in terms of Audio.  It has several audio modes– User, Music, Standard, Movie, and Sports.

Performance:

The overall performance of Kodak 4K UHD is good but if you go section wise, we are not fully content. Few areas like such as Miracast of the TV is superb and there is no lag between the video playing on a smartphone while projecting the same on TV. In the same way interface, viewing angle, picture quality(at this price) wise, the TV is good too. But in terms audio, remote connectivity, apps handling the SMART TV needs improvement. Apart from this, we have not found any other problems, it recognizes our 2TB Seagate external drive easily without any performance issue.

In spite of 4K, we didn’t find the 4k resolution option while playing the YouTube videos. Another issue which we have faced that the TV is not packed with the smart air controller remote. And it becomes difficult to aim at some particular option in the apps those are meant for the touch devices or while writing some text string to search on the YouTube. Overall, the Kodak should focus on its TV’s app ecosystem, UI and audio because as a reputed brand it can tap a wider market in Indian smart TV segment.

 

No doubt that the Kodak’ 55 inches UHDXSMART TV is the cheapest 4K UHD Tv in the Indian Smart TV market and can become a good alternative for costly 4K UHD Smart TV if you have a low budget. At the price of INR 45,999, the Tv is value for money product but don’t expect the high-quality experience. Also, it can give a tough competition to the brands like Micromax, Intex, Videocon, and others those have dominated the budget segment.