Real Life experience of TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba etc. vs Sony/LG/Samsung TV

[Ryzen]

Recently I purchased a 43 inch UHD TV. Before I bought it I went through a lot of reviews, comparison etc. All the reviews suggested to go for TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba etc if you are on a budget as these TVs offer better specs (Dolby Vision. ATMOS DTS X, higher brightness, Quantum Dot layer for more vibrant colour etc.) After reading reviews even on international forums, you will go for these TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba TVs if you are on a budget. These TVs are reviewed with best quality contents (UHD BDs, High Bitrate UHD streaming etc.), practically providing TVs with best possible contents to have best output from TVs. But real world experience is quite different, streaming services like JioHotstar, SonyLiv, Zee5 provides low bitrate content compared to UHD Blu-ray Discs and among these JioHotstar in "Asli 4K" look worse than 720p Netflix stream. Quality of DTH/IPTV (Airtel or JioTv+) are not great either. Most of the contents we Indians watch are not from best quality sources. In these situation what matters the most is "Picture Processing" and "Upscaling" of low bitrate contents and this is where TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba struggles. If you compare a Dolby Vision content on Hisense QLED tv and a budget Sony/LG/Samsung Tv, Hisense will win even with its lower price tag. But when it comes to watching low bitrate 1080p content all these TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba TVs looks crap compared to Sony/LG/Samsung TVs. So, if real world experience matters to you, if you are buying a TV on a budget, go for Sony/LG/Samsung rather than TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba. Recently I bought Hisense Q6Q 43inch at 29K at a retail store ignoring LG UR75006 2025 or Samsung UE84. I saved may be 1-2k max by going for Hisense but after brining it home I realised I made the mistake. Indian OTTs look horrible on it as compared to entry level 4K TV from Sony of 2022. Colours are inconsistent across the board, it’s like for every channel I switch I have tweak the colour for make it watchable.


TLDR: Do not fall for TCL/Hisense/Vu/Toshiba based on review, real world experience of Sony/LG/Samsung is far better even with inferior specs.

 

[Akshr]

Sony TVs have the best up scaling and the higher end Sonys do it even better. The processors keep improving.

Its consistently called out by all TV reviewers, that Sony performs the best with SDR and low end content.

If you only watch netflix, primevideo, apple tv, hotstar 4k content, this shouldn't matter much.

Also TVs need to be calibrated, the filmmaker mode are usually better on the samsung, sony, lgs.