Redmi Smart X55: Affordable large screen TV better suited to 4K content

Xiaomi has already become a name associated with the biggest screen in your home – TV, and they have done it relevantly quickly. There are the usual big names and there’s Xiaomi now considered by the masses when making the buying decision for their smart TVs. Some of the previous smart Tvs from them have been potential performers and some have left a bit more wanted. Let’s see if the X55 fulfils your needs at a Rs. 50k budget point.

The X55, as the name suggests, boasts a 55-inch LCD with rather thin but not ultra-thin bezel around it. The body all around is made up of plastic and that includes the stands, too, this plastic, though, seems a little sturdier than what Xiaomi had earlier used for its budget TVs. There’s not much that stands out in terms of looks and feel of the TV, as expected. There’s Redmi branding at the bottom next to bottom facing lights for indicating switching on and off.

This is a 4K (3840x2160) display that supports HDR (HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG+) at 60 Hz, and seems much brighter and vivid than earlier Xiaomi TVs. Even watching fast-moving videos seems to be taken care of better here. There’s more and more 4K HDR display content being released these days, and the TV seems to do a good job handling it. It can’t quite beat several Samsung and Sony TVs from past year or so when it comes to HDR content playback strictly for contrast and brightness every now and then, but then it does justice with the price tag attached.

The TV boasts of 15watts x 2 speakers, supports Dolby Audio, DTS:X, and the audio output is also an improvement, though, not that a huge jump. In terms of usage for playing live sports and movies, the speakers are quite loud when setup in a medium-sized room, but in a larger room, speech could get a little patchy for movies and TV shows. If you’re looking to make it your music source in a large room, the speakers may not quite live up to the effort and you are better off investing a bit in dedicated speakers to connect with the TV.

The Redmi Smart X55 runs on Android TV 10 with added Patchwall launcher from Xiaomi. You can opt to use Patchwall or completely ignore it while using more vanilla Android TV. The given remote control is all plastic, has a voice-triggering key, dedicated Prime and Netflix keys, and no mute button, though the keys seem a bit sturdier than the remote control that comes with Xiaomi’s 4K TV box. Patchwall, basically, tries to house different apps content and updates into one place but in doing so it messes some things. For instance, it doesn’t show live sports events from various apps installed but otherwise Patchwall would show new releases from the same apps and services you’re subscribed to. Being an Android TV, there’s Chrome cast built-in and the support seems much nicer to use than some previous patchy implementations. Plus, you can use the TV (via voice) to control Google Home-enabled devices at your place. Connectivity-wise, there are three HDMI 2.1 ports (one eARC), Bluetooth 5.0, WiFi (2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz) two USB 2.0 ports – all side facing at the back, while an Ethernet LAN port is bottom facing next to these ports at the back.

The TV comes with quad core A55 CPU and Mali G52 GPU along with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage space. The overall performance in terms of handling high resolution videos and images seemed good enough, playing from external drives is handled well, though would suggest using a third-party media player instead of the pre-loaded one for videos as the default one can be a little choppy in handling large size videos. Switching between apps works okay, but apps do close quite quickly even if you switch from the quick shortcuts and have to wait for the app to relaunch a lot of times. Not just after switching the TV off and on, but every time you switch on the TV from standby it would show you the external drive options attached. Settings have a lot more options for videos and audio now but the default one seems fine for a small room for media consumption.

All in all, the Redmi X55 is a really good option for those looking for a smart TV around 50,000 bucks to fit in a decently-spacious room. It has much improved picture quality, decent sound (suggest getting dedicated speakers as per your setup), and performs relatively well in handling high quality media content including from external sources. There are plenty of apps that you can install on it, and cast content from your smartphone, too, of course.