Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Is High Resolution on a Low Budget worth it?

Regardless of your budget, you always want the best bang for your buck. This is especially crucial for lower-end TV sets, as a wrong purchase means even the basic experience gets spoiled. Now to lower such risk, one goes for a branded product. In the current market, there are a few brands in the sub-20K segment with highly comparative products, both in terms of prices and performance. In other words, they are mostly commoditized. So, even a small upgrade can place one product up the other. Take, for instance, the Realme Smart TV we are about to discuss, at 32-inches, it offers 1080p quality while the rivals are restricted to HD resolution. But, is it good enough to classify as a competitive advantage? That’s the question and the answer to which we are about to find out.

This is the Smartprix review of the Realme Smart TV FHD 32-inch model and here’s a quick glance at everything you are getting with it:

Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Unboxing

Unboxing is simple as removing the Styrofoam frames and plastic cover. Beside the TV, here’s everything you get inside the box:

• Table Top Stands with Screws (4)
• Remote
• Two AAA Batteries
• Installation and User Manual
• The power cord is attached to the TV

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Contents

• Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Design
• Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Audiovisual
• Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Smarts
• Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Connectivity

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Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) India price and specs

Dimension and Weight: 730 × 469 × 161mm (With stand), 3.7kg (With stand)
Screen: 32-inch, FHD, 8-bit, 178 degree FoV, 85% NTSC, HDR10, HLG
Audio: 4-units, 24 watts, Dolby Audio
Processor: 64-bit MediaTek Quad-core
RAM: 1GB DDR3
Storage: 8GB
OS: Android 9 TV
Connectivity: 2.4GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, Infrared, DLNA, HDMI 1 (ARC CEC)/HDMI 2/HDMI3(CEC), AV, tuner, 2 USB A, LAN, SPDIF
Power Consumption: 45W
Price: ₹18,999

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Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Design

The first thing I noticed upon unboxing is how light the TV is. The plastic build and a 32-inch display make it portable and easy to set up. You can mount or place it on a table. There are no brackets for the former in the box. Anyway, I chose the latter but even with lots of screwdriving, the angled stands weren’t fastened properly. So, now if I nudge the TV, it wobbles a bit. Not that it would fall, but leaves an uneasy feeling nonetheless.

The fascia is decent with slim borders. Besides the outer plastic frame, there are inner bezels on all four sides with the ones on the left and right measuring about 1 cm. We’ll be looking at the display more in the next section.

Like I mentioned in the Realme Smart TV 4K 43″ Review, the remote is small and comfy to hold. It provides the most used functions at fingertips like a mute button, the power button, a mic hole, Google Assistant button, volume rockers, input source key, navigation ring, and hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube.

The remote supports both IR and Bluetooth, the latter of which ensures the remote talks to the TV in any direction and within a fair distance.

Lastly, the backside of the TV is where you’d find the connectivity ports (more on them later) and the power cable. The cord is attached to the TV, which means it has to be placed fairly next to a socket.

Once you plug it in, press the power toggle present at the bottom to boot the TV.

Before we proceed to the screen examination, note that the pics shared here are taken from an iPhone camera and the actual visuals from the TV are better.

Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Audiovisual

The major update to the Realme TV 32″ model is its FHD resolution. Most other TVs in the segment are just HD-ready (1366×768). On paper, the TV also boasts features like 85% NTSC color accuracy, coverage of a 178-degree field of view, and support for HDR formats like HDR10 and HLG. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a TV with all of these features. And they ought to attract movie buffs. I, for one, had a good time watching a bunch of content on it. For instance, the colors were popping on the latest Pixar flick Luca (2021). Live-action films or shows like Munna Bhai MBBS (2003) and Loki (2021) were also enjoyable.

Now although the screen prides to be HDR compliant, it lacks the 10-bit 1.07 billion color system that’s considered requisite for optimum HDR playback. So, tone mapping results in low brightness, color banding, and oversharpened artifacts in some content. The screen show signs of struggle with something involving dark imagery, say, the night scenes from Netflix’s Kingdom (2019). Also, the discernible eyes would notice the aliased or jagged edges of texts and icons.

You can try tweaking and tinkering some of these within the Picture settings. Out of the 7 picture profiles present, the TV defaults to Energy Saving mode. I changed it to Standard and stuck with it as the colors on the rest were excessively saturated. And there’s hardly any discernible difference between some like Movie and Vivid mode. But, by choosing either of those, you could experience punchier and sharper visuals.

The realme remote doesn’t let you switch between these profiles. So, be it picture presets or to tweak sound settings, you have to go to the Device Preferences section in the Settings. The audio from the 4-unit 24W speakers covers a frequency range of 148Hz to 20,000Hz, and it is loud and detailed enough. You also get surround sound and Dolby Audio enhancements. Good and good when set to Standard processing.

Scrolling on…

Realme Smart TV FHD 32 Review: Smarts

Realme Smart TV 4K ships with Android TV (v9) OS. The software is stock with some pre-installed apps. This includes leading OTT apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime. You can also download apps like VLC, Spotify, Puffin, Solid Explorer, etc from Google Play Store. This means you can also download games like Asphalt 9, but to play them, you’d require a gamepad.

You can connect and play games from your laptop. I enjoyed few rounds of Valorant like this. There’s also support for Chromecasting content from the phone to the big screen. Although, it was painfully slow in my trials.

You can also evoke Google Assistant from the button on the remote and talk through the mic, also on the remote. You could ask it to play any show from the available OTT apps or check the real-time weather. All these work but with a few seconds of delay.

Speaking of which, there’s a persistent lag in the entire UI which you’d feel while navigating, opening and closing apps, and doing the aforementioned smart tasks. Perhaps the underlying quad-core MediaTek processor and 1GB RAM are limiting. In any case, this needs some work.

Realme Smart TV Full HD (32″) Review: Connectivity

By the back, you’d find an array of holes including 3 HDMI (Port 1 with ARC CEC and 3rd one also with CEC), an AV, tuner, two USB A slots, an ethernet jack, and a S/PDIF port. For wireless communications, there’s Bluetooth 5.0, Infrared, and 2.4GHz WiFi. If you have a dual-band router, this would be a slight bummer. But if you don’t have WiFi and instead rely on a mobile hotspot, then there’s Google Data Saver mode too. This option lets you watch 3x more content while connected to your phone data. So, by and large, this is an agreeable setup.

Review Verdict: Should you buy Realme Smart TV FHD 32?

The biggest draw of this 32-inch Realme Smart TV is the FHD quality media experience at ₹18,999. It’s a Full HD TV in an HD-ready turf. That in itself throws competition out of the water. This is greatly complemented by the loud and fine-sounding speakers. With an ergonomic and fairly functional remote, you can access major OTT platforms, get voice assistance from Google, and navigate across the simple stock Android TV interface. Being a modern TV, you also get support for casting, a healthy suite of connectivity solutions, a large library of apps, and the TV looks the part.

However, it’s not all sweetness and light here. The HDR performance isn’t up to the mark, the UI lags during app startup, casting, and the stand doesn’t fit well. The latter could be a one-off thing, and you may have better odds. In any case, it’s a good thing that the company offers a full-machine warranty of 1 year and the screen alone gets more than 1-year warranty. After all, timely service matters along with these specs and scores.

So, overall the 32-inch Realme FHD TV stands a value for the money. You just have to bear with some trade-offs that come with the budget tag.