Thomson has launched a new range of TVs in India. The televisions run on the Android TV OS and Not AOSP. They run on Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. The TVs will be available in four screen sizes – 43-inches priced at Rs 29,999, 50-inches priced at Rs 34,999, 55-inches priced at Rs 38,999 and 65-inches priced at Rs 59,999. The TVs will come with a voice-enabled remote control that will support the Google Assistant. The remote control will also have hotkeys for Netflix and Google Play.
Talking about the new series Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO of SPPL, Exclusive Brand Licensee of Thomson TVs in India, says "We are honoured to be part of Android tv journey in India, we need to thank Google for all the support. We are proud to announce Thomson 65 inches Android tv, which will be India’s first 4K official Android that echoes the 'Make in India' initiative. It is a great feeling especially when you have seen the evolution of smart TVs; we had launched Thomson tv with open source 4.4 version and today we are launching an official Android with the latest Oreo version. This tv will change the whole ecosystem in India as it comes with some great features like Google Assistant, Netflix, some 5000 more TV apps/games, an inbuilt Chrome-Cast, Dolby sound, 2.5 GB RAM, 16 GB ROM and much more. This will be our first premium tv at a super affordable price starting from 29,999/- for 43 inches, to a never before seen price, 65 inches at 59999/-."
All the new Thomson TVs support a resolution of 4K along with support for HDR 10. The TVs can also decode Dolby Audio and DTS TruSurround. They comes with a set of preloaded apps including Netflix, Youtube, Google Store Play, Google Play Music and Google Play Movies.
This isn't the first time we have seen the Android TV OS come to budget TVs. Xiaomi launched TVs running on the Android TV OS in 2018. the only downside to those TVs is that they don't support Netflix or Prime VVideo's natively yet. TCL is another brand which has budget TVs running on the Android TV OS. Those TVs support Netflix as well. It is nice to see more TV makers move from AOSP to Android TV OS as Android TV works better as an OS for the TVs. It has a smoother UI, Google Assistant support and access too apps which are built for the TV from the ground up.
Stay tuned as we will bring you our review of the newly launched Thomson TV soon.