Just when you thought new product launches for 2020 had come to an end, Xiaomi jumps into the ring and announces the launch of a QLED TV. Xiaomi has taken to Twitter to make the announcement and the tweet reads, “Mi Fans, an all new TV experience awaits. #MiQLEDTV4K #QuantumLeapsAhead. December 16th,12 Noon. Stay Tuned”. The tweet is accompanied by a short 15-second video, highlighting the date and time along with the caption, “Quantum Leaps Ahead”. This is undoubtedly hinting at the QLED display the TV will come with.
https://twitter.com/XiaomiIndia/status/1335868089473277952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The Flipkart listing of the upcoming Mi QLED TV confirms the quantum dot backlighting for the TV. In 2020, we saw a number of QLED TVs launch but the one we got our hands on was the TCL C715. You can check out our review of the TV here.
Coming back to the Mi QLED TV, the Flipkart listing has us intrigued with some specifications. One of the highlights is HDMI 2.1 with eARC. For the past 2 years, we have seen flagship TVs launch with support for eARC. While eARC is an HDMI 2.1 feature, most TVs have only support eARC and no other HDMI 2.1 features like VRR, ALLM and 4K at 120Hz. It will be interesting to see if any of these other features are supported on the TV. While Sony has the X90H (review) with two HDMI 2.1 ports, we have seen LG launch its 2020 OLED TVs and NanoCell TVs with all 4 HDMI ports supporting HDMI 2.1.
The Mi QLED TV also has support for dual-band Wi-Fi and this is important as 5GHz offers a better experience when streaming 4K video. Speaking of 4K, the supports the UHD resolution along with support for HDR 10+, and Dolby Vision. HDR 10+ is a step above HDR 10 as unlike HDR 10 which supports static metadata data for HDR content, HDR 10+ is a lot like Dolby Vision supporting Dynamic metadata.
It looks like Xiaomi will continue offering a dual-OS for its Mi QLED TV giving users the beauty of Android TV and PatchWall. However, it remains to be seen if we get some new features or additions to PatchWall on this new TV. Xiaomi has been evolving PatchWall with new features on a regular basis.
What will be interesting to see is whether the TV brings with it any dimming zones and what peak brightness it can achieve.