We have the Micromax 42C0050UHD, 42-inch 4K Smart TV in our labs for review. Priced at Rs. 39,990, this Micromax TV is the cheapest 4K TV in India at the moment and has managed to create quite a buzz amongst prospective TV buyers wanting to buy a big screen TV without spending a fortune. While our detailed review is still underway, here's a quick first look at the build, features, picture quality and overall impressions of the common man's 4K TV by Micromax.
Looks and build: The Micromax 42C0050UHD looks sleek and very stylish. The base (stand) is an all metal unit and has a minimalist yet stylish feel to it. The metal strip on the bottom frame though, could have been avoided. An all-black piano finish frame along with the chrome metal stand would looked a lot more classsy. The piano finish frame is all plastic, just like most 42-inch TVs in the market. Also, the screen has a matte finish, a big plus in comparison to some of the overly reflective glossy screens offered by other vendors.
The back continues with the glossy finish and the stand assembly is pretty straight forward. You get the usual provision to attach a wall-mount. The wall-mount brackets are a part of the package.
In terms of thickness and profile, being an Edge-lit LED TV, the TV is fairly slim and it gets bulkier as you move from the edges towards the center. While not being the slimmest LED TV around, the Micromax 42C0050UHD isn't bulky by any standards.
The bezels on this TV are pretty slim, as expected. Most new TVs in the market sport slim bezels to ensure maximum screen-to-body ratio, further accentuating the big screen impact.
All ports are located at the left side of the back panel. The LAN, digital out, component, PC (D-Sub), AV-in and Antenna ports are bottom facing, while the other ports (shown in next slide) can be accessed more conveniently from the left side.
Image on the right: The TV provides 3 HDMI ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 USB 3.0 port and a SD card reader as well. Apart from the physical connectivity, on the wireless front, being a Smart TV you get built in WiFi and Miracast support.
The TV offers bottom firing speakers rated at 8W x2. These are one-way (single driver), full range speakers.
The supplied remote is fairly small and feels handy, a start contrast in comparison to the button-laden remotes offered by big screen TVs sold couple of years ago. Though, few buttons does have its downside in terms of few direct access buttons for common commands. The remote has a built-in gyro sensor for motion base gaming along with a microphone for voice control.
Picture quality: Out of the box, we were pleasantly surprised by the image quality in terms of color depth, contrast and black levels. After our recent review of the Micromax Grande 50-inch Full HD Micromax TV, our expectations were fairly modest and in comparison the, Micromax 42C0050UHD surely raised the bar in terms of image quality (more on this over the next few slides)
4K content on a 42-inch native 4K panel does look razor sharp. You can get really close to the screen without experiencing pixelation. While the Micromax 42C0050UHD does offer punchy colors, the colors do appear quite a bit over-saturated, hinting towards an attempt to make everything look extra bright and vibrant. Thankfully, you can tweak the settings (shown in following slides) individually to achieve a better balance.
The TV boasts of 178 degree vieweing angles and we can confirm that the viewing angles are pretty good in terms of maintaining color fidelity at extreme angles. We did not notice any prominent color shift.
While the core specifications mentioned on the website about the TV claim the panel to offer 60Hz true refresh rate (don't believe the ultra clarity 120Hz motion index, it is just a marketing jargon). We were disspointed to discover that at 4K resolution, the Micromax 42C0050UHD only supports a measely refresh rate of 30Hz. So, forget about using the TV as a Gaming PC if you want to run it at 4K resolution. At 1080p, the panel natively offers 60Hz refresh rate, which is the bare minimum for any TV. So, this TV isn't recommended if you plan to watch fast action based sports, movies or do gaming at 4K/UHD resolution. For all of that, you will have to tone down the resolution to 1080p.
The 'settings' button on the remote evokes the above shown menu, where you can quickly access common settings. Also, we played 4K content via the USB 3.0 port and the content played fine. As far as file format support is concerned, we the TV supports most commonly used formats in 1080p. In case of 4K compressed content, the TV had trouble playing one of the files (more on this in our detailed review)
You get a fair amount of control over picture quality, you can (and will surely need to) tweak a lot of aspects around the image quality to find the sweet spot as per your taste.
The 'Motion Optimization' option is the first setting that you should turn off, it is enabled by default and ends up playing everything at an exagerrated pace. The setting is actually supposed to help you deal with judder when playing fast-paced content, but given the fact that it is a software controlled gimmick, we suggest you turn it off.
Advanced controls for picture let you adjust backlight levels along with few more options that we preferred to be turned off. Though, the 'Dynamic Depth' setting did allow for deeper colors and better contrast.
On the sound front, you get basic options with some presets.
You can further tweak the sound output by using the 5-band equalizer.
The Network option in the settings menu is the simplest and most straightforward place to be in.
You can update the firmware of the TV over WiFi, the TV ships with the latest firmware.
The Micromax 42C0050UHD offers an app, allowing you to control the TV via your phone.
Just scan the QR code to launch the app install. And it works!
The TV comes with a 'Smart Browser', with bookmarks to popular sites and services.
As mentioned earlier, the Micromax 42C0050UHD does offer voice control, via the remote. We tried some basic searches and found a success rate of 60%, 6 out of 10 commands were recognized accurately.
The 'App management' menu keeps a tab on App installs, yes the TV supports Android and comes with Jelly Bean version of Android backed by a dual-core SoC and 2GB RAM. Though we experienced some trouble trying to figure out a way in which we can login using our own credentials (more on this in our review).
The 'App Store' gives you access to download Apps (we will update this part with more details, once we solve the log-in issue). This is not the Google App Store.
We tried downloading a game to test motion gaming using the gyroscope based remote, did not work as expected in the first go. We will update you guys as soon as we have our final report on this part of the TV.
The 'History' menu is a nice way to track back to the last used apps, media files and webpages loaded via the browser.
Overall, on the basis of our experience with the TV so far ( 2 hours), we like the fact that it is an pretty good 1080p TV in terms of image quality and Smart TV features. It can handle 4K content, but the 30Hz hurdle does put us off. At, Rs. 39,990, the Micromax 42C0050UHD does seem to offer a lot in terms of value and features. Stay-tuned for our detailed review where we will pass our verdict on who should buy it and who should skip buying the Micromax 42C0050UHD.