Great for movies, not so much for gaming

In recent years, Xiaomi has been working on changing its image from a value-conscious player to a full spectrum brand. Part of this transition involved spinning off the Redmi brand into its separate entity to focus on more affordable smart devices across its various product lines.

Clearly, the strategy is working for the brand as it starts getting more ambitious with its extensive portfolio. Alongside the high-end Mi 11 series of smartphones, Xiaomi recently introduced the Mi QLED TV 75 for the Indian market. As the name suggests, this is a 75-inch television that sits a step above the recently launched Redmi 65-inch television. Beyond the obvious difference in size, Xiaomi is focusing on image quality with a QLED panel and, of course, value.

Has Xiaomi made the right compromises in its effort to bring out one of the most affordable large screen QLED televisions? Find out in the Android Authority Xiaomi Mi QLED TV 75 review.

About this Mi QLED TV 75 review: I used the Mi QLED TV 75-inch television for six days running software version QTG3.200305.006.1328. The unit was provided to Android Authority by Xiaomi for this review.

What you need to know about the Xiaomi Mi QLED TV 75

• Mi QLED TV 75-inch: Rs. 1,19,999 (~$1,600)

The Mi QLED TV 75 is a 4K TV taking a value-focused approach towards large-screen displays. Priced at Rs. 1,19,999 in India, it undercuts other QLED sets by a significant margin, and the only competitors price-wise stick to regular LCD panels. The television can be purchased via Mi.com and Flipkart and is available only in gray. Xiaomi has not announced plans for a global launch.

The feature set includes most modern codecs and formats including Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HDR 10+. Built on top of Android TV with a serving of Patchwall on the side, it offers access to a wide range of streaming services as well.

How’s the design?

The Mi QLED TV 75 takes a lot of inspiration from the 55-inch model and looks suitably premium. It’s affordable in the broader scheme of large-screen televisions but is still Xiaomi’s most premium television. It’s very evident that Xiaomi has paid a lot of attention to detail.

This starts from the general display where the bezels are suitably small. A dark silver frame runs all around the display with minimal branding. A nondescript Mi logo sits front and center, while a barely-there “Designed by Xiaomi” logo is placed on the right side of the frame.

A major change this time around is the television stand. Gone are the side-mounted metal stands, and the Mi TV 75 gets a heavy-duty centrally-mounted metal stand that looks rather handsome. The TV is, of course, VESA compatible, and Xiaomi will wall-mount it for free should you require the service.

Port selection is exactly the same as we saw on the Mi Q1 55-inch and includes two HDMI 2.0 ports and a single HDMI 2.1 port which has eARC support. You’ll also find dual USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, audio jack as well as an optical output. For legacy devices, Xiaomi has included an RF port as well, so you should be able to connect a particularly old set-top box or a retro console dating back as far as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Finally, you’ll also find a composite input. It’s fair to say that the port selection is robust.

On the wireless side, the TV includes both Bluetooth 5.0 as well as Wi-Fi and things are plenty good all around. I had no trouble streaming high bitrate content from a local server, and streaming services worked just fine in 4K. Connectivity was good enough even with the television at a distance from my Wi-Fi router.

All in all, the Mi QLED 75-inch is premium enough to pass off as a high-end product. It’s certainly not as good-looking as an equivalent product from Sony or LG, but I doubt users will find anything to complain about here.

What’s the Mi QLED TV software like?

A key differentiator for Mi televisions is the Patchwall interface. It’s not as flashy as, say, WebOS on LG TVs, but it makes up for it with integration across a wide range of regional and international streaming services. More importantly, the television pulls DTH or Direct to Home services and seamlessly integrates them into the interface.

Patchwall is easy to use and beautifully integrates DTH services with online streaming content.

What does this mean for users? Better recommendations, for one. The universal search works across 25 streaming services and can also tie in with over-the-air television to dial in the recommendations and suggestions. It all works rather well if you care about over-the-air television, and is a nice value add. Meanwhile, you can easily drop out to the standard Android TV interface with the click of a button if you, like me, prefer the standard interface. Regardless, the set also has built-in Chromecast functionality.

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That’s for the good stuff. However, I faced serious issues with the software optimization on the Mi QLED TV 75. There were more than a few occasions when the interface locked up for a few seconds. The volume bar would also lock up at times, and there were moments when the remote was completely unresponsive. I’ve been told that many of these bugs have been fixed in an upcoming update. However, there is no fixed timeline for when that update will be out.

What’s it like to use the Mi QLED TV 75?

Picture quality and features

Xiaomi has thrown a lot of tech into the panel here, and it shows. The 4K 8-bit panel is HDR 10, HDR 10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision compatible. Peak brightness is rated at 1,000 nits, and the 192 dimming zones allow for very effective control over backlighting. The Q in the QLED comes from the quantum dot layer that helps improve contrast levels. And yes, the panel itself is 120Hz capable — with a caveat.

Like many televisions, I wasn’t too impressed by the out-of-the-box color calibration. Spend a bit of time with the picture settings though, and you can eke out a lot more from the television.  There’s a wide range of picture settings and pulling down the backlight level, sharpness, and turning off MEMC alone can bring about a world of difference.

Contrast levels are excellent and the black levels are particularly great thanks to that full array dimming. I’m partial to OLED panels, but the Mi TV pulled its weight with aplomb and I never really felt I was missing out while watching a movie like Hereditary.

The panel quality is very good — once calibrated.

Over on the gaming side of things is where I noticed some peculiarities. First up, while the panel itself is 120Hz rated, the television can’t accept an external 120Hz signal in 4K because of the decoder being used. This means that next-gen consoles are locked out of 120Hz support in 4K, making Xiaomi’s claims of this being a 120Hz television quite disingenuous. Xiaomi claims the television will support 1080p/120fps input over HDMI, but I was unable to verify this since the Mi QLED TV 75 altogether refused to detect my PlayStation 5 later into the testing period. Additionally, there’s no variable refresh rate (VRR) support either.

And that’s before we get to the real issue here. Chalk it down to bandwidth issues, or the aforementioned decoder, but I had serious issues keeping two HDMI devices connected to the television. The PlayStation 5 has a known issue that can cause flickering with certain televisions, but reducing the transfer rate fixes this in almost all cases — it certainly did with my older LG 4K set.

However, before it flat out failed to be detected every time, the only recourse with the Mi QLED TV 75 was to either reduce the PlayStation’s resolution to 1080p or, weirdly, to remove the Fire TV Stick I had in the other HDMI port. Removing the secondary streaming stick fixed the issue. I’ve reached out to Xiaomi about these issues. The company says it is investigating it, but no solutions have been offered at the time of publishing.

Audio

Xiaomi has talked up the audio prowess of its new television. Offering up a total of 30W of output using two tweeters and four woofers, there’s plenty of volume. However, that volume doesn’t really translate to a well-separated sound stage. Despite the drivers being spread out across the expansive size of the television, I found myself constantly adjusting the volume to hear dialogue.

The TV supports eARC over HDMI and can shoot over Dolby Atmos audio to a receiver if you want to integrate it into a home theater system.

How is the remote?

Xiaomi has a unified remote across its television and streaming device portfolio, and that’s exactly what you get here. It would have been nice to see a more premium remote considering the high-end positioning of the television, but what’s here is functional.

Xiaomi’s included remote gets the job done, but a premium television deserves a higher quality remote.

There’s a direction pad, direct shortcuts for Netflix and Prime Video, as well as buttons to drop you into Patchwall or the Android TV interface as well a back button. I wish some of these were customizable. The volume button doubles up as a mute button by double pressing. However, it is way too easy to mute TV audio while quickly tapping down the volume levels and Xiaomi should add a function to disable this feature.

Smart Hub functionality

Xiaomi has also talked about smart hub functionality for the TV, but, realistically, this is just an extension to the Google Assistant built into every Android TV. You can invoke the function by tapping the Google Assistant button on the remote and voicing out your command. It is possible to toggle the mic off.

What’s different here is the inclusion of four far-field microphones which should let you simply call out for the smart assistant by using the “Hey Google” command and the TV should pick it up. I had reliability issues here and it rarely worked for me.

Value and competition

Despite the issues — of which there are quite a few — the Mi QLED 75 offers value in spades. Not only is it one of the more affordable 75-inch models around, but it also tosses in a QLED panel to stand out amidst the competition. The picture quality, once calibrated, is excellent, and that’s not just true for its price point.

However, it is prudent to look at the alternatives, some of which include more affordable options.

The most affordable of the bunch is the Kodak 75-inch 4K TV. Priced at Rs. 99,999 (~$1,333), the TV has a similar feature set including Android TV support. However, the lack of a QLED panel means that picture quality won’t be quite as good.

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Meanwhile, the TCL 75CS2US priced at Rs. 1,49,999 (~$2,000) is another alternative that one-ups Xiaomi’s offering with Harman Kardon tuned speakers.

You can also find older models by LG and Samsung, but missing features or lackluster picture quality in comparison to QLED panels make them hard to recommend. For a true leap in picture quality, you will have to spend an order of magnitude higher. You could, however, downsize to a smaller model and pick up an LG CX OLED television for not much more money.

Xiaomi Mi QLED TV 75 review: The verdict

I’ve got mixed feelings about Xiaomi’s new 75-inch QLED television and a lot of that has to do with the mass-market approach the company tends to take. If all you want to do is watch movies on a big screen, there’s a lot to like here. The panel, once tuned, looks very good and not just for the price. The aesthetics blend in well with most decors. I’m positive this is a product that will spur other TV manufacturers to cut prices — something we’ve seen Xiaomi already act as the catalyst for in the smartphone space.

The Mi QLED 75 is an excellent deal for avid consumers of movies and TV shows, but gamers might want to look elsewhere.

However, the TV is decidedly a first-generation product. I can look past the lack of high-end features like VRR, but Xiaomi’s claims of 120Hz support are disingenuous at best considering there appears to be no way to get a high refresh rate signal to the TV at 4K resolution. There are also the reliability issues I faced with external sources. Finally, the UI lock-ups and glitches are not something you expect in a high-end product such as this.

Priced at Rs. 1,19,999 (~$1,600), the Mi QLED TV 75 is relatively affordable for a large screen TV, but I’m afraid the company might have cut a few too many corners. It’ll suffice for media consumption, but more evolved users might want to downsize and look at some of the options on the market like the LG CX.