The model that we are about to put to the test has just arrived in stores with an apparent purpose: to reinforce the mid-range of this brand. And to do so, it resorts to a strategy that has given Xiaomi perfect results with other proposals from its immense portfolio and consists of giving us exciting features at a groundbreaking price. However, this is not all. In addition, the TV F2 model is the first of this company that bets on Amazon’s Fire TV operating system.
Fire OS 7 has pleasantly surprised us.
In the first lines of this article, I have revealed what is undoubtedly one of the main hallmarks of this television: it is the first from Xiaomi that offers us the Fire TV platform. Running Fire OS revision, seven is powered by a MediaTek MT9020 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor and Mali G52 MP2 graphics logic that work hand-in-hand with 2GB of main memory.
During my tests, I was pleasantly surprised by the fluidity with which this platform runs on this hardware. If we stick to the time, it takes to launch and close the applications and the agility it allows us to move through the interface, it has nothing to envy the latest version of Google TV that I have tried on such an ambitious television. Like the outstanding A95K MASTER Series from Sony.
Even the interface of Fire OS 7 is reasonably similar to that of the latest revision of Google TV. The contents of the different platforms we have access to monopolize all the protagonism, and it seems to me that it is the ideal. In addition, it is possible to customize the interface very simply and decide which apps we prefer to have in the foreground to spend as little time as possible launching them. Nothing to object to here.
The contents monopolize all the protagonism. It is also possible to customize the interface very simple and decide which apps we prefer to have in the foreground.
On the other hand, like the latest revisions of the operating systems for televisions with which it competes, Fire OS 7 unifies the content we are playing in a single section of the interface, even if it comes from different platforms. And it implements an area with recommendations that draws on the content we are reproducing to suggest others on a similar theme successfully.
Other features of Fire OS 7 that are worth not overlooking are that the voice assistant that it offers us, as we can guess, is Alexa; it incorporates a control center from which we can act on the behavior of the devices compatible with this assistant that we have in our house; and finally, it is compatible with Apple AirPlay.
The section of Fire OS 7 that combines the TV’s adjustment parameters is intuitive. Each option is where it should be so we can locate it effortlessly.
In the following photograph, we can see the section of the Amazon operating system that brings together all the adjustment options. Honestly, I like it more than the way Google TV solves this section because it seems to me that the parameters are better organized. People who haven’t used Fire OS before will find the tuning option they’re looking for without difficulty.
The initial calibration that Xiaomi offers us on this television has room for improvement, although its performance as it leaves the factory is not bad at all. The ideal if we want to get the most out of it is to calibrate it with a probe and a professional tool. Still, it is also possible to tune it without too much difficulty if we are used to dealing with the image parameters of televisions. A notable point in its favor is that I have not missed any relevant image quality adjustment parameters.
In its price segment, it will be a formidable rival.
To test its image quality, I used some of the Blu-ray Disc and 4K Blu-ray movies that I usually use, among which it is worth highlighting ‘The Revenant, ‘The Arrival,’ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘ Blade Runner 2049’ or ‘Spider-Man: Far from home, among others. I also used content from Netflix and YouTube that I know very well.
Or digital, and in it, we can see the distribution of the RGB sub-pixels of the inorganic matrix. IPS panels cast light at a greater angle than VA types, so they don’t need to resort to relatively aggressive light-diffusing coverage. This is why the color hardly degrades when we look at the screen from a tilted position.
One of the weak points of IPS matrices is their average static contrast ratio. The specifications of this Xiaomi television it has not reflected what its native contrast is, although its performance in a space with low ambient light is compelling. Its blacks do not have the depth of those that a TV with a VA LCD panel and FALD backlight gives us, but they are not bad at all.
On the other hand, in terms of its maximum brightness delivery capacity, the LED backlighting of this television is up to the task, although without standing out. The brightest regions of the frames that are part of the HDR10 content have intensity, but this TV suffers from a certain level of blooming and ghosting in unfavorable circumstances.
Blooming is a defect that manifests itself in the form of halos surrounding each frame’s brightest areas, and ghosting causes the appearance of a slight trail when a very bright object moves against a dark background. However, these flaws are subtle, so they will usually have a little noticeable impact on our experience.
Another weakness IPS-type LCD panels often have is that they are prone to light leakage in the corners and edges. In the following photograph, we can intuit with some clarity (when you have the television in front of you, it can be seen much better) that, indeed, this matrix lets out some light on the edges and corners, but it is nothing serious. It has managed to pass the backlight uniformity test better than other TVs in its price segment.
