Daiwa is not a popular brand when it comes to TVs India. But I did some googling and found some interesting stuff on them. Daiwa TV is from one of the largest TV manufacturers in India, Videotex International. They take care of assembling for most of the other popular Indian TV Brands like Intex and Micromax.
Most of the other Indian Brands source everything from China and get it assembled here. They just rebrand existing products with their logo. But Diva TV took a different approach. They decided to design their own TV and manufacture it here in India. This is unheard of in the budget TV segment.
Daiwa launched in April 2016 exclusively on ShopClues, hoping to sell 50 TVs in the first month. But by the end of the month, they had a backorder of 500 TVs. Once they had enough demand, they were on other platforms like Amazon and PayTm. By the end of last year, they were selling thousands of TVs.
Display
As the name suggests, it’s a 40-inch HD TV with a display resolution of 1920×1080. There’s nothing special about the display. The image is sharp, and the colour reproduction is good. Like any other HD TV of this size, images do not look good when you’re close to the display. But it’s a delight to watch when there is enough distance between you and the TV.
The TV has a decent anti-reflective coating for natural light. The viewing angles are good without any colour shifts.
Audio
The TV comes with a couple of inbuilt speakers which barely do the job. They are extremely flat and there’s no Bass in it. But it would be hard to judge any TV for its audio. None of the TVs these days come with a good speaker in them to make them thinner. Some high-end TVs don’t even have a speaker in them. If you want a good Audio Experience, you need to get a separate home theatre system like any other TV.
Connectivity
For connectivity, the TV comes with two HDMI ports in the bottom, one VGA port, one Ethernet port, one Optical Audio-Out port and two USB 2.0 Ports to the side. Apart from Ethernet, the TV also comes with Wi-Fi for internet connectivity.
The only shortfall is the limited HDMI ports. The TV comes with just two of those which is inadequate. To make things worse, none of them are on the side. Both HDMI Ports are at the bottom.
Internals
Most of the budget Smart TVs come with terrible internals making them barely usable. Not this one. This one comes with 1GB RAM, 4GB ROM, and Quad-Core Processor. Most of the entry-level Smart TVs come with less than half these specs which barely manage to run any apps.
Remote
I was genuinely surprised with the remote for this TV. Daiwa gives not one, but two remotes for this TV which is impressive. The first remote is huge, and looks like any other remote with a number pad and media controls. It works on infrared and has shortcut buttons for Netflix, Youtube and Hotstar.
The second remote is a lot more interesting. It’s a tiny Bluetooth remote built for Smart TV’s for which the Bluetooth Dongle uses one of the USB ports. The remote also has infrared to do the basic functions like turning ON the TV and controlling the volume. These basic function buttons are on one side of the remote.
On the other side, there’s a complete QWERTY Keyboard making it easy to interact with apps on TV. It does not end there. The TV also has an inbuilt gyroscope to enable a mouse and use it. The mouse charges using Micro-USB and the battery lasts pretty long.
Software
The TV runs on Android, with their own custom skin on it. It also manages to run it will, thanks to the specs onboard.
When it comes to installing new apps, you have three different options. The first option is Daiwa TV’s own App Store which can apps that work well on the TV. Then, there’s an option to download directly from the Play Market. But these apps might not work well on the TV. The third option is to side-load apps.
The TV runs on a mobile version of Android, not Android TV OS which is limited to very few manufacturers. So do not expect to run TV OS apps. You are limited to over-blown Android Apps. It’s not a big deal because you forgot about it when you’re actually playing some media.
The software also comes with M.Cash to stream media from mobile devices. It’s not as easy as using ChromeCash or Airplay, its good to have an option.
Conclusion
Daiwa Smart TV does so many things right. It is a brilliant Smart TV which can fulfil every media need you have. The only shortcoming with the TV is its limited HDMI ports. But it’s not a huge deal since you can expand it with an inexpensive external adapter. Daiwa 40” costs Rs. 23,000 and is available on Amazon.
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