LeEco Super3 X55 Review

The TV industry in India has been stagnant for a really long time, and there’s been a monopoly by the existing companies. Then came LeEco. A lot of companies have been trying for years to crack the TV market in India. It is impressive that LeEco managed to bring their TV lineup to India just a few months after entering the market. They are not the latest variants being offered in China, but they are way better and cheaper than what is being offered in India right now.

Buying, Packaging and Installation

TVs are products which are to be experienced before buying. So it is hard to buy one online without experiencing it. A few of my friends bought the TV, but only after checking my review unit out. Also, the TV is being sold through flash sales which is another hassle.

LeEco Super3 X55 arrived in two separate boxes. The first large box contains the TV itself and the remaining accessories including the remote and power cable. The second small box contains the sleek silver stand. It makes sense to pack it separately since the stand is ridiculously heavy.

For the review unit that I got, I used it with the stand. I screwed the TV and the Stand together myself without getting the help of the installation team.

Although I got the review unit, the buying experience as a consumer is excellent. My friend got the same TV and it was delivered to him the very next day, and the installation team arrived the day later. It was wall mounted in less than 30 minutes. But the best part is they came at the exact time they promised without my friend having to call them even once. That’s the kind of experience I’ve not seen in the most premium brands.

Design

TVs exist in the living room, and it is extremely important that they are flaunt-worthy. The LeEco Super3 X55 lives up to all expectations. It is unique and, unlike anything I’ve seen. It has a thin silver bezel with sharp edges and a Backlit LeTV logo in the bottom left corner. Right next to the Back-Lit Logo is the IR Receiver. It is possible to wall mount the TV, but it removes a key design element. One unique part of the TV is the stand it sits on. It is a curved stand on which the TV sits. It is super sturdy, and the TV is not going to fall off.

LeEco Super3 X55 is not the thinnest TV out there. It is between 15.5mm to 46mm. But it does not matter because the real life performance is important than how slim a TV is. The X55 has Physical Buttons on the left for navigation, volume and other basic interactions. It has various ports on the bottom and right side.

Connectivity

LeEco Super3 X55 is not short on ports. One the back, it has 1 HDMI, VGA, 3.5mm Audio In, LAN, Audio Out, AV Input, RF and Optical Sound.

On the right side, it has an SD Card Port, 1 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, 3.5mm Audio out and 2 HDMI Ports.

There’s one USB 3.0 Port on the top to mount a camera. All these ports are more than enough to connect with pretty much anything you might want to. Along with all this, it has Wi-Fi to stream content wirelessly with AC support. For power, it has a 2m cable which should be long enough for most homes.

Picture

The most important part of any TV is it’s picture quality and LeEco shines in that for what you pay. For starters, this is the cheapest 55″ 4K TV. Similar sized TVs offered by the competition is at least 2x or even 3x higher and they are just marginally better.

The LeEco Super3 X55 is an unbelievably good 4K TV. The TV has a resolution of 3840 x 2160p and has a refresh rate of 60Hz. It can play 4K content at 60fps. The response time though, is at 8ms, theoretically not making it ideal for gaming. But I never had issues while gaming and the slower response rate is not noticeable.

The Overall Brightness is rated at 350nits, but while playing similar content, it was not as bright as the other TVs I compared with. But once again, they were better only by a small margin and it is entirely okay. The contrast levels were good with excellent levels of Black.

Looking at the image quality, it is hard not to recommend the TV to someone who is on the lookout for a new one. It is amazing to see LeEco has not compromised on the image quality by cutting down on the cost.

Sound

The LeEco Super3 X55 has 20W Speaker (Two 10W Speakers). These speakers are placed down and sounds flat. As a rule of thumb, if you’re buying a high-end TV, invest in a good home theatre system. It is all the easier with the X55 as you can use all that money you saved on a sick speaker system!

The speakers are not good enough to give you a good experience. But so is the speaker on any of the high-end TVs. While buying a TV, speakers should not be something you should look into unless you absolutely cannot buy a home theatre system for some reason(Especially after saving all that money)!

Hardware

LeEco Super3 X55 is a Smart TV, and naturally, the internals is important now. It runs on an ARM Cortex-A17 Quad core 1.4GHz Processor and Quad-core Mali-T760 MP4 GPU. It uses HEVC/H.265 for hardware video decoding and also has HEVC/H.265 hardware video decoding. Regarding Storage, the Super3 X55 has 2GB DDR3 RAM and 8GB ROM. For wireless connectivity, it has Wi-Fi with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 to connect the remote.

Ignoring all that, does the TV perform well? YES.

Software

The LeEco Super3 X55 is a Smart TV which runs on Android 5.0, with their flavor eUI. This is where the TV falls short. The eUI does not live up to expectations, and the App Store is extremely limited and feels severely crippled. We wish it ran Android’s TV OS.

The software is made up of three sections:

• Input screen to watch content from all the input devices including Set Top Box and game consoles.
• Live Screen to stream live content which is included with the TV.
• Apps section for all the apps you can load.

Live Screen pulls in content from Yupp TV. This is a part of the 2 years of VIP membership which is included when you buy the TV. This content is painfully maxed out at 396p for a 4K TV. But this is something that is not included in any of the other TVs and is something unique to LeEco TVs. It is a nice feature to have for someone like me because I do not own a subscription to Live TV and I can use this when I need.

Finally Apps, the most important part of any smart TV. The Super3 X55 has it’s own App store and not Google Play Store. This app store is extremely limited and does not have most of the standard apps. There is an option of  side loading mobile apps through the file manager. One instance was with Netflix. Our team managed to sideload the Phone version of Netflix app and had a not so great experience with it. Navigation was hard, and we could not get the content in 4K. Also, we could not load the TV OS version of the Netflix app or any other TV OS app. To add to our disappointment, we were not able to get the YouTube App to stream in 4K.

A part of the VIP membership is also content from EROS Now and these movies stream at 1080P which is great! Due to these shortfalls, the Super3 X55 is not the best Smart TV(But is an amazing 4K TV). You can also screencast your mobile to mirror content right from it.

Click on the image to view bigger.

There’s a file manager app which is used to install apps and play files from USB Drives. It could play most of the formats we threw at it, including 4K. This is a common problem with almost every manufacturer. The ‘Smart TV’ part comes with its catch. The best option would be to get something like the NVIDIA Shield to get the best Smart TV experience in 4K.

Remote

Super3 X55 includes a remote which is capable of everything you need with a small footprint. It has a good range and you don’t have to point at the TV because it uses Bluetooth for communication. It is used to do basic navigation and volume/channel switching. There’s a LeTV buttons which brings an overlay of common shortcuts. But the major part of the remote is the voice. The remote has a Microphone and a Mic Button. But, it has not yet been enabled and gives a message that it is still under development. Hope it is enabled soon in a future update and works well!

Conclusion

The LeEco Super3 X55 is a huge deal for the Indian TV segment which has been stagnant for a long time, without much innovation because of zero competition. New companies have tried and failed to enter the Indian market, and LeEco seems to have cracked it. Also, there’s the problem of having to buy it online without experiencing it first. Super3 X55 is not the best Smart TV, but it is an amazing 4K TV at a fraction of the cost of other similar 4K TVs from different manufacturers. Our recommendation is to get the LeEco Super 3 X55 and spend the money you saved on a Kickass Speaker System along with the insanely awesome NVIDIA Shield for the best experience!