Hisense 108 cm (43 inches) Android 11 Series Full HD Smart Certified Android LED TV

The TV screen was packed and delivered with protection using ample plastic lamination. There were 4 different protective lamination in front. There was one big lamination which covered the main screen. Then there were 2 lamination like tapes to hold this main lamination. Then there was one lamination which covered the Hisense brand name panel which is located at the bottom of the screen.The volume control bar is 100% opaque. It is very bright and white and opaque and spoils the view. Moreover, when I try to change volume then this volume bar appears at the middle bottom of the screen. It is not helpful because it completely obscures the subtitles / captions and various other on screen texts or images. This volume bar is TV’s system feature or perhaps it is an Android 11 feature. Location of the volume bar should be on the left or right of the screen not bottom. Else, they should have provided an option to change the transparency of the volume bar.When this TV is about to go to standby it shows a black pop-up in the middle of the screen with the countdown timer. There is no way to cancel or snooze this timer at that moment. So it is not helpful especially if you are watching something important. TV will turn off to standby and you can’t do anything about it at that moment.The location, size, shape, etc of the mute button on the remote is not good at all. Mute button should be of a unique shape. It should be bigger than other buttons and easier to access. Button has been placed in the middle of all buttons which makes it difficult to access it conveniently/ immediately if you are watching something in dark.I had a Sony LCD TV before. It had an excellent feature of keeping the screen off while audio was still on. It was a very helpful feature. This feature is not available in this TV. I miss that feature.Moreover, the Sony TV had another very useful feature which this TV doesn’t have. The display area settings. There were 3 options in the display area settings in the Sony TV viz +1, 0, and -1 which were very helpful. I miss that feature. This feature isn’t available in this TV.Options of screensaver timer are few and fixed eg 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc. I wish it was possible to set the screensaver timer of choice eg 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, etc minutes.In the Play Store app the installed apps often don’t update even after several manual attempts let alone auto update. This is not good.The OS is Android 11 and still there is no dark mode feature in the TV. There should be a page up / down feature in the remote. This feature is needed quite often in various apps to browse through various genres, titles, etc. Tapping the up, down, left , right, etc keys repeatedly only to move between titles one by one requires a lot of effort and is a waste of time. It also causes hardware damage because the up, down, left, right, etc keys will wear off quickly and I’ll have to buy a new remote soon.I was focused on so many other features, prices, etc that while making a decision to buy this TV I totally forgot about confirming the energy rating before placing the order. When I placed the order nowhere was it mentioned on Amazon that it has only a 3 star energy rating. I am disappointed with this. I found out that this TV has only a 3 star energy rating after I received the delivery. The energy rating is mentioned on the sticker attached to the protective plastic lamination on the TV screen.I had a very bad wall mount installation experience with the service company associated with this TV brand but that’s a different and a long story and I guess will not be appreciated if I include that in this review.There are several options in TV Options. One of which is the picture option. In this picture option there is a very helpful option called display mode. This display mode has 6 options. One of which is a 4:3 aspect ratio which is indeed very helpful. But unfortunately there is no option to zoom the video if you have selected this 4:3 aspect ratio. Due to which there are a lot of empty black spaces (black bars) on all 4 sides of the video. These bars or empty spaces are absolutely all right. But I also need to see the 4:3 videos in zoomed in / zoomed out mode sometimes. So an additional setting of zoom in and zoom out “after” selecting 4:3 display mode would have been terrific. Wish they had also included a 7th option of cinema aspect ratio ie 2.39:1 in the picture option. There is no aspect ratio above 16:9.There are 7 modes in picture mode. If you try to change picture mode then there will be a pop-up warning saying “this option may result in higher energy consumption”. Now amongst these 7 modes there is an ENERGY SAVING mode also. It is surprising that when you try to select this mode the same pop-up warning appears. This is contradictory. How can selecting energy saving mode result in higher energy consumption?The home screen interface is not easy to use. The selected item or title should be prominent or conspicuous e.g. the selected item should be surrounded by a white / coloured outline so that it is easy to decipher which item is currently under selection. At present the selected item just gets a little bigger which is often difficult to distinguish from other items.There is no option to download movies, shows, etc in any app unlike mobile phones, tablets, etc. There is no download option at all even in major apps such as Netflix, Amazon prime video, YouTube etc to watch something when offline. This is unexpected and disappointing.I have a Bluetooth version 4.2 headphones. I could not find the Bluetooth version of the TV mentioned anywhere in the TV. I could not find the Bluetooth version of the tablet mentioned anywhere in the tablet either. The only info available in the tablet is that the Bluetooth AVRCP version is 1.4. The Bluetooth version of the tablet is probably 4.2 as per the information available on the tablet company / brand website. So anyway, I have already paired the headphones with this TV and the tablet. I usually connect headphones either with the tablet or this TV. Now if the headphones are already connected with the tablet and not with TV and then if I disconnect the headphones from the tablet (by switching off the Bluetooth of the tablet) then the headphones should automatically connect with TV. But that doesn’t happen. I have to reboot the headphones so that it can automatically connect to TV.While watching the new The Invisible Man movie (most probably on Netflix app) the visual experience was not good. The movie features a lot of greyish / dark / night scenes. These scenes looked blurry / unclear as if some sort of fog or vapour was floating on the screen. It appears that this TV is not very efficient in displaying true deep darkness in these types of scenes.Remote often doesn’t work efficiently or effectively when casting or screen mirroring e.g. it takes several attempts / pressing the up, down, left right, etc keys of the remote control before the progress bar appears on the TV screen. Progress bar is a basic necessity nowadays so that one could fast forward or fast backward a video. If I am not mistaken, nowhere on the product page on Amazon or the TV package is mentioned that a wall mount bracket set will be provided. Moreover, there is no mention of the list of all the parts in the wall bracket set pack. There were 8 items in total. Or 1+2+2+2+2+3+3+4=19 individual pieces in total if you count the number of pieces in each item. Or 1+2+2+2+2+3+15+4=31 individual parts in total if you count every part of each piece e.g. each expansive bolt is made up of 5 parts. They should have mentioned this list on the box or on a paper or manual or somewhere appropriate.I don’t know why these brands don’t recommend or provide a screen cleaning kit.You can switch between wall hanging and tabletop mode yourself. You just need to attach the 2 stands using regular screwdrivers. Screws and stands are provided with the TV.

Excellent picture quality, very good sound quality and the TV looks classy. The only downside is the remote as it has too many unnecessary buttons