I just bought the TCL 55S405 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Roku Smart LED TV (2017 Model) $369

[+warwagon]

I was in the market for a new larger TV for my Girlfriends house where I spend 2-3 days a week. Last week I was sitting on her couch and searched for 55 inch TV's on Amazon, and this TCL TV Showed up for only $369 and it was 4k too!! .. I thought that's a great price. So I researched it. Around the same time a TV went on clearance at walmart, I actually made a thread about it which you can find right below this one.

 

I was going to choose between those two TV's.

 

TV At walmart

 

Pro's

Cheap

4k

 

Cons

No program guide

can't find ANY info on the internet about it at all

It's a TV model made for Walmart so the Manufacture will treat it as a bastard child not even talking about it on their website

(Not sure if there was chromecast built in or not, but I would assume not)

 

So I went back and looked at the TLC TV on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MTGM5I9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Pros

Cheap

Roku OS

Program Guide

Pauses Live TV for 90 mins with a USB drive plugged in

and Select the inputs on the home screen

Reviews said the included Roku OS is very responsive.

 

Cons

Might be some backlight bleed

Simple remote (though could also be a pro)

No built in Chromecast

 

So I went with the TLC 55inch RoKu OS TV. It arrived yesterday, I set it up last night and i've been using it all morning

 

Her old 32 inch TV

 

 

The TLC 55inch

 

 

The Screen

 

The screen does have some black-light bleed along the left side. It's not noticeable unless the screen is displaying a black picture. I was expecting a little bit of it. Given the price of the TV it doesn't bother me and it's not noticeable any other time.

 

 

It's also pretty reflective. I thought the reflection might be more of a problem than it is. There is a window that the TV is pointing at but the reflection isn't bothering me as much as i thought it would.

 

*update*

 

It's now 1:05pm and the reflection is starting to become more apparent then in the morning when I took those photos

 

 

Looks like we may have to do something with the blinds in this room.

 

4K

 

4k content looks amazing on this TV. I played some 4k sample clips I brought with e.

 

 

 

 

I took the those photos this morning, so the bright spots on the screen were from the light coming in the window behind me.

 

720P upscaled content also looks good

 

 

Upscaled 1080p

 

 

SNES Emulation 1080p upscale Nexus Player SNES9x (No Filters)

 

 

 

 

Input Lag Test (if you want slow motion change  speed to 0.25)

 

 

Power consumption

 

Sitting at the home screen in all of it's bright colors : 105 watts.

While paying Your average lit movie : 65 - 90 Watts.

Putting the TV to sleep (pressing the power button or waiting 10 mins) 19 Watts .

After 10 mins of being a sleep it turns completely off : 0 Watts. I was impressed by that. I thought because it starts up faster than if unplugged and plugged back in that it would have to be using some watts. But the meter read 0.

 

Remote

 

 

The remote is pretty basic. You have your buttons for streaming services on the bottom and play pause and a dpad. There are no numbers or input buttons. You select the inputs on the home screen of the Roku OS.

 

Roku OS

 

 

So far i've been very pleased with the Roku OS, it's VERY snappy and fluid. Netflix loads quick and the program guide is both, fluid and attractive. Some User interfaces of some cheap tv's lag alot are aren't very smooth. Hell even my 70 inch LG TV from 2013 isn't very smooth. This Roku TV UI is butter smooth!

 

 The Roku OS also has a lot of settings to set as well if you want to dive in. The Roku TV does not recognize NTFS file formats. The Roku Media player does play flies off Fat32 USB but apparently files with DTS audio have no sound. 

 

So I downloaded Emby and installed the  Emby on the intel Celeron Nuc I put next to her TV a while back. Now I can access TV shows and movies off a USB hard drive I have plugged into the system. The 4k demo content i downloaded played fine off the fat32 USB stick (they were only 600 - 1gb files) but played like crap over emby, probably due to the low specs of the nuc, all other 1080 content played fine.

 

One neat feature is the Roku Android app which also acts as a remote control. On the app there is also a headphone button. When you press it, the audio on the TV gets muted and audio then starts playing through the smart phone. So the person next to you could wear headphones.

 

Because it runs the Roku OS it also has other Roku features you would expect, such as searching for movies and seeing which services have them.

 

There is a Over the air program guide built into the TV and a nice smooth, attractive and responsive one that at that. The TV also allows you to plug in a USB flash drive allowing you to pause TV for up to 90 mins. When you change channel it also starts a buffer allowing you to also rewind TV.

 

All in all i'm very happy with this cheap 55 inch TV. Compared to what she had this is a night and day difference. I also love the built in Roku OS. A new version came out recently, version 8.0 so the TV is also getting updates which is also nice.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim K]

That reminds me ... I want hallway arches in my next house.

 

Manufacture page w/ manual downloads

https://www.tclusa.com/products/home-theater/s-series/tcl-55-class-s-series-4k-uhd-led-roku-smart-tv-55s405

 

More specs

https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/0da3bc3

 

Tom's Guide review

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/tcl-roku-55-inch-55s405,review-5186.html

 

Nice review!

[+warwagon]

Updated the section about the reflection.

[xendrome]

When you are on a Digital TV signal, press left arrow and the program guide should load.

[+warwagon]

5 minutes ago, xendrome said:

When you are on a Digital TV signal, press left arrow and the program guide should load.

Yes, that's the program guide button.

[xendrome]

9 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Yes, that's the program guide button.

Yeah you had in your "Cons" - No program guide

[+warwagon]

19 minutes ago, xendrome said:

Yeah you had in your "Cons" - No program guide

At the top of the review I started by doing a pros and con of the walmart TV i passed up, does that TV have a program guide?

[+warwagon]

Added

 

Input Lag Test

SNES Emulation 1080p upscale shots.

[+warwagon]

Last night I put a power meter on the TV to see how many Watts it was using. Added my results to the review.