Xiaomi recently made headlines with the launch of three new Mi TV 4 smart televisions in India, and it has already garnered early success for its televisions with flash sales. Responding to the disruption ushered in by Xiaomi, Kodak TV brand licensee in India, SPPL, launched Thursday a new 50-inch 4K smart TV.
Kodak's 50-inch 4K Smart TV will be available exclusively on Flipkart for an effective price of Rs 34,999. With the launch, Kodak TV India is going up directly against Xiaomi — specifically its Mi TV 4 flagship TV, which is available for Rs 39,999.
Now, consumers have to choose between two smart TVs that are disrupting the Indian television market almost equally with their low-priced models. Here's a comparison of Kodak 50UHDX 4K Smart TV and 55-inch Mi TV 4.
Design & display
Xiaomi Mi TV 4 features a 55-inch frameless design and has a thickness of just 4.99mm, which the company claims is the world's thinnest 4K LED TV. The 55-inch screen has 4K (3,840x2,160p) resolution, an LED SVA (Superior Vertical Alignment) display (Samsung-made) panel, a contrast ratio of 6,000:1, 60Hz refresh rate, 8ms response time and a 178-degree viewing angle.
Kodak 50UHDX TV has a slightly smaller 50-inch panel with 4K UHD resolution (3,840x2,160p) on an A+ Samsung display. For richer and vivid pictures, the TV comes with HDR support.
Hardware
Xiaomi 55-inch TV is powered by a 64-bit 1.8GHz Amlogic Cortex A53 quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC storage and 750MHz Mali-T830 GPU. The Mi TV 4 also sports Dual-Band Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0, Dolby and DTS audio system. The television comes with three HDMI ports and an Ethernet port for wired connectivity.
On the other hand, the Kodak smart TV is powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB flash storage. There are two 10W speakers, LAN connectivity and all the smart features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB ports.
Xiaomi's TV comes with the AOSP-based PatchWall OS and offers content from Sony Liv, Voot, TVF, Hungama Play, Flickstree, Sun NXT, Zee5, Hotstar, Viu and Alt Balaji, but lacks support for Netflix and Amazon Prime (for now). The makers promise to add these soon.
But Kodak is taking advantage of this to boast Netflix integration with a dedicated button on the multi-functional remote along with YouTube and Hotstar.
The Xiaomi Mi TV remote is a lot simpler with just 11 buttons on it.
Will Kodak be able to create the same level of demand as Xiaomi's Mi TV 4 in India? We just have to wait and find out.
