Design and Build

iFFalcon has kept the design of the K31 simple. The TV has a basic construction and a semi-slim design. The 43-inch display is housed by a plastic bezel, with a small iFFalcon logo carved on the bezel below. There isn’t much happening at the back, except the connectivity ports, which are partly aligned towards the right. The simple structuring of ports give easy access even with the TV wall-mounted.

The TV is equipped with two down-firing speakers, grilled inside a plastic cage. The 43-inch K31 is easy to wall mount. You can also choose to place it on a plain surface using the table-top stand. It is made of hard plastic and it is strong enough to carry the K31’s 7.4kg load.

The K31 comes with a smart remote, which we found to be very impressive. We only see such remotes bundled with high-end TVs. The remote is short and slim with simple navigation buttons, a volume button and two hotkeys for Netflix and Google Assistant. This helps in easily navigating through the interface and accessing content in no time.

Features

The 43-inch iFFalcon Smart TV runs a 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD (4K) resolution. This TV’s features are comparable to any decent 4K TV in the market today. The interface of this TV is simple with a tile of menus and settings, neatly organized. The most interesting feature of the K31 is its hands-free AI voice interaction feature, which will let you easily control the TV, switch channels and control smart devices such as lights and robotic vacuum cleaners with just your voice.

The iFFalcon K31 supports another popular feature of the TCL brand, called AI Picture Engine. It recognizes scenes using AI algorithms to offer an improved picture quality with the right balance of brightness, contrast and colour saturation. This also means the K31 should offer a more realistic and life-like viewing experience. In addition, the K31 supports HDR10 to produce detailed images by balancing lighter and darker shades in every scene.   

This TV has a number of pre-installed apps such as T-Channel, NetFlix and YouTube to keep you entertained for hours. These apps give you quick access to movies, live TV shows and originals from major video-on-demand players such as Hotstar, ZEE5, Jio Cinema and more. You can discover more content by installing apps directly from the Google Play Store. After all, this is a certified Android TV with a Play Store. You can stream content from your smartphone to the TV using the built-in Chromecast feature. Other connectivity options of the K31 include two HDMI ports to connect a set-top box, laptop or soundbar. There is also an USB port to connect external USB drives such as pen drives, hard drives or a USB mouse or keyboard. The TV even has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 802.11n. In terms of sound quality, the 43-inch K31 has two speakers rated at 20W, which should produce loud sound.

 

Performance

The iFFalcon K31 is a good TV, at the price offered. It has everything you would want in a 4K Smart TV. The first thing we liked is the TV remote. We connected it to the TV and it was fun using the remote to navigate through the interface and settings.

 

This TV runs Android 9 Pie and using it on a large 43-inch screen is fun. The TV has good viewing angles. We connected a pen drive and the TV immediately detected it. We viewed multiple sample photos and videos using the default settings. Images and videos appeared a bit too bright, sharp and saturated. Both, the brightness and the backlight didn’t make a major difference. The white intensity often overwhelms the details, so gradients in the brighter shades disappear. The colour saturation setting was also up too high. We managed to get a pretty good look with impressive details, after making some fine changes to the settings. These picture settings can be useful in calibrating your iFFalcon K31 TV.

Picture Setting	Default Setting	Tweaked Setting
Brightness setting
Brightness	100	100
Contrast	100	82
Black level	50	100
Dynamic contrast	High	Off
Black stretch	Low	Off
Dynamic backlight	Brightness+	Off
Micro dimming	Off	Off
Gamma	0	0
Colour
Colour saturation	55	44
Tint	50	50
Colour Temperature	Warm	Cold
Clarity
Sharpness	50	0

We also played several 4K HDR videos on YouTube. You get access to vast amounts of content using YouTube and Netflix. There is a lot of high-quality 4K HDR content including award-winning originals, TV shows, movies, music and more. The audio performance of the K31 is pretty outstanding. The built-in 20W stereo speakers come with Dolby Audio support, and produces a loud and immersive sound. TCL’s AI Sound Engine normalizes sound and dialogues don’t muffle at high volumes. We set the TV’s volume to 30 per cent and the iFFalcon K31 is still very loud and clear.  

The bundled smart remote is easy to use. It even supports voice control. The operating range of the TV remote is good, but there is some delay between the press of a button and the actions performed. This was noticeable while switching between menus and channels.

Conclusion

A decent 43-inch TV would have cost you a bomb just a few years back. Today, that norm is broken by the iFFalcon K31. Not only is it a lot cheaper at Rs. 22,990, but it’s also bundled with all the features you might only find on a TV that costs twice as much. It has everything you need, Chromecast, Dolby Audio, Netflix, and more. There might be other 43-inch 4K TVs in the price range, but this one takes the cake with its good picture quality and rather good audio quality. It’s even a proper, certified Android TV!