Build quality and Design

The design of the TV is nothing extra-ordinary. The TCL R500 4K Smart TV comes as a large 55-inch screen with a glossy, plastic bezel surrounding it. The TV can be wall mounted or kept on a flat surface with its easy-to-assemble TV stand. The top of the TV is thinner than the lower half. The TV weighs 11.9 kg without stand. The back has a plastic matte finish. All the connectivity ports are on the right of the TV and are easy to reach, even if the TV is wall mounted.

The TCL R500 has two down-firing speakers covered with a plastic grill. The TV comes with a standard remote with buttons. The remote is comfortable to hold, but not really compact. It feels like holding a 30 cm ruler in a hand. We were happy to see a dedicated Netflix button on the remote for easy access, but there is no YouTube button.

Features

The 55-inch TCL R500 is like most other 4K Smart TVs. It has a large 55-inch 4K screen sporting a resolution of 3840 x 2160. It runs T-launcher, a TCL interface that is simple in looks and also to use. Like any other modern 4K TVs, even the TCL R500 comes with Netflix 4.3 pre-installed. There is YouTube in addition to Netflix, so you can explore more content of your choice. For apps, there is a TV+ app store where you can download a number of apps.

Speakers on the TCL R500 are rated at 10W each, which should sound good enough. Wired connectivity on the TV is quite simple. There are two USB 2.0 ports for connecting external USB devices and three HDMI ports including one HDMI ARC port. With the help of the HDMI ARC, you can establish a connection between the TV and audio devices such as a receiver, soundbar, etc. The HDMI cable sends audio and video between the TV and audio devices, and vice versa. Talking about wireless connectivity, there is Bluetooth for connecting smartphones, speakers and headphones. Also, the slightly older WiFi standard, 802.11n is present for easy internet connectivity and local media streaming.

Performance

The TCL R500 is quick to start. Turning on the TV, we were greeted with the T-launcher interface. It is simple to understand and use. It resembles the flow seen on most smart TVs. However, we noticed that navigating through the interface is not very smooth. The home screen has a search box, Netflix app and a very few videos listed. Just below the content, are four items - Home, Videos, TV and Apps. The Video tab has a collection of movie, sports, music, popular, education, news and gaming videos categorized separately. We found some random YouTube video listings under this tab. The TV menu is divided into two parts. On the left, are contents currently playing, while the right had highlighted connectivity ports.

The TV settings menu is arranged properly, but not neatly categorized. It takes a while getting used to it. The collection of apps is noting great. Most of the apps are unheard of. You’ll find YouTube and Netflix to be the most useful.

To check the picture quality of the TV, we viewed several high-quality 4K photos and videos. We connected a pen drive with all the sample content loaded on it. On the default picture settings, colours appeared bright with very high colour saturation but details were lacking. With content playing from the USB drive, few picture settings were available. On switching the connection to HDMI, we got access to finer picture settings such as saturation, colours, sharpness, RGB, etc. On reducing the brightness, contrast and the default sharpness, we were able to get the picture look a lot better but the result wasn’t spectacular.

The panel doesn’t show up detail very well. Colour accuracy isn’t great. It’s better than most budget TVs, but the compromise in panel quality is visible. Picture settings can be tweaked per input, which is handy. TCL says, the R500 supports HDR. We tested it by playing a few HDR sample clips, one of which was from the Life of Pi. The TV detects HDR content. With default settings, the screen lights up further, with brighter colours. When we checked the picture settings, we noticed that the contrast, sharpness and the brightness levels were set to the maximum. On tweaking the settings, we didn’t notice any major changes in the picture. Although, we preferred the Natural picture preset over the Dynamic preset that was set by default. On this Natural setting, the picture appears gentler on the eyes. 

Connecting the TV to the internet was not a problem, but it takes time to switch between content and apps. We also connected an Android phone to the TV using the free T-Cast app available on the Google Play Store. Streaming content from mobile was easy. The home screen of the app prompts for the TV connection at first, which makes it quite easy. There are four other options such as Stream, Remote, Applications and Treasure chest. The Home section itself has two sub-sections - "Now" and "Likes". Similarly, the Stream section lets you access content from Entertainment, Music, Science and technology and more. Although, we didn't see options to search for specific content on the T-Cast app. You can use your smartphone as a TV remote. The sound quality of the TV was good, but nothing spectacular.

Verdict

The 55-inch TCL R500 is a good Smart 4K TV for its price. If you are purely looking for a large screen but affordable 4K TV, the TCL R500 should be on your list. The TV has Netflix and YouTube for streaming content off the web and you can do a lot more, such as screen mirroring and gaming. If you are very picky about the colour quality and sound, the R500 might not be right up there, but it’s still a good panel. If you are curious to see it for yourself, head over to the nearest Reliance Digital store and get a demo. You can also choose to buy this TV online.