Pros:
– Good picture quality overall (except in Dolby Vision content)
– Close to natural colours in SDR content
– Google TV with clean UI
– Access to picture settings on the fly
– Dual-band WiFi
– Decent sound output
Cons:
– Erratic Dolby Vision output
– Lacks HDMI 2.1 ports
– No analogue audio output
– Ports are hard to reach
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Price: Rs 32,999
Around this time last year, we reviewed a budget QLED TV from Thomson and quite liked most of what it offered for a modest asking price. Cut to the present, we now have a newly released standard LED TV from the company that has a lot in common with the QLED model, except the Quantum Dot film, and is even more affordable. But does it truly address a substantial need gap? After having used the 55-inch variant from the Thomson OP Max series for a couple of weeks, it is time to answer the question and tell you if it’s worth buying.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Design and connectivity: 7/10
Just like its QLED cousin and most TVs these days, the OP Max also sports a near bezel-less design on three sides. The bottom bezel is relatively thicker and has a small chin that hosts the power LED. The connectivity ports are placed closer to the centre of the TV rather than near the edge, making them hard to access once you wall mount it. It is a common design flaw in several budget TVs.
The TV can be wall-mounted or placed on a desk using the bundled mount or the metal stands respectively. The stands feel sturdy and hold the TV firmly in place without a wobble. You get a compact voice-enabled remote in the package. It is fairly uncluttered with only a handful of keys and a few hotkeys. The necessary screws and a pair of AAA batteries are present in the package.
The connectivity department has the basics covered, barring one. You get three HDMI ports, one of which supports ARC. Still no HDMI 2.1 ports on Thomson TVs. In addition to that, you have two USB 2.0 ports, Optical audio out, A/V input and a LAN port. Analogue audio output like a 3.5 mm headphone jack or a coaxial A/V port remains absent just like in the case of its QLED variant. Wireless connectivity options include Bluetooth 5.0 and dual-band WiFi with support for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Features and specifications: 7/10
This Thomson LED TV has a 55-inch IPS panel with an Ultra HD resolution of 3840X2160 pixels and a 60 Hz refresh rate. The viewing angles are good and the peak brightness is rated at 500 nits. It claims to support HDR10/10+ as well as Dolby Vision. It also offers 10-bit colour depth and can display over a billion colour shades. The marketing material of the TV talks about the use of some TQLED technology; it doesn’t mean anything and has nothing to do with QLED.
This TV is powered by a quad-core processor with four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz. You get 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, a chunk of which is taken up by the Google TV OS and a few preinstalled apps. You are left with about 10 GB for installing more apps. Sound output is rated at 40 Watts RMS with support for Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS TruSurround. Like all Android/Google TVs, it has Chromecast built-in and lets you cast content to the TV from compatible apps on your smartphone or tablet.
The wireless remote control bundled with this TV is Bluetooth-enabled. After pairing it with the TV, you can bring up the Google Assistant by keeping the corresponding button pressed and issue voice commands. It works well without much delay. The key layout is fine and most of the necessary buttons are present. You also get hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube. The finish and build quality are acceptable for the segment.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – User interface: 8/10
The Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 runs the latest Google TV based on Android 11 for TV. The UI is quite polished and assigns a higher weightage to content discovery rather than installed apps. It shows you suggested content from various OTT platforms which the AI believes would interest you. Their subscriptions need to be purchased separately though. Suggestions do feel random at the start but get better over time as it learns your taste.
Google Play Store is available here to download a lot more apps if needed. There isn’t too much bloatware on this TV, which is good. A dedicated settings button on the remote gives you access to picture and other settings of the TV on the fly irrespective of the app or input in use. The UI is fairly simple and the learning curve isn’t steep even for someone new to smart TVs.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Picture quality: 6.5/10
The colour reproduction of this TV is quite good when watching SDR content. The picture is tuned well out of the box. But you can always play around with multiple picture settings available here to make it look a little better. You get quite a few options ranging from the usual brightness, contrast, and sharpness settings to adjustments for gamma, colour temperature, white balance and more. In case you don’t want to bother with the tweaks, the Standard preset does a good job most of the time with normal colour temperature.
The contrast is good (after switching off all the auto contrast settings) with details in dark areas in high contrast scenes in our test videos clearly visible. But one can notice a bit of flickering in high-contrast scenes, especially in HDR content. On that topic, the TV performs reasonably well in HDR10 and HDR10+ content. The colours seem a tad boosted but can be reigned in through the picture settings. The black levels are average though.
You get about half a dozen presets including a custom (User) option and they get a Dolby Vision or HDR prefix when viewing content in the corresponding formats. Speaking of Dolby Vision, a lot of budget TVs boast of compliance for that format and so does this Thomson OP Max model. While the performance is just about acceptable in most LED TVs due the limited panel brightness, the output here is outright erratic.
Dolby Vision content on Netflix or Disney+Hotstar is unwatchable on this TV. It feels like someone has lit up a few neon lights on the screen. The colours and contrast are completely off. I had a word with a company official who acknowledged the issue and assured me that a fix is in the works. An interim option to switch off Dolby Vision was provided, something that will also be provided through customer support to those who already have or intend to buy this TV before the OTA update with the fix is available.
After disabling Dolby Vision, the corresponding content was a lot more palatable though not perfect. There were still the odd glitches in dark scenes but not as glaringly bad. The TV upscales lower resolution 1080p videos perfectly well, and even 720p videos are very much watchable on this TV. Understandably, anything lower than that looks flat as is the case with most 55-inch TVs. All said and done, things are generally acceptable here when not watching Dolby Vision content. If that’s your primary requirement, this is not the TV for you.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Audio quality: 7/10
A pair of speakers rated at 40 Watts RMS delivers decent sound quality. It is nowhere close to the best around, but is pleasant and gets the job done. The output is reasonably loud and offers good dialogue clarity. There is also a fair degree of warmth that makes it sound more pleasant. It is better suited for watching news or sports or any dialogue-heavy content. It is just about acceptable for music and action movies/ web series.
The audio is loud enough at 40 to 50 per cent volume level in most cases. If you seek better sound quality, you can always connect a soundbar or a speaker system to one of the audio outputs available here like Bluetooth, optical or HDMI ARC. As I mentioned earlier, the TV speakers are compliant with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS TruSurround, but these are basic TV speakers, so keep your expectations real.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Overall performance: 7/10
The TV takes about 50 seconds to boot up when you switch it on from the mains, which is on the slower side. Post that, the TV comes back on almost instantaneously from standby mode. The voice assistant is fairly prompt to respond and works as expected. Media playback through USB is perfectly fine on the default media player, and you can always install a better player from the Google Play Store available on this TV. Things were generally stable with no app crashes or system restarts during the course of testing.
Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV – Price and verdict
The Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030 TV is priced at Rs 32,999 with a one-year warranty and was selling just under 30K on Flipkart in the recent festive sales. The Dolby Vision fiasco notwithstanding, this is not a bad-budget TV for less than 30K. They could have probably dropped Dolby Vision entirely and made this TV even more affordable. At the moment, the similar-sized Thomson Q55H1001 QLED TV is available for just a thousand Rupees more, and it is a far better option than this OP Max model.
That brings me to my original question – does this model serve any real purpose? I don’t think so unless there’s a price difference of at least Rs 5,000 between this and its QLED variant, and if the company fixes the Dolby Vision glitch soon in an upcoming update as promised. But it is not just in-house competition that this TV has to worry about, with better performing 55-inch models from brands like Xiaomi and Hisense also going under 35K these days. The way things stand right now, it is hard to recommend the Thomson 55OPMAXGT9030.