Buying a TV is a big decision in Indian homes. Buying a 65-inch TV that will not only bring your family together on weekends but will also serve as the centerpiece of your living room is still a big decision. You scour the internet for the right models that offer you the best performance technology, features and sound. You check your pocket to see how far you are willing to go beyond your set budget to get those bright and vibrant visuals and sharp and clear sound (after all, this is a decision you will have to live with for at least 10 years of your life) and you get confused between QLED and OLED TVs. One gives you high peak brightness and rich colors, but it pales in comparison to the other which gives you beautiful colors and great viewing angles. It doesn’t help that OLED display TVs cost a lot. Enter: Mini LED TV.
Mini LED TVs give you the best of both worlds – excellent contrast, deep blacks and high peak brightness at a price that doesn’t even burn an OLED-sized hole in your pocket. This is exactly the class of TVs and type of users that Xiaomi is targeting with its latest Xiaomi S Mini LED TV series. This premium TV series promises to deliver deep blacks, clear details and consistent performance. On paper, the details look good and the promise feels real. Yet the question remains: does the Xiaomi S Mini LED TV series deliver on its promises or is it just another fancy-looking TV with great features? We will try to answer this in the detailed review below. So, keep reading. But before that let’s take a look at its key specifications.
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV Specifications
Speciality |
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV |
| Display | 65-inch QD Mini-LED |
| construction and design | Metal body, 1445 x 81 x 832 mm (without stand) |
| Processor and graphics | Quad Core A55 CPU, Mali-G52 2EE MC1 GPU |
| RAM and storage | 2 GB RAM, 32 GB storage |
| operating system | Google TV with PatchWall skin |
| audio | 34W speaker with Dolby Atmos |
| connectivity | Dual Band WiFi, Bluetooth |
| casting | AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Miracast |
| ports | 3 HDMI ports including 1 eARC, 2 USB 2.0, 1 Ethernet, 1 AV |
| price | ₹Rs 51,999 for the 55-inch variant, ₹Rs 71,999 for the 65-inch variant, ₹Rs 99,999 for 75-inch |
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV design: It’s huge but minimal
The first thing you notice about this TV is its sheer size. We got a 65-inch variant of the Xiaomi S Mini LED series TV. It is huge, hard to miss and catches your attention as soon as you enter the room where it is placed simply because of its size. Despite the impressive appearance, it doesn’t have as attractive a design as some of the other premium TV models available in the market right now. Rather it blends into the space it’s placed in, that is, if you can ignore its sheer size. However, this subtlety is not necessarily a bad thing as it brings the focus back to the things that matter most – the visuals.
Apart from the size, the Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV comes with a metal body with a bezel-less design and ‘Mini LED’ branding on the bottom right corner. The design feels more premium than huge TVs with plastic frames. It gives more stability to this TV when it is placed on a table or cabinet using the stand. But if you don’t like it, you can always mount it on the wall for a cleaner look.
Apart from its minimalist looks, this TV offers ample connectivity options including multiple USB ports and three HDMI ports. The list also includes an HDMI eARC port, which is essential for sending high-quality uncompressed audio from your TV to the soundbar more efficiently. More on the sound part later. You also get support for AirPlay 2, Google Cast and Miracast, which makes connectivity easy.
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV Display and picture quality: Big and bright
This is the area where Xiaomi has focused the most in its S Mini LED TV series this year. The 65-inch model gets a QD-Mini LED panel with a 4K Ultra HD resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, up to 1,200 nits of peak brightness, 94% DCI-P3 color gamut, 178-degree viewing angles, and a screen refresh rate of 60Hz. This combination of features enables this TV to deliver vibrant colors with superior contrast.
I went back to watch WandaVision and The Batman to get a feel for how adept this TV is at handling scenarios where bright and dark elements co-exist in the same scene and how well it differentiates between different shades of gray (and even red in the case of WandaVision) and I was really impressed with the output. Brighter areas emerged and darker areas retained depth. Overall, the visuals looked balanced. Sure, black or dark areas don’t give you OLED-level depth but they come close.
Beyond the vibrant colors and deep blacks, this TV supports HDR10+ with Dolby Vision, which is where the magic really happens. Xiaomi claims that this TV reaches a maximum brightness of 1,200 nits. However, in real-life scenarios the performance varies with ambient brightness. That said, this TV gets incredibly bright. Even when there’s bright ambient light in the room, colors feel sharp and punchy, even more so in Vivid Picture mode, without being overwhelming. I watched several movies and TV series like Dhurandhar and Emily in Paris (you can judge me later!) and the visual display felt bright, vibrant but controlled.
That said, not everything is rosy and red as the viewing angles aren’t perfect. It gives the best viewing experience when you are sitting right in front of it. You move too far towards the edges and the viewing experience, especially contrast, begins to lose its impact. Additionally, Xiaomi’s S Mini LED 65-inch TV gets 512 dimming zones, which is a backlighting technology that divides the screen into 512 zones that lets the TV brighten up specific areas while turning off the lights in other areas to offer better contrast and deeper blacks. It also helps the TV achieve higher brightness and reduce the halo effect, which is when light moves from a brighter area on the screen to a surrounding darker area. For the most part, the halo effect is controlled but I did notice some blooming occasionally.
Apart from this, the Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV has a 60Hz display. But the software uses a combination of Auto Low Latency Mode (ALM) and DLG, which temporarily doubles the screen refresh rate to make the screen feel smoother during gaming.
Sound quality of Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV: Surprisingly loud
Talking about sound, Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV comes with 34W quad speaker setup, which includes two tweeters and two speakers. These speakers also support Dolby Audio, DTS X, DTS Virtual:X and Xiaomi Sound. For the most part, the speakers work fine. They can be fast. I mean really loud. But what I like is that the sound remains stable even at the highest volume levels. There is no distortion and no change in quality. You can find dedicated DTS Virtual available as a part of Sound Mode:
So does this mean it can replace your soundbar? No, this cannot happen. But for the most part you won’t need a soundbar as the sound is loud, balanced and loud enough to fill a large living room. But if you are an audio enthusiast and you are looking for a distinctive sound quality and high clarity, then a soundbar will definitely enhance the overall audio-visual dynamics.
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV Software: Perfect for everyday use
Now let’s talk about software. The TV runs Google’s Android TV operating system with Xiaomi’s own PatchWall+ interface on top of it. Both these platforms co-exist on this TV and can be accessed separately, easily. Home Space gives you direct access to Google TV, which provides one-stop access to hundreds of apps including Netflix, JioHotstar, SonyLiv, and YouTube. You can also access these platforms using dedicated buttons on the remote control.
Coming back to the interface, the Home space has a dedicated tab that gives you access to PatchWall’s interface and Xiaomi TV+, which in turn gives direct access to OTT apps and hundreds of live TV channels including news channels, regional channels, and even entertainment channels. Google TV is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly and Xiaomi has also made it easy for users to navigate the interface easily, making the entire experience intuitive and seamless. Apart from these features, this TV supports Apple’s AirPlay 2, Google Cast and Miracast. I frequently used AirPlay to cast my entire playlist to this TV and it didn’t fail me once. Suffice it to say that the connectivity in it is also very good.
Talking about the internals, this TV is powered by a quad-core A55 processor paired with Mali-G52 GPU. Under the hood, you also get 2GB RAM and 32GB storage space. Although it looks good on paper, the whole setup can seem a little dull at times. I especially noticed the difference when switching apps and accessing different channels on the Xiaomi TV+. But for the most part, you won’t notice much of a difference.
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV review: Advantages and disadvantages
Here’s what we liked about the Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV and what could have been better:
Pros
-Excellent picture quality
– Strong HDR performance
– Great speaker setup
– Value for money in its value segment
Shortcoming
– Not a true 120Hz panel
-Sometimes you may feel lethargic
Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV review: Final thoughts
To sum it up, the Xiaomi S Mini LED 65-inch TV has a subtle yet premium design that’s hard to ignore. Its Mini LED panel delivers bright visuals, high contrast and color accuracy even under testing conditions and its speaker setup keeps going even when the volume is turned up. Plus, you get an easy-to-navigate interface that works smoothly every time. Of course, it is far from perfection. Viewing angles may be better, audio may be clearer and performance may be faster. But overall, this TV delivers on its promise.
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