Is An LCD TV That’s Priced at Rs 3,999 in India Really Worth it?
The company claims to have the most affordable LCD television people can buy in 2018.
advertisement
We heard about the cheapest smartphone that was priced at Rs 251 not very long ago, which was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Fast forward to 2018, it’s time to witness the launch of the most affordable LCD TV in the country, which is priced at Rs 3,999.
Televisions have become affordable recently, so much so you can spend under Rs 20,000 for a big screen LED TV. But getting anything for the price of a cheap smartphone is understandably raising quite a few eyebrows. This television has been made by a company called Detel, which also sells mobile devices in the country.
The company has launched a 19-inch LCD TV for Rs 3,999 that is available via its website, but it is unlikely to be listed for a long time.
So, what is Detel offering for this crazy-sounding price? As the website listing suggests, it is a 19-inch LCD panel TV with support for HDR and offers 1366x768 pixels resolution. It looks like an old-school television, with the speakers positioned on both the sides of the screen, and big bezels bordering the screen.
The company is offering a one-year onsite warranty and lets you connect Tata Sky or even Amazon’s Fire Stick streaming device via the single HDMI port available on the TV.
They’ve also mentioned something about in-built games and we’re not sure about that. You can also plug in external drives via the USB port to watch content besides what is available on the cable network or internet.
Repeat of the Freedom 251?
Seeing a feature-packed television for under Rs 5,000 sounds too good to be true. Yes, the company claims to be filling every home with a TV, but we’ve heard those promises before, from a brand called Ringing Bells which wanted to sell its Android smartphone for a mere Rs 251 not very long ago. Freedom 251 was a 3G smartphone, packing a 1.3GHz quad-core processor backed by 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory.
The company, Ringing Bells and its founder Mohit Goel had promised delivery of "nearly 200,000 Freedom 251 handsets" which never came through.
After going silent for a long period, the company later forayed into making TVs and other smartphones, burying the Freedom 251 dream, for which many people had paid to own an internet-enabled device.
Hence, when one sees a brand like Detel offering an inexpensive, feature-rich LCD television, one tends to be sceptical. Let’s hope the brand proves us wrong.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)