DEVANT 50iTV630 Smart 3D Internet TV Review

We’ve had this 50-inch Smart 3D Internet TV from DEVANT for a couple of weeks already and it’s been sitting in the living room for the most part of this review.

DEVANT TVs have been around for some time now and one of their latest models in their TV line-up is a Smart LED 3D TV with display sizes of up to 50 inches. And while there are a lot of choices in the LED TV market these days, Devant is positioning their Smart Internet TV as a digital-ready HD TV and equipping them with a built-in ISDB-T receiver.

This means that with an ISDB-T receiver (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting – Terrestrial), the TV is already capable of receiving digital HD signal on free TV without the need for a set-top or converter box. ISDB-T is the same digital TV standard used in Japan and will be the one that’s supposed to be implemented in the Philippines in the next 3 to 5 years.

Design and Construction

The DEVANT 50iTV630 has a really simple yet elegant design, nothing fancy but straight-up solid and monolithic. The design is very natural with hard lines, strong corners and a refined look. The bezel has a black glossy finish with a silver lining around the edges.

Fifty inches has now become the de facto size of high-end LED TVs while 32 to 42 inches have become the usual sizes for entry-level sets. At 50 inches, your viewing experience drastically changes. This is especially true when watching movies or playing games on the large screen.

The TV is 56mm on the side which is pretty close to the thinnest LED TVs we’ve seen since last year. Nevertheless, it has chopped off a significant amount of thickness from most LCDs around.

The manual controls are on right side while the connection ports are placed on the back, near the left side corner. The port selection includes 3 HDMI ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, RCA ports, etc. The set also comes with a WiFi dongle that plugs into one of the USB ports to connect the TV into your local area network and to the internet.

The bezel is about an inch wide from the edge of the panel. The base is adjustable so you can swivel the panel around for about 70 degrees (could be wider since the back of the wall prevents me from swiveling it around even more).

Display and Playback

With a large 50-inch display, the Devant 50iTV630 offers full HD 1080p resolution. It’s no denying that once you go LED from LCD, you will never want to go back. Full HD 1080p movies looked very nice on a huge LED screen. The Devant 50iTV630 has shown impressive results in picture quality, clarity and crispness. It’s got really deep contrast and wide viewing angles.

The display can be adjusted depending on the type of use or output and you can adjust a lot of the internal settings to adopt to the type of scene you want to watch.

The system is pretty easy to use and very responsive. It was able recognize all of the external media players we attached to it.

The TV came with two 3D glasses which you can use when playing 3D movies or content. Unfortunately, we did not have the 3D Blu-ray player so we weren’t able to test the quality and depth when 3D is turned on.

Multimedia and Internet

This model is considered an Internet TV because of the built-in web apps that came with it. The list is a bit short but the basic and widely used ones are pre-installed — YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Picasa and a basic web browser that looks very similar to Chrome. The web apps are pretty basic but still very usable while YouTube streaming can be enjoyable when you have really good internet speeds.

The TV connects to the local network and the internet via a WiFi dongle which plugs into one of the USB ports at the back (wired connection is also available). Setting up the TV on WiFi is pretty quick and easy.

The web browser looks pretty basic but is light and fast, renders pages quickly and has most of the basic navigational functions. The virtual keyboard is simple but does the job really that well we didn’t get frustrated with using it.

There are two built in speakers, each rated at 10 watts each. The sound quality is good although it still lacks the depth and bass of real external speakers (Devant adds a 5.1 speaker system into the package). IN any case, the volume is good both when watching movies or playing games on the LED TV.

The USB port is capable of directly reading and playing media files like JPEG, MP3 and MKV so you can play multimedia files directly into the TV from a USB drive. This spares you from hooking up a separate media player into the system and all you need is an external storage for your media files.

Conclusion

The Devant 50iTV630 has a suggested retail price of Php94,950 and comes with the following freebie options — a free Devant 32Mel250 (32-inch LEDTech LCD TV) or a free Devant BR 51 (5.1 Channel, 3D Blu-Ray Player) and DV 5270 (5.1 channel speaker system). We’d suggest picking the one with the free 3D Blu-Ray player so you can maximize the 3D capabilities of the LED TV.

It’s among the most affordable yet pretty good 50-inch LED TV we’ve seen around. With a suggested price that’s under Php100k, we think the 50iTV630 is a really good buy if you’re upgrading from an LCD TV and have a tight budget (been using a 40-inch LCD TV for more than two years now and the improvement is miles away).

DEVANT 50iTV630 Smart 3D Internet TV specs:
50″ EDGE LED Smart 3D TV
Full HD 1080p resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio
3,000,000:1 contrast ratio
500 cd/m2
178-degree viewing angle
6ms response time
120MHz frequency
3 x HDMI ports
2 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x 3.5mm audio jack
ISDB-T receiver
2 x 10-watt speakers
130-watt power consumption
Remote Control
Wall Bracket
2 x 3D Glasses
WiFi Dongle

What we liked about the set:
* Clean, simple design
* 3D capability
* Internet features
* Affordable in it’s category
* ISDB-T receiver
* Lots of bundled freebies

What we didn’t like about it:
* Not as thin as we liked it to be
* Limited internet features

Disclosure: Devant gave us this review unit for free. They’re also sending another one which we will be giving away to our readers here so watch out for that!