OnePlus first launched their Android TVs about a year back or so

Smart TV space in India has seen a lot of developments and shifts in the past 2-3 years. More and more players previously associated with smartphone and tablets have entered the segment while the conventional names have been made to up their game. 

Consumers have a lot more options to choose from across different price segments. OnePlus first launched their Android TVs about a year back or so, and has now come up a 43-inch Y1S Pro at a price tag of Rs. 29,999 to try and stretch its hands in that budget smart TV segment at a size that’s good enough for most small room spaces.

Let’s try and see whether it does justice to this and fares well in this competitive market.

The OnePlus Y1S Pro sports a 43-inch 4K LED with thin bezels around it, plastic built front and back, and Power button located at the bottom in the middle. The TV comes with a pair of stands that screws up on sides but there’s no wall mount and has to be purchased separately. 

The rear houses 2 USB 2.0 ports, optical port, 3 HDMI 2.1 ports including 1 eARC and a LAN port along with the power. The thinner bezels do make the TV look a little more appealing in what otherwise comes across as most oother budget smart TVs available today.

The remote control, though, is kind of not that similar. It has round edges, has buttons (including the circular OK button) curved upwards, and feels a little more responsive to use. It also has dedicated keys for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ Hotstar alongside the usual back Google Assistant keys. The power key also doubles up as OxygenPlay shortcut (more on that later. The display on this TV sports a 43-inch display with 3840x2160 resolution that supports HDR (including HDR10+ and HLG format). 

The display is capable of handling TV shows and movies well enough, it handles moving objects somewhat okay too, something a lot of TVs can struggle with at times. For HDR, the TV does lack a little in high brightness and contrast, to get that distinct HDR output. If you compare HDR and SDR side by side, then there’s definitely a difference, but othereise HDR output is not that great. Having said that, regular 4K comes out nicely. It has sharp and somewhat vibrant colours and handles most content from apps like YouTube, Voot, SonyLiv, Hotstar and Prime relatively well when fared against other TVs at this price point.

The TV has two 24 watt speakers with support for Dolby Atmos. For sports and TV shows, I found the audio output to be loud and deep, and it handled dialogues well, too. For foreign movies and TV series, especially from streaming services even with high bitrate codecs, it can, at times struggle to handle it. Your best bet would be to get a decent set of speakers to go with the TV. But otherwise, the sound quality is good enough for a small room.

The TV is powered by MediaTek MT9216 coupled with 2GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage. Performance in general seemed up to the mark for an Android TV. Scrolling between streaming apps and going back between one and another doesn’t mean having to really wait. The TV was able to handle most codecs for video and audio. It could also play high bitrate 4k HDR videos using a media player like MPV and MX Player Pro just fine, just make sure if you’re watching an HDR video foy our own, the player supports it, too. 

Connecting the remote control for the first time worked in 2 seconds. The TV runs on Android TV 10 with OxygenPlay 2.0 built-in. What OxygenPlay is, it’s a content discovery platform that gives a preview of different streaming services at once. Classified into different categories, it shows you the latest shows and moves released on these services. Perhaps the best part about OxygenPlay is that, it shows you, in a separate tab, shows or sports videos that you’ve recently watched, so you can go back and watch them or resume watching from there. 

Notably, OxygenPlay incorporates most of the popular streaming services that you might be subscribed to, but notably, Netflix and Hotstar were missing, though of course you can use them the usual way on Android TV. Android TV home screen and discover tab might still be the most preferred and plain way that most people would use this TV.

All in all, the new OnePlus Y1S Pro is a good enough performer on most counts – it has a nice sharp screen for the price, decent audio output for most use cases, responsive remote control, compromises on build quality, and seems like a solid option to consider if you’re looking for a 43-inch smart TV for a not-so-big room.

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