Devant Smart 3D TV Review

It’s not everyday something so large drops in to get the Unbox treatment. The large package in question was a glorious 55″ Devant Smart 3D TV. Over the last few years, Devant has steadily made a name for itself as a quality manufacturer of premium flat screens. Their current flagship model — the Devant 55WIZ830 Smart 3D TV — is what we’re looking at today. This Smart 3D TV was also the perfect model to test our new flatscreen testing venue — the Unbox Pad!

Design

Less than an inch think all around, and bordered in silver metal, this Devant Smart 3D TV’s LED panel is certainly dressed to impress.

Some pleasant surprises out of the box — this massive screen comes with two options for mounting — a shiny stand and a factory-included wall mount.

Connectivity

Designed for today’s network integrated living room, this Smart 3D TV comes with the following connection options:

2 x Composite AV
1 x Component Video Input
1 x VGA input (w/ audio input)
1 SPDIF Input
3 x HDMI Input
1 x LAN Port

The unit also supports MKV Playback, DLNA, and comes with an iSDB-T receiver for digital television reception (the emerging standard in the Philippines).

 

At the Unbox Pad, we had most of our gadgetry (an Xbox 360 and a Home Theater PC) already connected via HDMI to an integrated receiver — so all we had to do was hook up the TV via the Smart 3D TV’s input and we were ready to rumble!

Performance

The EDGE LED 55″ panel is indeed glorious. There’s plenty of brightness to keep things crisp and clear even with daylight streaming into the room.

The 6ms response time isn’t as quick as some dedicated gaming panels but gets the job done. Using our gaming PC, we fired up Bethesda Software’s Skyrim at max settings and an HD textures mod, and piped in the audio and video via HDMI. I must say that this is by far the most immersive Skyrim experience I’ve ever had, and it easily puts the Xbox 360 version to shame.

As far as Blu-rays are concerned, Pixar’s Brave looked absolutely stunning in full HD as well. This film has tremendously vivid and rich colors, as well as some dark evening scenes, and the Devant Smart 3D TV’s LED panel handled it perfectly.

Smart 3D

The Devant Smart 3D TV also came with two 3D Glasses. These glasses were the active kind — there were USB ports on the frames to get them charged up. We were unable to test the 3D capabilities of the TV but it seemed fairly easy to set up.

The unit was also WIFI-ready, and shipped with a USB dongle that was extremely simple to get working on our network. The built in apps for services like Youtube were simple to operate, although text input via the remote control could still be enhanced with a third-party remote solution.

Wrap Up

With current prices for equivalent Smart 3D TV models from other brands starting north of P150K, it is possible to find this model under P100K. Only an LED TV like this one can give you great performance in such a thin package. and the peso-per-pixel value is really starting to drop.

If the future battleground for tech supremacy is going to be the living room, then the Devant Smart 3D TV is a great showcase for what’s possible today, at a price that won’t break the bank.

Pros:

• Feature complete
• Slim and sexy
• Lots of inclusions like a wall bracket and a pair of 3D glasses
• Great value

Cons:

• Remote Control needs better text input capabilities

Note from Editor-in-Chief: This article was contributed by our guest writer, Mike Palacios! Thanks Mike!