Large screen TVs, and by that we mean 65-inch screen sizes, with a QLED panel isn’t an easy pick these days. Purely because of choice. QLED, or Quantum Dot LED, is a panel display tech that finds close to the perfect balance, based on the tightrope walk for cost effectiveness and performance. Far superior to the basic LED panels that dotted the smart TV ecosystem till a few years ago, and more cost effective than OLED panels, which can usually be found in much more expensive televisions. You’ve some interesting choices.
Samsung’s QE1D (these retail for around ₹1,06,990), the Xiaomi Mi QLED TV (albeit in 75-inches; around ₹1,09,999) and the HiSense Q7N series (the 65-inch one costs around ₹69,999) are some neat choices. If you wouldn’t mind saving a bit more money on a 65-inch frame of entertainment goodness, there’s a new choice to consider. That is, Skyworth’s 2024 update for the Coocaa 65Y73 Pro. This is selling for around ₹47,999 and it gets a lot of things right from the outset. For starters, they’ve changed the very foundation of the QLED display panel, and when weighed in the real world, these changes seem to have worked.
QLED+ is what the company calls this display, and the core changes are with the structure of what sits behind what you’re watching. Traditionally, QLED panels have the display later, behind which is a quantum dot film, diffusion plate and the backlight, all different layers. Skyworth’s labs ended up merging the quantum dot film and the diffusion plate and then swapped out a standard backlight canvas with a blue light and colour phosphorous layer. It may not immediately come across as such, but this panel is a smidgen brighter than most other QLED panels, differences becoming apparent when the afternoon sunlight comes streaming into the room.
The other important upgrade is the matte treatment to this screen, which significantly reduces reflections. The results of all these changes have worked. The Coocaa 65Y73 Pro reproduces gorgeous colours, once you get the picture settings in tune with your viewing preferences. Blacks are deeper than what we’ve experienced with other QLED TVs, something that further reduces the technology’s gap with the more advanced OLED panels.
Working behind the scenes is the Chameleon Extreme engine, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to adjust backlighting levels based on the data shared by the sensors capturing ambient lighting. Unlike most TVs, this transition doesn’t return any perceptible flickering.
A drawback I did notice with the Coocaa 65Y73 Pro’s picture is an inability to hold accurate skin colours if you increase the backlight level (this is found in picture settings) any more than 10 (this goes up to 100, mind you). Skin tones look unnaturally white and over-illuminated, which also has a fallout on the broader colour representation. You’ll have to work the picture settings to get the best out of this panel, though it shouldn’t have been made this hard by unoptimised image processing algorithms, because the hardware in play seems to be top notch.
Could this be solved by a future software update? Time will tell. On that front, in our time testing the Coocaa 65Y73 Pro, we have already seen the TV receive one fairly large software update (that was around 900MB; a shortcoming of Google TV is, there are no release notes being shown). We can only hope the company is active with software updates and patches for the TV – something many a TV maker have struggled with as time passed.
Again and again, my thoughts go back to the rather plain design of the table-top stand. This has now become common even in TVs that cost as little as ₹15,000. Some creativity may have been the order of the day. I must reference Haier’s efforts with their new Google TV line-up, with rather slick, centre aligned table top stands that allow for more versatility in terms of table width, and look good too.
Google’s mess with Google TV continues, something we’ve pointed to in previous TV reviews as well. Curations and suggestions littered across different tabs makes navigation sluggish, something that takes away from the overall experience. Best is to head to settings and enable the “app only” mode, to keep the home screen streamlined, and app performance unaffected.
The Coocaa 65Y73 Pro’s remote is claimed to be anti-bacterial (there’s a massive graphic printed on the front of the remote), and you may appreciate that. However, the remote itself feels as if it’s made on a budget – and there’s a design resemblance to older Xiaomi TVs as well. Key presses feel soft, too soft, and you aren’t always sure if a press has registered. The layout is minimal, which is certainly a positive.
Having undercut most other 65-inch QLED TV options that you can choose from right now, and also reworking the very foundation of a QLED panel, seems to be working for the Coocaa 65Y73 Pro. The picture quality is really good once you’ve made some efforts to tune it. 4K and HDR movies and TV shows (Dolby Atmos and HDR10+ are supported) really shine through, while lower resolution content does retain a good level of sharpness. The only real complaint with the experience is the restricted sound (that’s mostly always true for in-built TV speakers), which perhaps could’ve been overcome with a soundbar-esque implementation.