TCL 43 EP 658 43-inch 4K UHD smart android TV box review

EP658 4K Smart Android TV combines slim contemporary design built with leading entertainment technologies including HDR10 Micro Dimming and Dolby Sound EP658 Series provides a smarter viewing experience – Freeview play Netflix Prime Video YouTube Watch blockbuster movies stream apps and enjoy multiplayer games And with the Google Assistant and far-field voice control built in (with the support of voice remote-NOT INCLUDED) you can do more and faster Ask it questions discover the best contents control smart devices around your home – and with just your voice. Find more in TCL 43 EP 658 43-inch 4K UHD smart android TV box review.

TCL 43 EP 658 43-inch 4K UHD specs

Resolution: 3840 x 2160
HDR: HLG, HDR10
HDMI: 2 x 2.0
USB: 1
Ethernet: Yes
Wi-Fi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
OS: Android
Tuners: Satellite, terrestrial
Dimensions: 572 x 970 x 78mm
Weight: 7.8kg

Compare TCL 43 EP 658 43-inch 4K UHD

TCL 43 EP 658 43-inch 4K UHD smart android TV box review

Design

Its top, left and right bezels are reasonably slim, and nicely finished in glossy black plastic. The broader bezel across the bottom of the screen is in silver-painted plastic, and in its centre has both some discreet ‘TCL’ branding and a combined IR receiver/LED for receiving and confirming instructions from the remote control.

Remote

The remote is just as functional a device as the TV it controls. It’s a bit too long, feels undeniably cheap in the hand, and has had its buttons arranged seemingly at random. It’s just as well TCL also has its T-Cast control app, which is one of the more thorough and stable of its type – and offers a good replacement for the remote.

Ports

A few physical inputs, including two HDMI 2.0 ports (one with HDMI ARC), are joined by a USB input, aerial posts for satellite and terrestrial TV tuners, an Ethernet input, a 3.5mm socket for use with a composite video adapter, and a digital optical output).

Smart TV – Android

The 43EP658’s quad-core processor drives an Android 9.0 operating system and Android TV smart TV interface – which is, let’s be honest, a better and more sophisticated specification than the TCL’s price might suggest is possible. 

As usual, Android TV is a combination of the outstanding and the mildly infuriating. On the plus side, it works in tandem with Google Home to serve up access to pretty much every streaming and catch-up service worthy of the description. The layout is reassuringly familiar from any number of more expensive TVs, too. But, as usual, the interface occupies the entirety of the screen in an unashamedly imposing manner; really, it’s a bit like being shouted at. We can put up with this, though, given how straightforward navigating the interface is.

As well as the so-so remote control and the really-quite-good T-Cast control app, the 43EP658 is ready to be voice-controlled – being compatible with both Alexa and Google Assistant devices. The voice assistant will only carry you so far, though, as the TCL’s brief set-up menus must be navigated manually. 

Smart TV TL;DR Android OS + Android TV + Google Home = interaction satisfaction

4K/HDR performance

The TCL comes quite strongly into its own when given some native 4K content to deal with. A UHD disc of The World’s End enjoys a nuanced and wide-ranging colour palette, fine detail levels and some very worthwhile insight into dark or black tones – and those blacks are pretty deep and convincing, too.

The EP658 is way more assured in every other aspect of picture-making here than with sub-4K material. Edges are drawn smoothly and confidently, and motion-tracking is equally convincing. There’s good depth of field to images, and picture noise is suppressed really well – even in scenes of uniform colour and depth. Contrasts are pretty strong, and the TCL manages to retain detail in both dark and bright tones even if they’re occupying the same scene.

It’s slightly strange to realise that the same screen that was so flummoxed by 720 x 480 DVD content can be so calm and composed when given all the information necessary to fill its native resolution. 

The World’s End is an HDR10+ master, with all the theoretical advantages the dynamic metadata standard offers. But the TCL’s HDR compatibility extends only as far as HLG and HDR10. So the occasional bit of BBC iPlayer 4K content (Seven Worlds, One Planet for instance) is maximised by the 43EP658 – at least as far as that’s possible with a 300-nit peak brightness. But it can only apply HDR10 static metadata to the HDR10+ disc, and as a consequence some of the luminosity and detail lurking in the dingy interiors of the film’s numerous pubs is left behind.

4K/HDR performance TL;DR Capable of detailed and quite convincing images (within its 300-nit, HDR10 confines)

HD/SDR performance

There doesn’t seem much point in beating about the bush here, so let’s not bother. The TCL 43EP658 is not a very accomplished upscaler of standard- or high-definition content, and as a consequence isn’t all that pleasant to watch. 

In some ways, it’s understandable. After all, few are the 4K TVs at any price that can make a decades-old episode of The Sweeney (standard definition) on ITV4 look anything other than antique. And, sure enough, this daytime-TV schedule filler is rendered soft and indistinct by the TCL: the picture is low on detail, and high on video noise, especially in darker areas of the screen or when displaying complicated patterns and textures. Edges are jagged more often than they’re smooth, and the TCL 32EP658 is badly flustered by motion too. 

But not only does stepping up in quality to HD once or twice (first with a DVD of Zoolander, and then with a Netflix stream of Big Night followed by a 1080p Blu-ray disc of The Prestige) fail to really improve matters all that much, it also throws up some other shortcomings.

Oh, there’s no doubt detail levels improve along with the increase in resolution of the source, and edges are far better-behaved. But there’s still more picture noise, and less insight into black tones, than is ideal. And the 21:9 content, with its black letterbox bars top and bottom of the screen, reveals backlight beam from each corner of the screen.  

One of the TCL’s picture presets (along with the usual ‘standard’, ‘movie’, ‘sports’ and so on) is ‘smart HDR’. This attempts to inject a little HDR-style luminance and colour volume into SDR material, but in practice it simply ramps up the brightness of the screen until the TCL’s 300-or-so nits bleach white tones completely free of detail. In extreme circumstances – when the on-screen image is predominantly bright white in the first place, for example – there’s a small, but undeniable, strobing or flickering of the brightest areas.

Some quite fundamental audio/video syncing problems manifest themselves, too. The TCL doesn’t have any problems keeping the pictures and the sound of an off-air broadcast synchronised, but content delivered either by disc or by streaming service can fall out of harmony. If your disc player, like the Samsung UBD-M9500 used for the majority of this test, has some adjustment in terms of sound delay this trait can be overcome. But for streamed content, all the viewer can do is watch the mouths move and wait for the dialogue to come. 

HD/SDR performance TL;DR Ragged upscaling and some audio/video syncing problems make for a suboptimal experience

Sound

The TCL is Dolby Audio-certified, and uses a couple of downward-firing full-range drivers, powered by a total of 16 watts, to deliver sound. Like the vast majority of flatscreen TVs (not only the most affordable ones), the EP658 sounds fairly hard, and flat, and lacks any meaningful dynamic expression. Having said that, though, the audio balance is quite well judged, with a slight emphasis on the midrange to make sure dialogue projects clearly.

There’s a genuine hint of weight to the low frequencies (which is good) and some treble spikiness waiting to surprise those who ramp up the volume (which is not so good). While the actual quality of the TCL’s sound is nothing like as aggravating as the way it falls out of sync with the accompanying images, a modestly-priced soundbar will bring across-the-board audio improvements.

Sound TL;DR Not as unpleasant as some alternative TVs, but still not really up to much

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