Bad experience with TCL Android TV

by gentlewaterboarding

I bought my first smart TV ever a year ago now, which was a TCL Percee 55" with AndroidTV. Anyway, figured I should warn everyone from ever considering the same.

I have never had a consumer product this riddled with bugs before. Holy shit. I thought I'd be safe since after all it runs AndroidTV, but christ... I probably have to reboot this thing daily, because Netflix video randomly goes all black, or the audio randomly disappears. And rebooting is really slow. The entire thing is actually really slow. It will shut down randomly. It will turn on randomly (which can be really creepy when it happens in the middle of the night). Apps randomly will fail to work, requiring reboot.

The worst part is, they haven't made a single attempt at fixing it. Each time I check for system updates, it gives me the response "No reason to update :)". Fuck you , there's a million reasons to update. It's still running AndroidTV 8.0.0 , which literally means they haven't made a single update for it after releasing it. The last Android security update it has is from 2018, which is grossly negligent .

TCL has every hallmark of a company which puts in just enough effort to get the product out the door. The aesthetics is 10/10, with a huge thin display with almost no bezels. But when it comes down to living with this thing, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually only has a hamster wheel on the inside driving this thing. I'm 100% convinced they paid for proper design, then got the lowest bidder to make the software. It's crap.

This is what you get when you opt for "the most bang for your buck". You get a blowjob from a crack whore in some back alley. My sincere advice is to go for brands with a good reputation, like Samsung, instead of only looking at the price tag.

</rant>
tkelly1740

Android TV on Phillips is crap and has the same symptoms you described. I have a Roku plugged in to my Android TV.

herecomeseenudes

you have to upgrade manually. download from their website. I have TCL 50, which is not too bad

cosmokra3er

I understand your frustration. I had a Sony Xperia phone few years ago and the user manual for that phone clearly asked me to reboot the device once a day to release leaked resources. There is no excuse for TCL to not fixing the issues, but if the TV works well with a reboot every now and then, then it might be worthwhile just having a scheduler reboot your TV everyday(which is what I end up doing with my android phones anyway).

NoShftShck16

Same experience with a TCL Roku TV and various other smart TVs. Don't buy a TV for it's “smart” features and expect to get by. It's ridiculous people actually going into a purchase of a product that typically has a 5-10 year turn over period and are buying smart features. How many people have Roku remotes with a dead service as a dedicated button?

Buy a TV that has the TV feature you want and then buy a smart box to connect to it. End of story.

rzr82

I have a 55DP660 (european model) which serves me fine, for the most part, with one major annoyance. Once I manually updated to Android 8, the TV's "Instant On" toggle *does not work*. The TV spends almost three minutes cold booting every time I turn it on.

There haven't been any updates for well over a year now, so I'm not very happy with that. Hopefully they've fixed it on newer models, but it's not a great first impression of TCL, that's for sure.

GravityDead

Dude, I can feel your pain. I have the same TV, it's just mine is 65". This TV and MiBox are the reasons I despise AndroidTV now and ordered a Firestick 4k.

There are even more bugs than you talked about.

If this TV goes to sleep while connected to a VPN, then it won't turn back on. Instead, it will crash, and then it will even throw an infinite boot. At that point you will have to power it off.

HDMI speaker connection is also very buggy. Sometimes, the TV will output sound to both audio systems, externally connected speakers and internal speakers, thus creating an echo effect. There's another very frustrating issue with other HDMI devices like firestick or gaming consoles. The external speakers will give very squeaky sound output and the solution here is, you will have to open any app installed in the TV and then switch back to your HDMI device.

UI is a shit show, it lags too damn much. Voice search is broken, often results in freezing the TV for several seconds and Bluetooth remote often lost the connection, so had to re-sync it. This is why now I'm using the normal IR remote now, with no voice search and Bluetooth. Not to forget, how uncomfortable the "smart" remote is.

Chromecast in this TV isn't very reliable either. Did I mention the boot time? Too long.

I'll never suggest anyone to purchase Sony's phones and TCL's TVs. Firestick 4k is a god-send, else I'd thrown a chair at this TV by now.

spellino

I have the 32S6500. It has received 2 major updates from android 7 to 9. It had the same sound cutting out issues which was fixed with updates.

Maybe the issue with updates is region specific. If you have not found a firmware update file yet, I would recommend changing your region. I'm in Ghana btw

spaceursid

yeah thats the prob with android, theres not a solid framework where google can keep the software updated on every device on the market at the same time.

brockbanks

Their customer service proves that things do indeed get much worse. It took 14 months to finally get a replacement for a faulty unit. The company is cutting corners in all areas that are initially out of view to the new buyer.

Bboy486

I use a tcl with the shield. The Roku is crap and slows down the experience. Also there was a tiny spot of dead pixels on arrival but it was under their 20% or whatever policy. Was not worth the return and rebox

Dlinefivenine

Go to other subs and see people complaining about LGs os, Sony Android, etc. Roku is probably the simplest and easiest to work with but at the end of the day, the best experience is with a Shield TV or Apple TV. Then any other external device.

ancientalien67

I have the same tv, kindly do to tv center clear the caches of all apps and hopefully your tv would run fine for few weeks, this happens due to clogged caches

rommiebab

I just bought the TCL A537 :(

Wish I had read this before...

le_homme_qui_rit

My TCL TV is shite too. You can sideload apks for some system improvements, but ultimately they should be ashamed. I emailed them about my Chromecast constantly dying and they never responded.

I'm tempted to take it back for being unfit for purpose.

22Anonymous

Heyo, I heard the update fixed most of your problems. Could you tell me if you have been happy with your TV since then? I am thinking of buying a TCL Android TV myself but wanted to get some reviews from people who own them first before heading out and spending a grand on something I then don't even like ^^

azure_i

What did you expect? Smart TVs have notoriously bad embedded solutions, and TCL is a notoriously cheap garbage manufacturer.