critic rating
3.5
Top Features
Decent viewing experience
Good sound quality
Average performance
With smartphone brands launching a new TV in the budget segment, the smart TV space has lately been very crowded. Case in point, one can easily find a decent TV in every screen size with every bells and whistle a modern TV should offer. Going with that flow, a well-known laptop and electronics brand Compaq has also launched its 65-inch Android smart TV in India.
Dubbed as Flex 65, it offers a 65-inch 4K QLED panel with HDR 10 and Dolby Digital support. The TV also runs the latest version of Android TV operating system out-of-the-box, an extensive set of features and app support to take on the likes of its competitors.
We have been using this for a while now as our daily source for binge-watching shows and movies and here’s what we think about it.
Compaq Hex 65 Android TV: Design
The moment we unboxed the TV and mounted it on its feet (the tabletop stand), which is made out of plastic, by the way, we were surprised to see how slim the TV is. This reminds us of the first 55-inch TV (Mi 4) launched by Xiaomi India a couple of years ago.
The 65-inch panel has very slim bezels across the sides. The chin, however, is pretty thick. The chin also carries a small LED light for notifying the on or off state of the TV.
Unlike the rest of the TV's back, where the entire back is covered with plastic that also carries the mounting area, I/Os and other necessary parts. The Flex 65 is just a panel and a small plastic housing mounted on it. The housing carries all the ports, mounting slots, etc.
The overall build quality is solid. The plastic used is also of good quality. The panel has a very minimum amount of flex to it, but that’s obvious that there’s nothing to support the panel.
The bottom portion of the TV houses the speakers. The TV comes with 2 USB Type-A ports and 3 HDMI ports with ARC support.
The TV also comes with an infrared remote with a built-in microphone and dedicated hotkeys for popular OTT platforms like Netflix. The remote looks a lot like the one we see with
Samsung
TVs these days, the one with Compaq is a tad bigger. The remote offers a pretty decent set of buttons like input selection, settings, power, dedicated assistant button and more.
Overall, it is a very good-looking TV with slim and edgy design.
Compaq Hex 65 Android TV: Viewing experience
It’s a 65-inch QLED panel with HDR10 support. We watched the entire season of Loki, Agents of Shield, The Tomorrow War, etc on the TV and it offers a decent viewing experience overall.
The 4K panel is sharp and offers a good amount of details. Upscaling also works fine with almost negligible noise. It seems the image processing engine is doing its job. The problem is that despite being a QLED panel, the vividness we were expecting was somewhat lacking also, the Black levels could have been better.
It is worth mentioning that the TV offers a ton of display tweaking options from the settings. For example, one can choose from the presets available with the TV like Dynamic, Movie, Sports, etc or can also customise the display variables like brightness, sharpness, noise, Black levels, saturation and more.
We used these settings and that actually made things a little better for us. But from a TV of this price, we were expecting to see better tuned presets from the company. Things were much better while watching HDR content on the TV. The saturation level, colour production, details everything was improved by a margin. Not to forget, the TV also supports HDMI 2.0 which further enhances the overall viewing experience if
Talking about the sound, the Compaq Hex 65 comes with dual speakers and the TV also supports a couple of promising sound technologies like Mimi sound processing engine, Dolby Audio, DTS and Pure sound.
The built-in speakers of the TV sound good, but not the best. It’s loud, crisp and clear. There’s no distortion till almost 80 percent of the volume. A decent amount of bass effect is also present.
But, the TV excels where most TVs fail to impress it's the surround sound effect. The Dolby and DTS support seems to be doing its job here. The good part is that you can also manually expand the soundstage from the settings.
Speaking of settings, the TV also includes a bunch of handy presets for audio as well which was not that impressive. We felt the standard sound mode was just fine.
In our view, the Compaq Hex offers a decent viewing experience in its default settings and good viewing experience if you have that insect who loves to tune the TV as per their watching needs. There’s nothing worth jaw-dropping here.
Compaq Hex 65 Android TV: Performance, software and remote
The Compaq Hex 65 is powered by a quad-core processor, 2.5GB of RAM and comes with 16GB of onboard memory. It runs the latest version of Android TV operating system which is Android TV 9 by the way and as expected it comes with Google Assistant, Chromecast support, Play Store and most importantly support for almost every OTT service including Prime Video and Netflix.
But, Compaq has thrown in some other features as well. For example, it took us by surprise by offering Apple AirPlay support and a dedicated screen mirroring option on the top of Chromecast.
Plus, the built-in media player is pretty decent and supports most common codecs for both audio and video.
The basic performance of the TV is good. Functions like opening or closing an app or switching to another app, etc works just fine. The issue is with the heavy menu designs. It feels sluggish. Also, the UX is a bit confusing as well.
Another issue we found is with the remote. We felt that the response time of the TV was a bit delayed and sometimes it even failed to register the command. We thought it could be due to the battery so we changed it with a new pair and things were just the same.
Well, all these issues are just basic and can easily be fixed by a small patch. But only if Compaq would choose to do it. Till then you are stuck with it.
Compaq Hex 65 Android TV: Verdict
The Hex 65 Android TV from Compaq costs Rs 99,990 and it certainly isn’t cheap by any means. With this kind of price tag, the Hex 65 has almost infiltrated the territory of premium smart TVs from Samsung, LG and
Sony
. But, finding a QLED + 65-inch combination will cost you around 25% more than the Hex 65.
But, not everything is hunky dory for Compaq Hex 65, it has its own limitations be it in terms of display quality or performance or the sluggish remote. In general, the TV is good and you should consider it if you are looking for a 65-inch QLED TV then you can go with the Hex 65. It offers decent viewing experience, good sound output and is feature-rich as well. But, there’s more to the story here.
At this price, you can either go with a 55-inch Mi QLED TV for almost half the price or choose a 65-inch regular LED or OLED TV from LG, Sony or Samsung at almost or even lesser price point which can offer a good well-rounded experience. The idea is that the Hex 65 feels a little overpriced for what it has on offer.
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