In the recent few months, we’ve seen the advent of smart TV for a budget pricing. Several manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vu, Thompson, Marq, and iFFALCON have introduced multiple models with varying display sizes and features to serve the huge demand that has arrived. However, most of these Televisions either run on their own Custom SKIN or come with an outdated version of Android. The iFFALCON 40F2A that we are going to talk about comes with Android Oreo operating system and is a Google Certified Android TV.
The iFFALCON 40F2A also comes at a very reasonable price point and has an amazing price to value ratio.
The iFFALCON 40F2A claims to have an A+ grade FullHD panel, and we were pleasantly surprised by the color reproduction on the television. The iFFALCON 40F2A performs better than similar offerings from Xiaomi and Thompson which generates images with washed out colors at slightly higher brightness levels. The design is pretty good as well and the TV doesn’t feel very hefty, the bezels surround the display on all sides but are of marginal thickness. The iFFALCON 40F2A claims to have HDR10 certification which adds to the value. The brightness levels on the television are average and the viewing experience does reduce in very bright conditions, the iFFALCON 40F2A has a peak brightness of 320 NITS contrary to the minimum 1000nits brightness suggested for HDR10 content.
We plugged in the Play Station 4 to the iFFALCON 40F2A to play few games of PUBG and the performance was pretty good, the colors reproduced by the television were on par with other budget TV’s and the gaming performance was above average. We ran the TV through the regular demo content from YouTube and the images were reproduced very accurately, however, the contrast levels weren’t the best and we could still see a lot of white light peeping out through the images even in the darker scenes. This was surprising especially considering the micro dimming feature on the iFFALCON 40F2A, this feature is generally reserved for the more expensive televisions and does improve the blacks on this model but doesn’t completely irradiate the white light leakage in darker scenes.
The iFFALCON 40F2A comes with two plastic stands and a wall mount option in the box. The TV also comes with two remote control options out of the box, the first one is a standard looking remote with a dedicated Netflix button, this remote has all the options and looks very similar to a generic remote. Most functions of the iFFALCON 40F2A TV can be navigated using this bigger remote including the Channels, Settings and other options. However, there is another included remote to make use of the smart features in the TV. This connects to the television over Bluetooth and has Voice Command functionality as well. The smaller and more compact remote has fewer options and is limited for simplicity and better design aesthetics, this remote also has a dedicated Netflix button to directly launch the application.
Coming to the connectivity, the iFFALCON 40F2A has 1 USB 2.0 port, 2 HDMI ports, 1 SPDIF port for optical audio output, an Audio/Video input jack and a headphone jack. In terms of other connectivity, the TV supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and also has an RJ45 port for wired ethernet connection. The TV comes powered by a 64-bit Quad Core processor and has the Mali 470 GPU for decoding the different supported video formats. The iFFALCON 40F2A is also one of the only budget televisions in the price range to come with HDR10 decoding support. The TV has built-in Chromecast support as it is a certified Android TV, the RAM on the unit is 2GB and it has 8GB of internal storage for applications and games. The 40-inch display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and comes with stereo built-in speakers having a total of 20W output. The TV is reasonably power efficient and consumes about 75W of power on regular usage.
The software of the iFFALCON 40F2A is very feature packed and comes with YouTube, Google Play Games, Google Play Movies, Netflix and Google Play Store applications pre-installed. The TV also supports several other applications that can easily be downloaded from the Play Store and installed using the built-in Wi-Fi connection or using an ethernet internet connection. The USB port supports input for H.265/H.2 64,MPEG1/2 /4,WMV,VC1,VP8, and VP9 formats in 1080p resolution. The Voice command button on the smaller smart remote actives the Google Assistant and accepts various supported commands.
The iFFALCON 40F2A also comes with support for Yupp TV which allows you to stream live TV in multiple regional languages for a very moderately priced subscription fee. The Google Play Store in the TV has limited app selection and only displays the applications and games that were specifically designed for the television.
The iFFALCON 40F2A offers overall very good value for money and offers better features than the competition. The support for HDR10 and micro dimming is greatly appreciated at the price point. The fact that the TV is Android certified increases the functionality and adds features like Chromecast support built in and Google Assistant for voice commands. The connectivity options on the TV are very similar to the other offerings in the price range. What really sets the TV apart from the rest of the competition is the support for HDR and the above average color reproduction.
