Thomson Oath Pro 55 review: Miserable barebone Android-certified smart TV

On paper, the Thomson Oath Pro 55 smart TV seems to offer good value for money. But does it? Let's find out

The Thomson Oath Pro 55 is one of the three Android-certified smart televisions launched by Super Plastronics, the official brand licensee for marketing Thomson TVs in India. The television seems to be an affordable proposition in the 4K UHD smart television segment, with Dolby Vision and HDR10 support, a combination that many affordable televisions lack. Also, being an Android-certified TV, it has Google Play Store for TV, Chromecast and Google Assistant all built in. Obviously, the Thomson Oath Pro 55 looks like a value-for-money smart TV on paper. But good is it in real-life scenario? Let’s find out:

Design

The Thomson Oath Pro comes in 43-inch, 55-inch and 65-inch screen variants. The 55-inch model we have reviewed has a decent built – neither heavy nor unnecessarily bulky for its size. Moreover, it has thin screen bezels and boasts a plastic-made rose gold colour strip at the bottom accentuating the overall design. The television supports wall mount and table-top installations. Its I/O ports on the left are easy to access even if the TV is mounted on the wall. Overall, the Thomson Oath Pro 55-inch has a minimal yet functional design.

Display

The Thomson Oath Pro 55 has a 10-bit LED panel of a UHD 4K resolution. The panel supports Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG. It has a rated brightness of 550 nits and contrast ratio of 500000:1. The panel is glossy and has 178-degree viewing angles. Completing the package is motion estimation and motion compensation (MEMC) tech for on-screen content frame rate upscaling.

Even so, the display on the Thomson Oath Pro 55 seems uninspiring. It suffers from backlight bleeding and image ghosting issues. Moreover, the brightness is static and there is no option to set auto brightness or auto dimming. There is HDR10 and Dolby Vision, and these two dynamic content profiles get activated as soon as the TV detects compatible content. However, instead of boosting the dynamic range, the panel boosts just the brightness, making the on-screen content look unimpressive. Surprisingly, the TV does not have a display setting and there is no way one can make any change to the display output, except the four built-in modes that change just the colour temperature. Worse, the addition of MEMC seems just a marketing gimmick.

Audio

The Thomson Oath Pro 55-inch has bottom-facing dual 30W stereo speakers with DTS TruSurround and Dolby Digital Plus audio support. The speakers are loud and seem to have been tuned on flat equalisers frequency. It has decent treble and bass but not enough to make you groove on a sound track. The speaker set-up is good for casual TV viewing, but it leaves you asking for more if you are watching documentaries, shows or video songs.

Performance

The Thomson Oath Pro 55-inch is powered by a quad-core processor, paired with 1.75GB RAM and 8GB built-in storage. The TV’s overall performance is okay, but not exceptional. It takes time to power on and to load the user interface, but works fine afterwards. There is no lag in the UI and the overall experience is what you expect from stock Android TV platform. However, the television does not support quick boot and it takes its own time coming to life every time you switch it on. Besides, there is a software glitch and some over-the-top (OTT) apps seem to automatically shut down as soon as the TV enters the standby mode. While these seem software-related bugs which might get addressed in future updates, the TV’s 2.4GHz WiFi limits its overall utility, especially if you have internet of things (IoT) devices connected to a dual-band WiFi router and you want them to connect with the television.

The Thomson Oath Pro 55-inch ships with a voice-enabled Bluetooth remote control with a dedicated microphone to register voice commands. It does its job without faltering. The remote has hotkeys for Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, and Google Play and all buttons you need to manage the television, including volume and channel keys.

Verdict

Priced at Rs 32,999, the Thomson Oath Pro 55-inch is a barebones smart television powered by Google’s Android platform. The television has a lot to offer but most of those things do not translate into anything meaningful for users. The television is hard to recommend; you might instead like to try the Vu Premium Android TV 55 (review), which costs less and does better on every parameter.