Gadgetory

hi there I'm David Katz Meyer from CNET and this is the SE ki se 50 uy Oh for this model number denotes the first 4k TV we've tested at CNET yes this little 50-inch or is a 4k resolution TV that means it has four times the pixel resolution of a standard 1080p television of course you'd expect that to give a tremendously better picture but at this screen size it really doesn't I'll talk about that in a little bit but first let's look at the external design of the seiki the set is a very minimalist around the edges it really has a pretty thin bezel here there's really not much to the design except for this unfamiliar nameplate and a little LED along the bottom here it's a glass stand it doesn't swivel very basic external design of course you look at it from the side it has that characteristic LED thinness so that's something in the plus column the sets features are extremely minimal the really only thing to talk about besides 4k is 120 hertz refresh rate that doesn't mean that this TV has smoothing however unlike most hundred 20 hertz sets you cannot turn on or off that smoothing or soap opera effect the set does have minimal picture adjustments you can play around with a couple of picture modes but as soon as you change any of the settings it'll default to a user mode from there you can really only play with the most basic settings such as contrast brightness etc the remote itself similarly basic I was a little confused by the many number of buttons here especially for TV with this simple of a feature set turns out a lot of buttons are devoted to navigating USB photos and music if you decide to use that feature there's also a bunch for the built-in tuner yes this TV does have a tuner like every other television on the market so it's not quite fully a monitor but it does sort of behave like a computer monitor right now the only 4k content you can really get in your home is computer-based so I think people hooking a computer up to this TV will get the best benefit for that extra high resolution on the flip side as a regular televisions performance wasn't that great we'll go through those two right now first off with 4k content the company did supply me with a little server filled with a couple of 4k clips the content wasn't really spectacular though it wasn't the highest quality 4k content I've seen looked a little bit soft yes you could tell there was more than with standard 1080p material but as with all 4k I've seen you have to be very close to appreciate that detail and 50-inch set math tells us you have to be about three feet eight inches to about seven and a half feet that range in seating distance from the 50-inch TV to actually appreciate the difference of course the further way the more difficult it is to appreciate and of course with lower quality content you can't see that difference that much so all told the 4k benefit on this TV really depends on how close you're sitting of course when I did sit very close I played a video game on this TV I played a little bit of BioShock Infinite look great on the computer with that really high resolution at an extremely high-end graphics card connected to this TV and that really allowed the game to pop of course if you have a lower-end computer pushing that many pixels is going to be extremely difficult so this is reserved for the hardest core gamers on PC of course other 4k content is pretty much non-existent you're not gonna be able to find any 4k blu-rays 4k broadcasts or any other content right now that's all a couple years down the road of course with no 4k content that means are going to be mostly watching normal hi-def on this TV and it's really not very good for its price point the black levels are relatively light the TV crushes shadow detail is also relatively inaccurate color although that is the brightest spot on this TV video processing is very important because of course TV has to scale 1080p and other high-def content to fit the 4k pixels that scaling was good but not great it actually looked a little bit softer than a comparable 1080p TV right next to it so all told not the greatest picture quality and again for this price point you do expect pretty good picture quality from 1080p because that's mainly where you're going to be watching despite that bare-bones feature set there are plenty of inputs you get three HDMI all of which can take 4k up to 30 Hertz there's also a VGA input for computers again that can go up to 4k resolution as well as a component video input in a pair USB slots all told I can't really recommend the sake a to a lot of people unless you really really want a 4k TV of course it is the cheapest 4k TV on the market so it has that going for it I'm David Katz minor from seen it that's a quick look at say k's inexpensive 4k TV the SE 50 uio for