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Sanyo LED TV in India – Review 2024

By on February 23, 2022

Sanyo TV is one of the emerging brands, fighting fiercely to provide smart TVs at an affordable price. Competition in the budget LED segment, especially in the e-commerce space is heating up and Sanyo is one of the reliable brands for budget smart TVs.

To give you an Indian connection, Sanyo was founded in 1947. So, this brand has its inception rendezvous with our new era of freedom! Sanyo in Japanese means three oceans—name in line with the ambition of its founder—to make the company’s mark across the globe by serving in the 3 most important oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian. A few years ago another Japanese corporation, Panasonic acquired Sanyo. Panasonic relaunched this brand in India in 2016. And guess what? By 2017 Sanyo became the most reviewed brand on Amazon in the TV category!

Key Sanyo TV Technologies

4K TV

Resolution is one of the most defining parameters of LED TVs and 4K resolution is slowly gaining traction. This may sound a little exaggerated, but prominent TV innovations would not have been possible if it wasn’t for high-definition technology. Sanyo Kaizen models offer 4K resolution TV from 43’ to 65’.

Now, the panels used in TVs can be either VA (Vertical Alignment) or IPS (In-Plane Switching). Sanyo traditionally used IPS panels in its TVs. But interestingly, few of the Panasonic Kaizen 2020 models come with VA panels like XT-55UHD4S, XT-50UHD4S, and XT-55UHD4S.

VA vs IPS is a contentious topic and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. IPS panels have wider viewing angles and generally a longer lifespan. But the contrast they can generate cannot be increased beyond a certain limit. VA panels do not have this limitation. Therefore, you’ll see high-end Samsung and Sony TVs come with VA panels. Basically, VA panels give better picture quality than IPS. But then they do not offer good viewing angles like IPS panels.

Sanyo Kaizen is offering VA panels in some of the 2020 models, whereas all Kaizen 2019 models come with IPS panels. This is a blessing in disguise because you as a customer virtually have a choice to go either with a Sanyo TV with a VA panel or with an IPS panel. Specification wise there is not much difference between Kaizen 2020 and Kaizen 2019 models.

Android 9 TV OS

Older Sanyo TVs used to come with Opera OS. But now the company has fully switched over to Android.

New 4K smart TVs by Sanyo come with Android Pie TV OS. With Android TV OS, Sanyo Kaizen TV come with a Play Store to download apps from the app store and all the core Google apps like Google Music, Google Play Movies, Google Games, etc. Like all Android TVs, Sanyo Android TVs come with a Chromecast built-in which facilitates seamless casting of videos, photos, and other content from mobile, tablet, or laptop on the giant Sanyo TV screen. With the Google Home app, users can seamlessly control their TV with an Android smartphone.

Sanyo TV reviews: Android TV OS

HDR to Improve Contrast and Brightness

One prominent factor that has helped in the progress of 4K TVs is the advent of HDR. The good thing is all Android smart TVs from the Sanyo company come with HDR.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and it significantly expands the range of two important factors—contrast ratio and color accuracy. With HDR, the bright parts of the image get much brighter and the dark parts much darker—giving a greater color depth. The color range expands to display brighter blues, greens, reds, and everything in between. Thus, HDR-compatible movies push TVs to their limit, with brighter highlights and perfect blacks. Combining this with the powerful 4K resolution, watching content on 4K TV is bliss.

Despite the aforementioned benefits, not all HDR devices are created equal. The premium category of HDR is Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision IQ whereas HDR10 and HDR10+ are standard or ordinary forms of HDR. Most of the budget and mid-range TVs come with HDR10 or HDR10+ as it is open source and manufacturers do not have to pay royalties. That’s not the case with Dolby Vision HDR.

Panasonic Kaizen 2019 models come with Dolby Vision HDR. Surprisingly newer Panasonic Kaizen 2020 models do not come with Dolby Vision HDR! Instead, they come with an ordinary HDR10. The main difference between the Dolby Vision and HDR10 is their color reproduction capability. Dolby Vision HDR supports up to 68 billion colors whereas HDR10 max out at 1 billion colors.

Sanyo TVs especially the premium ones are powered by Dolby Digital—a digital coding technique that reduces redundant data to produce good quality sound. The strength of Dolby Digital lies in compressing the size of multichannel audio files without disturbing the sound quality. What Dolby Digital does is, takes cues from how the human ear processes sound and implements it in its own functioning.

It provides 5 bandwidth channels: front right, front left, center, surround right, surround left for an amazingly true sound feel. Thus, it expands right and left conventional stereo channels to give listeners enveloping 360 degrees of sound. This arrangement also helps in providing clean, crisp dialogue delivery of the onscreen sounds.

Sanyo premium TVs also have HDMI Sound Out capability which helps to connect with an external home theatre system to enjoy the thrills of theatre at home itself. Sony Kaizen models also come with Audio Link Technology which lets you play music from your phone onto the TV’s speakers. It also allows you to turn off the TV screen while playing the music so you can peacefully enjoy the music without any distraction.

MEMC to Reduce Motion Blur

TV marketers use different specs to market, and one of the lesser-known entities is the refresh rate. Refresh rate measures how frequently a TV switches the image (also called, frame) on screen. Mainstream TVs have 60 Hz as source frequency. This in layman’s terms means that TV switches 60 times each second.

The refresh rate matters the most while watching frenzied content like an action-packed live sport or a fast-paced thriller. Sanyo TV uses MEMC (motion estimation, motion compensation) technology to reduce motion blur which usually occurs while watching fast-paced action scenes such as an F1 race.

Sanyo’s Strengths and Weaknesses

There are areas where Sanyo fared well but there are also areas where it has been sloppy. When it comes to design, it’s pretty simple and sober but the form factor is thick. Now, the good thing is that Sanyo Smart TV’s weight is on a lighter side which makes it easier to carry around and install.

When it comes to picture quality it can’t really match with OLEDs from LG or QLEDs from Samsung. Though the panel, in general, is bright edges seem to be slightly over sharp. That is alright given the fact that OLED or QLED TVs would cost at least twice than normal LEDs.

What disappointed us the most is that Sanyo has reduced some features in Kaizen 2020 series as compared to Kaizen 2019 series. As mentioned earlier, Sanyo Kaizen 2019 series models has Dolby Vision support which is removed from Kaizen 2020 models. Another thing that pinched us is Kaizen 2020 models come with relegated Bluetooth version. Kaizen 2019 used to come with Bluetooth 5.0 version whereas the newer 2020 Sanyo Kaizen comes with Bluetooth 4.2!

Sound is another department where Sanyo’s performance is pretty average. None of the Sanyo models available in the market presently has audio output above 20 watts. For a TV with big screen, you will not be satisfied with the loudness. Although sound quality is decent thanks to Dolby Digital audio support.

Certified Android TV is one of the key selling points for Sanyo TVs. And it works pretty smoothly. But boot-up time is a little long. Takes around 30 seconds to power on.

Conclusion

One can expect decent quality and strong customer support as Sanyo is a subsidiary of Panasonic which is a reputed brand in the consumer electronics category. Sanyo has more than 450 service stations in India, which can allay the concerns people have in its after-sales support.

Sanyo is Panasonic’s attempt to explore and conquer the budget segment smart TVs, where it will face the likes of Vu, Micromax, Cloudwalker, etc. While Indian brands like Vu and Micromax are comparatively newer brands, Sanyo outshines them with over five decades of experience in manufacturing a diverse range of electronic/electrical products like TVs, ACs, washing machines, batteries, etc. Sanyo should be your choice if you can compromise on the audio quality but want a vibrant display and smoothly running Android operating system.

About the Author:
Hussain Kanchwala is an Electronics Engineer from University of Mumbai. As an Analyst at BijliBachao he keeps a tab on latest technologies in gadgets and appliances, tracks businesses of white goods companies and monitors the consumer behavior. With a background in engineering, penchant for detail, and flair for writing he regularly write reviews about brands and their products. .

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