It’s always hard to trust a new brand when you’re making a big tech purchase Skyworth has only been in South Africa for two years but its TVs can be found in most ‘big box’ hyper stores. The picture quality of the SUC9300 punches above its price point, producing sharp, rich, colour-balanced images throughout, with deep blacks and realistic skin tones. It’s no OLED, obviously, but it’s hard to fault the screen image at this low price.
In practise, we found it well worth our time to experiment with all the video presets. These are easy to access, adjust your picture in real time and go a long way towards optimising your viewing. Even turning off all the high-end imaging features such as HDR10+ and smoothing on action movies, and even when downscaling from 8K to its native 4K resolution, image quality was solid throughout, with no stutters and tearing. However, the refresh rate of just 60Hz and response of 9.5 milliseconds means that this TV won’t do well with the newer video-game consoles, or with PC gaming generally.
Skyworth has also pioneered Google’s Android TV operating system in South Africa and we like the way this organises video content by app on the home screen with quick access to the TV settings. However, while it is possible to customise the layout of the home screen somewhat, we found this didn’t go far enough and the screen real estate was not being used efficiently, resulting in a lot more scrolling around to fire up your key apps and services. However, you do get access to Android’s vast library of apps, regular OS updates and security fixes, and the use of Google Assistant to help you find content to watch, or quickly look up shows or actors.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the SUC9300 has Google’s Chromecast feature built in so it’s easy to send pictures, music and videos from your Android phone straight on to the TV screen. Bluetooth connectivity for headphones or external speakers is also a nice touch. It’s all packaged in a very elegant design, although the overall build quality is not on par with the market leaders. Otherwise, it’s a simple and straightforward budget-priced TV.
55” OLED UHD, 60 Hz refresh, HDR10+, 20 W audio, Dolby Digital, LAN/WiFi/Bluetooth, 3× HDMI 2.0, 2× USB, Chromecast, Android 10, R8 000
