TCL 32S5209K TV- 32-Inch TV Smart HD Television with Android
TCL 32S5209K TV- 32-Inch TV Smart HD Television with Android TV – HDR & Micro Dimming – Compatible with Google Assistant, Chromecast & Google Home, Slim Design, Dolby Audio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi [Energy Class F]
From the brand
| Dimensions: | 73.2 x 17.5 x 81.28 cm; 4 Kilograms |
| Model: | cdqq120 |
| Manufacture: | TCL |
| Dimensions: | 73.2 x 17.5 x 81.28 cm; 4 Kilograms |
| Origin: | Poland |
The TV is great, but for some reason the OS just locks up some times and nothing will wake the TV up again except turning it off at the mains and back on again. I’m not sure whether it’s because of smart home integrations or my Sonos Arc plugged into it or something else, but it’s the only complaint about an otherwise excellent TV.
Perfectly good telly and delivered in good time. The niggle is that it needs 4 small bolts to fix the feet on but only came with one. Bit of a carry on getting the right size from the DIY shop but got there in the end.
Needed a new TV when my old one gave up the ghost, I’m on a tight budget, so I bought this TV (I needed something to watch Hans Gruber falling from the Nakatomi Plaza Tower to get Christmas 2023 stated!! ).
It arrived quickly, and safely. Took a few minutes struggle to get the ‘legs’ attached, but I was working in poor light…
TV worked, set itself up via Google on my phone, and it’s working.
Picture and sound aren’t the best, I’ll have to see what adjustments I can make in the settings. It’s much better than trying to watch films, and TV shows on my phone or tablet. I’m happy enough with my purchase!
Will update after I’ve been using it for a few days.
So I bought this to replace the TV in my TV bed and it doesn’t fit all the electronics for it are in one place on the back and making it rather thick.
Other than that, it was so quick to set up and all the apps logged in when I cast from my phone so that was really handy. It doesn’t feel like the most expensive TV, but that would be because it isn’t. Anyway, I would recommend it for someone that needs a cheap and cheerful telly (not for a TV bed…)
Picture quality is decent. Obviously this not a top end TV, but for 120 pounds it is good value.
The Google TV features can sometimes a little slow and there is sometimes a little lag time.
Good picture and price. Delivered quickly.
But the legs that were included with the TV don’t screw in all the way so the TV is one gentle jump away from crashing to the floor. May have to look into wall mounting but not what I wanted to do.
Quick delivery and arrived when stated – important as needed tohave someone present to take delivery. This was bought as a second tv to be used in father’s bedroom as he is now having to spend more time there and this enables him to watch sport and evening tv etc…… perfect for this use, very good value and good picture for the the money
This is to replace my 32 inch TV.
An Android TV so set it up half with my phone and half with remote.
I’m still digesting all of the settings but out of the box is a good start.
For this price I’m really pleased with picture and sound. I’m new to this brand but reviews overall rated it as good. Quick delivery and a good price.
Great tv for the Price . Bought while working away from Home picture quality is great and the sound is nice and clear easy to use menu. Used for gaming and netflix while away and doesn’t disappoint.
Grab a bargain Great tv Great price
This was a replacement for the kids bedroom after the cat knocking their expensive branded one they for Christmas, off the side and breaking it. This one has all that had and more at a much lower price. Its great fir a kids bedroom.
For the price of this TV, excellent! No issues, easy to set up. Quick deliver. Just buy it. I did for my room.
Sound is good. Quality is good. Link up to phone is great!
TV is superb and is so light and has lots of apps on it like Netflix and Amazon
Good picture and sound. Got it in the bedroom easy to install
This is a good tv for the price. The sound quality isn’t the best but it’s not terrible. I use it in my sons room for kids tv and it’s more than up to the job. I definitely recommend it and will be buying another soon.
I’m pretty sure also it’s a 1080p panel and not 720p, or at least that’s my interpretation of the onscreen stats.
Negatives – it’s very slow to start up in the mornings. My Samsung just turns on. This thing needs to display 2 TCL locos in slow-mo, then the Android logo before finally granting you control. There’s no rushing it!!
The remote control – as others have mentioned, some days it’ll respond to the first touch.. most of the time, you’re hitting the button repeatedly whilst waving it about like a magician failing to perform a basic trick.. but it does work. Eventually.
The screen does not like dark scenes. It’s definitely a struggle for it. Maybe I haven’t played with the settings enough to find a way to fix this, but currently, anytime a scene gets dark, it struggles to display properly.
Positives.. the price. Obviously.
It does look very nice, and not at all like a cheap budget TV.
It’s been very reliable, displays very well in HD/SD quality with streams such as Netflix, Prime, ITVX, etc. The ports all function as intended.
Overall – very fair quality for such a low price. If you want high quality display, darks, and a non argumentative remote, you should look elsewhere and at a higher budget. But if it’s just for casual lower quality HD/SD TV/movie streaming, perhaps a bedroom TV or kids room, and you don’t want to spend a lot.. I certainly don’t regret it! (Bought to replace a 27″ non HD pc monitor without RC attached to my Roku, so it’s an upgrade!!)
I’m more use to smart tv from lg
It was a headache to set up no clear instructions.
Be prepared for long set up time with apps remembering passwords etc.
took a while to suss out layout etc.
normal tv doesn’t come up straight away your Home Screen is just apps.
Apart from all that perfect size for bedroom. I got 32inch.
Set-up was pretty easy.
Log into your local wi-fi, sign into your Google account and let the scan for Freeview TV channels run its course. Its initial offer to scan a QR code with your phone didn’t seem to work, and how would it if you weren’t already logged into your home wifi? Maybe some people are using Ethernet.
After that, you’re pretty much there. I never did find out what ‘pairing your remote control’ was all about as it was already working (duhhh!) and never got any confirmation that I’d succeeded.
I say ‘pretty much’ as the Android apps that are ready installed are a tad disappointing, although in some cases, like adding NOW TV was merely a case of searching for it on the Play Store app and installing it. We also rent Amazon Prime and Netflix, but these were already ‘native’ to the TV.
My biggest gripe, for which it transpires there is more than one way to work around, is the omission of something as ‘main-stream’ as BBC iPlayer, or All4 for that matter, and perhaps more understandably the very latest iteration from ITV called ITVX, the latter of which we actually pay for as it then includes the entire range of Britbox as well as largely ad-free catch-up all for 60 p.a. In fact, of all the UK TV streaming apps only My5 can be installed from the built-in Google Play Store app.
Plenty of people will be shrieking “Get a Fire HD or Roku stick!” at this point, but if you’ve got a ‘smart’ TV, surely you’d want it to be the whole deal in itself?
I then got weaving to find out how such exclusions could be overcome. I already knew about ‘sideloading the APK files’ from previously experience with a Fire tablet that is now to all intents and purposes a ‘vanilla’ Android tablet.
It’s easy enough to alter the security settings to allow ‘untrustworthy’ installations, but this is only the beginning. It’s also easy enough to locate the APK files on the web and download them to your phone.
Then by installing a copy of the ‘Send Files to TV’ app at both ends, mercifully available on the TV’s Google Play Store, you can transfer the three missing installation files (APKs) to the TV where they can be run from a File manager app (yet another that you download rom Google Play store) in much the same was as you run a ‘dot exe’ file in Windows File Explorer.
Whoopee, I thought. Then I tried them all
Yes, the front screens appeared but only to crash. I may have to try this process with different ‘vintages’ of APK files, as I understand some people have succeeded.
THEN, I side-loaded a copy of Aptoide.TV which is an alternative app library to Google Play Store, and my heart lifted as it listed BBC iPlayer so I installed it from there — still no sign of ITVX or All4 though. Yes it installed iPlayer but where was it? No sign of an icon, despite being able to run it from the settings list of apps.
That Fire or Roku stick is looming methinks.
However, in the meantime, I’ve found that I can easily ‘cast’ the required stream from my phone apps to the TV with very little fuss so all is not lost.
Back to the TV.
On the plus side, I assume that it has a better or more sensitive tuner than its predecessor as the former would only pick up a handful of the available Freeview channels from the amplified indoor aerial I’m forced to use. I’m really pleased to find that all the HD channels have tuned in. Picture quality is good but not astounding. It is after all ‘only’ an HD-ready (768 lines) screen, from before they started their dizzy climb through ‘Full HD’ to 4K and even 8K UHD.
However, this doesn’t matter too much with a screen that’s only 32″ diagonal and viewed from 8 feet away in a bedroom.
Speaking of bedrooms, you can opt to have the LED stand-by light completely ‘off’. On the first night, I got nothing but moans about the white light leaking from the vents at the back throwing patterns on the wall!
You do have to keep reminding yourself that you only paid 149 for it, not the 1000 I shelled out for the 55″ Samsung downstairs!
Minor niggles? Well, I set up my Bluetooth ear buds to work with it only to find that I have to make alterations to the audio delay (lip-sync) every time and then restore it when using the speakers. Oh yes, and the instruction manual (and even the download version) is just too generic to be of any use, having no mention of ‘pairing the remote’ for a start.
As a main TV? Probably not!
As an excuse to never get out of bed except for the call of nature? Definitely!
No iPlayer but that can be solved through sideloading it if you know how to do this, and the remote came with dead batteries – popped in new ones and all good. This is a BBC thing rather than TCL as they likely need to test it fully.
Picture quality is alright, could be better but honestly for a 32″ TV where I am sitting about 6ft from it the TV is more than adequate and the other smart features are fine as it runs android TV
I could have been put off by some very ill-informed reviews here! Only 720 HD, surely they have not built sets with that resolution for years? But on a 32″ screen so what. In fact while watching a programme via my Sky Q Mini Box through the HDMI input, I hit the i button to see that the resolution was in fact 1080. I must admit, the specifications page on the TCL website is confusing sometimes referring to 720 and at other times 1080. So, I rang the TCL number provided by Amazon to find it had changed to 02037953308. In the end, I was put through to a very knowledgeable lady who confirmed that the resolution is 1080. She also gave me a part number for a remote control with built in microphone for issuing voice commands (RC602S) as the supplied remote does not have a microphone. More about that later.
With TVs I usually like to play around with the settings but in fact, the picture did not need tweaking, it is excellent. I did use the equaliser to push the bass up and the sound was better than expected via the internal speakers. In fact, I use the headphone output to connect to speakers in the ceiling via a small amplifier which is fine – doubt that I am benefitting from the Dolby Sound with that configuration.
Although I am mainly using Sky with the TV I tuned in the Freeview channels and even though I have a very old aerial, the TV tuned in excess of 140 channels. Some of the newer frequencies obviously did not work but that is an aerial issue. Interestingly, the TV identified the Freeview streamed channels (bet hardly anyone knows or let alone cares about them) but the TV could not resolve them unlike my large LG.
As mentioned, Sky via HDMI works well.
On the Android side, many apps including Netflix AND Prime TV are provided but as others have noted the Google Play Store where you normally find apps (generic names apk) is not well stocked for this TV and strangely the BBC iPlayer cannot be found at all. But here, geekiness sets in. Go to the Play Store and download a programme called Downloader. Once installed search for iPlayer. It will come back with a message that Downloader needs a browser add on. Download that and search for iPlayer.apk, there are many to choose from but the latest version can be downloaded and it works. But there is an issue and that is that you really need a mouse to navigate. As it happens, I had an old cheap keyboard/mouse that was easy to install and makes navigating the screen even easier. Also search for an app called on Downloader called Mobdro. This is easily installed and gives you access to hundreds of global TV stations including News and Sports.
Finally, I said that I would come back to voice commands. I use an iPhone and was surprised that there is an app called Android TV. When the TV is on, it connects to the app and can act as a keyboard, a track ball for mouse functions and using the iPhone microphone, you can use voice search. The trick is to touch the microphone button and then speak rather than keeping the button depressed while speaking. It works well and the app is free. I am sure that there must be a similar app for Android phones.
So, in summary, this is a high quality and keenly priced TV. OK, it helps if you enjoy technical challenges but straight out of the box, you will be connected in minutes and Netflix and Prime TV are there waiting for you as well as Freeview and if you have a suitable satellite TV dish pointed at 28 degrees you can get the free Freesat channels and if you nudge the dish to 19 degrees, you can receive the free Astra bouquets.