In the never-ending surge to convince consumers to buy new TVs for some reason, 4k TVs have replaced the previous gimmick — 3DTVs — as the latest way to convince you to drop thousands of bucks on a brand new TV you (probably) don’t need. These 4k TVs, however, were priced solely for the rich and famous, until now.
Kogan has announced today that it will release a television at the 3840×2160 resolution for under $1000 Australian.
Ruslan Kogan, founder of Kogan announced the news at CES.
“There’s a lot of really exciting innovation here at CES and we want to thank the entire technology industry for helping to make the world a better place,” he said, in a press release.
“However, CES shouldn’t be just about technology that the average person will never see or could never afford.
“We want to make the latest technology more affordable for everyone, which is why we’ve designed a 55” Ultra High Definition Smart LED TV for under $1000.
“The real innovation here is the price. Generally it’s Australians who look at prices of technology overseas with envy. For once, it’s now the rest of the world looking to Australia, wondering when this Kogan TV will be available in their country…stay tuned.”
It all sounds a little too good to be true, so I’m guessing it probably is. Resolution should, of course, be front and foremost when thinking about buying a new TV — but is there really that much 4k content out there? The PS4 and the Xbox One sure as hell won’t be playing 4k games any time soon and terrestrial TV is still stuck on 720p.
A sub-$1000 4k TV sounds tempting, but I’d rather spend a little more and get a great big Panasonic Plasma that runs at 1080p. That’s just me.
But Luke Hopewell over at Gizmodo Australia had a quick go with the TV over at CES and he reports that the TV is actually pretty nice! Happy to be wrong about this one for sure.
Comments
28 responses to “Kogan Announced A Sub-$1000 4K TV”
I need a new tv and like you Mark, since plasmas are cheap as chips and no longer inferior to LCD, that’s what I’m looking at. 3d took 2-3 years before it was justifiable to buy a 3d tv. It’ll be at least the same before 4K tvs are worth it and for me, since I don’t have a tv cable and just run my consoles through my tv, I’m unlikely to be using any 4K content before the next gen of consoles at least
Hang on, when have plasmas ever been inferior to LCD? :p Plasmas have always had the better black levels, colours, response times, it is only in the last few years LCD’s have become as good as plasmas.
More the overheating issues and being a fair bit thicker. That’s no longer the case but plasmas are on their last legs unfortunately
Plasma owner here, that is a lie for the more recent Plasmas as they sussed out majority of the heating issues and size is quite skinny.
that’s why I said plasmas used to be like that. Unfortunately LCDs have taken over the market and even though the two types are basically equivalent and plasmas are far cheaper, LCDs are the ones that will survive. As for me, I’ll be getting a plasma as soon as I can before all the companies shut down production of them
He’s pretty much right. I just happened to read a post over at reddit today about plasma tv that had a link to Wikipedia with this info:
“Until the early 2000s, plasma displays were the most popular choice for HDTV flat panel display as they had many benefits over LCDs…. However, improvements in VLSI fabrication technology have since narrowed the technological gap. The increased size, lower weight, falling prices, and often lower electrical power consumption of LCDs now make them competitive with plasma television sets.”
“Panasonic announced that they will stop making plasma tvs starting March 2014.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_tv
I really like Ruslan. He’s a switched on guy and has done an amazing job with the brand. However… every single Kogan TV I’ve seen has been absolute rubbish. It’s cheap shit and you get what you pay for.
Sure it might be packed with features and is excellent value for money, but the image quality is horrible on every set I’ve seen. Bad firmware, horrible motion flow software, bad backlight bleeding, etc. You get what you pay for with these TVs and they’re good if you’re not picky.
But if you’re after image quality, I haven’t seen a single set so far that’s been good.
This is pretty much how I feel.
From the research I’ve done in the past, it seems like there are only a small handful of companies that actually create the panels. Amongst them is Samsung, LG, AUO, CHIMEI, etc
Take all of this with a grain of salt because it’s hard to get credible information on the entire manufacturing process.
Manufacturers such as Samsung keep the good panels that have passed the highest levels of QA to themselves (or sell them off at a higher rate to other brands) and then sell off ones that may have slight defects to the budget brands to use in their sets.
Thus I would say that Kogan is one of those companies, along with a bunch of other cheaper brands that use the ‘rejects’ for a lack of better words. These are still good panels, just not as excellent as the top ones.
Kogan keep their cost low because they put their TVs together themselves (in China) and then have their own firmware, etc. They’ve used Samsung panels for some of their TVs for instance (even got into trouble from Samsung for misleading advertising about it) but I’m willing to bet that it’s not the best panels Samsung produces, but rather the panels they themselves reject.
There are a couple of other interesting things that happen as a result of this:
1) Even though Samsung make their own panels, they also outsource panels from other manufacturers. Even within the same model. So you can end up with a panel lottery where you get a set with an AOC panel while your mate gets one with a Samsung panel. Similar specs, yet slight differences will make one better than the other potentially.
2) Even big manufacturers still skip on some QA and have shitty faults. Dead pixels, uneven panels, etc. Many of the W series of Sony TVs use LG panels (specifically the IPS, passive 3D models) and I suspect that they use inferior panels in their lower tier range compared to the higher models like the W9 series.
3) Even expensive TVs can have what I think are massive flaws. There’s issues with backlight bleeding (or the torchlight effect) even on big name brands. Samsung are notorious for this. Then there’s the Dirty Screen Effect (DSE) which can plague some models – that’s where you’re watching cricket for instance and you can see dark/light smears running down your screen. So it’s not even a safe bet that you get a really good set from a big brand.
But I’d trust a big brand any day and the quality is usually much better.
On a related note, I’m glad we’re moving more into IPS and MV panels and away from shitty TN panels even for gaming screens. TN had great refresh rates, but the view angle and colors seriously sucked.
Ive got a Toshiba 1080p LCD and the picture’s well clear but I felt like games looked more *real* on a mate’s big expensive Bravia. Is that refresh rate? (and is that the speed the picture “animates”? Sorry dunno the terms)
Hmmm, not sure what it could be, but maybe you mean the refresh rate or the technology manufacturers use to pump out more frames (like Sony’s ‘Motionflow’) which can make things look smoother. Though to some people they look unrealistically smooth.
Hey may have had something like that switched on.
Get what you pay for. Simple as that.
thats why theyre cheap. for a lot of people these tvs are perfectly fine though.
Yeah I have a few mates who bought one and they like them (because of the price). But personally I was really disappointed when I saw the image and there’s no way I’d even consider getting one myself after that.
yeah agreed. while some cheaper brands have crappy picture, some can have a good picture but its also the build quality thats important. people say “its all same panel as a better brand” but cheaper parts means theres a higher chance of things going wrong.
I’ve always bought decent quality electronics and over the years had very few things break down.
If you did want that Panasonic Plasma TV then you better hurry. Panasonic have announced they will stop making Plasma TV’s this year. Which is a damn shame, my 60″ Viera i bought in 2012 is an amazing TV.
such a shame. i’ve had a 50 inch panasonic plasma for about 5-6 years now and it’s still going strong. I think most brands are phasing out plasmas
kogan just needs to resell vizio… please?
“Kogan has announced today that it will be released a television “, that’s real-godd-english-like.
Their high rez monitor is excellent, don’t know about their tellies.
Oh Christ. Arrest me for my crimes. That was brutal!
“Resolution should, of course, be front and foremost when thinking about buying a new TV”
If this were the case then a higher resolution TV would always be preferred over one with better colour representation, a better refresh rate, and so on.
Personally I find 1080p perfectly adequate. 4K TV is a technology yet to prove its usefulness outside of certain very niche areas.
At the moment there’s a serious lack of 4K content, thus that resolution is pretty much irrelevant. By the time there’s some good content around, the major brands would have dropped their prices on 4K TV by a fair bit.
Best to fork out money for a decent 1080P TV now and a few years down the track upgrade to a 4K when the price is more reasonable.
But what’s the refresh rate like? I don’t want to play games at 30Hz =(
Its only 30Hz if you play games at 4K. At 1080/720 it will still do 60.
What’s the point of buying a 4K screen to use it at 1080p/720p 😛
Every time I see Kogan, I read “Krogan” and imagine Wrex standing next to consumer electronic products, smiling as he headbutts people who approach the stand.
Hahaha, and here I was thinking I was the only one.
Anyone that buys these 4k TVs now has more money than sense. What are you going to watch on it?
In the Australian context it is even stupider. Sure Sony Unlimited that service in the US and Japan (I believe) and it seems Netflix and Amazon will follow but the download for a film is like 40gb! So currently what percentage of the Australian population have internet bandwidth that will accommodate that? I have no idea but at a guess I am going to say less than 10%?
If the NBN had panned out like it shoudl have then we could be all good in a few years with streaming services but it looks like Australians will be taking a backward step to physical discs again when three layer Blu ray discs become available.