when Amazon Basics does a thing you guys buy the ever loving crap out of it so
with that in mind I know you're going to buy this whether I give it the green
light or not but hey I like feeling like I'm matter so I figured regardless of
that I'm going to talk at the air around me for 8 to 10 minutes and hopes that
someone somewhere hears my words and cares whether or not I approve of the
new Amazon ml55 F700 mini LED Fire TV
spoiler alert I don't really but not
because it's a bad TV let me show you
why first everyone's favorite part this
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we picked up the 55 in version because the 65 was going to take an extra week
for some reason and we didn't really care they both have functionally the same specs anyway 4K 120 HZ or 144 HZ in
gaming mode free sync premium Pro certification and a handy dandy autol
low latency mode for gaming pretty nice for under
$700 that is if you have a Prime Membership more on pricing later before
we get to that there's even more to like as the name of the product would suggest
the the ml55 F700 or mil 700 as I've
taken to calling it features a mini LED backlight that boosts up to 1,400 nits
with 512 dimming zones and support for
every HDR standard that you could want I'm talking Dolby Vision hdr10 HDR 10
plus and hlg to be clear I am not
expecting the world's best HDR experience based on these specs but I
also didn't pay for the world's best HDR experience so so far so good
since we're down here we can take a look at our speakers which are apparently 2.1
Channel Dolby Atmos with built-in subwoofers but we're going to look at
those later because first we've got to talk about our soundar oh my God I
forgot the soundar oh where is it it's at the lab time for an
adventure nice Fire TV Soundbar Plus
all
right dang
it there you
go okay I'm rolling and here it
is what a smooth production the Amazon
basic Soundbar plus 3.1 Channel allinone
design D be Atmos dtsx clear dialogue
2024 release let's take a look at it
shall we oh this is supposed to fast forward again so don't stop
rolling yep that's a bar of sound all
right I was expecting it be a lot lot more it's Amazon Basics not Amazon
Deluxe okay and they did the same thing that Sonos did where they only have one
HDMI port anyway enough about the Soundbar for now let's set up the TV
it's a pretty painless setup it only weighs about3 lb so you can move it with
a friend but you probably don't need to and in terms of IO it's got four HDMI
ports two of which are HDMI 2.0 two of which are HDMI 2.1 and yes one of the
faster ports is the EC meaning that with Amazon's own recommended Soundbar you're
going to be eating up one of your high-speed ports also present at the
back is coax Optical Ethernet no speed specified and a usb3 port which can
either be used to load media files onto or just used for power for a streaming
stick uh oh this is cool though at the bottom
they have a physical microphone switch and there it is if you don't want old
Alexa listening to you it's also got Wi-Fi 6C all right ready let's fire it
up get it fire
great she's going hey oh yeah kind of store is going
to have a fire TV in it I don't know actually that seems like the kind of
thing that was just part of the software for whatever OEM created this and yeah
cuz this is never going to be in a store for ever it's just coming from a warehouse yeah okay setup with Fire TV
app set up with the remote sure I like this what that it just gave you a bunch
of networks to choose from no that the signal strength it puts it in very simple English signal strength is really
good use this one okay sign in with your Amazon account uh okay I can press this
to do it later oh by not signing in any previously saved Wi-Fi or Ethernet
information will be removed and select features will be unavailable
I says pardon I'm not allowed to have a network
connection if I don't sign into an Amazon account I don't think so well
this is pretty right here I wonder what other features are locked like if you
don't make an account and you go in can you even change inputs and stuff to use
just a separate box I actually can't sign in though the tof goes Toon's phone
do you have an Amazon account I have an Amazon account sorry I'll try not to
order too much stuff it's okay is it oh
okay maybe they registered our TV
big brother's watching yeah I will save Wi-Fi passwords to that's wild I don't
like that that what that's not good
that's really messed up imagine if someone hacked your Amazon account and got into it I don't need to do that
voice commands when the TV screen is off sure get the best picture quality oh
yeah the default set op it's the energy saving stuff yeah I like that it prompts
me for it it's nice a lot of them just show up and they're in energy saving
mode and they don't tell you anything and that's a lot brighter now it's kind of nice that it doesn't just load them
all up for for you you get to choose yeah some of them just come pre-loaded
and you go and sit there and delete a bunch is Plex an option no of course not
get tuby what are you doing get tuby tuby enable parental controls okay not
bad I don't actually care about that right now oh man this this getting a
little long though right scan for TV channels no no okay me try to use Alexa
to do something sure cuz we should be able to just be like hey open
Netflix do you have off I don't know
maybe maybe the red means off you'd think red means recording you would
think that yeah microphone is on to turn microphone off oh there we go the Alexa
Switched Off okay hey download
plex y it hey it went to though that was
pretty Snappy inputs okay easy enough
picture backlight picture reset with
there's more than this there's way more than this you say that I know that maybe
we have to be in like Netflix or something maybe it just has a really
minimal well I hate that OSD I don't like it either I hate that I should be
able to change everything that I want to change from wherever I am cuz that
that's horrible yep Watch trailer
Easy sure oh there's way more
what the heck I don't know why it's you
know locked unless you're watching content but it does have a bunch of
options and they Auto on to filmmaker mode did it or was it said yeah so
that's nice filmmaker mode oh right no no I wanted motion off it's off by
default what's action smoothing set to three well three that's probably okay
it's probably fine it it'd be better at like 1 or off but there's no way I would
leave something like super resolution on
by default really I just keep it on you know what like it's not super aggressive
yeah I think I might actually prefer it off really on yeah yeah okay hey tu's
ready you know what no it's messing with the bokeh effect oh yeah sharpening
background details that are supposed to be out of focus I'm leaving it off all
right all right all right we got our Alm vrr DG refresh rate that's what that
means so that's free sync yep what's DG dual line gate it's a TCL feature oh you
just SPO you just spoiled who the it's probably a TCL hey we took the last Fire
TV apart and pretty much confirmed it's a TCL so all right it's probably a TCL
this doesn't look bad no it really doesn't it really doesn't especially
given what my expectations were from the last Fire TV and what's really
interesting is if you disable local dimming we actually got stunning color
accuracy out of this thing a Delta e of just 1.8 in SDR with that said you
bought a mini LED with full array local dimming for a reason so you might have
to sacrifice some color accuracy for a more pleasing to the eye visual
experience but looks pretty good yeah honestly what about the listening
experience for that I'm going to need to put on my LTT hat from LTT Store.com it
might not make me a better listener but you'll like the way you look I guarantee
it uh we should use voice search um okay what was that button the blue one press
and hold crab
Rave all right let's go let's hear the speaker
and then we can throw the soundar
on you know what they're not bad they're not bad no especially for like 40 44
volume inste out of 100 well I know that
going louder isn't better
yeah that was are you kid I'm not saying that was like amazing Basse but that was
like actually Basse does the integrated
subwoofer actually
subwoof she woofs wow she woofs I've
never been impressed yeah I'm
trying I think that's the first time I've ever been impressed by a TV
subwoofer huh that was like not awful and it's not necessarily the best bass
I've ever heard out of a TV like there's some that have like ball and speakers
but those ones don't cost a few hundred bucks should you even get the Soundbar
combo yeah we promise let's get let's let's try it let's see if it's worth it
got a couple wall mount brackets that we're not going to use comes with a remote and an HDMI cable and a power
cable so we'll just get this plugged in real quick yeah the power cable could be
longer this is a nice setup process yeah
that was really easy we plugged it in it automatically detected everything tells
us it's connected uh you might need batteries for the Soundbar remote no I
don't even need to use it boom you're right I can customize in settings uh it
didn't take me straight to where to customize the actual sound so that's EQ
is right there what do you mean well yeah but it it took me to picture settings first oh sure yeah and there's
not much to adjust so cool oh long press
home for Soundbar settings juicy grassfed beef did it do
it I don't think it did it it just went to the settings menu shut up it does not
pressing settings go back and long pressing home do the
exact same thing why why is that even a feature it sounds better oh yeah I mean
and so it should how much is this thing the Soundbar alone is like 250 bucks
it's on discount when you bundle it with the TV and get it through Prime yeah
it's way better yeah I'm still impressed by the TV but if you want better
Clarity obviously your TV is not going to be the best speaker
I'm less impressed once we get to the base yeah but if you do want like yeah
volume uh for your dialogue yeah it's
better than the TV I don't know if it's $300 better oh No Maybe not maybe not
even like $250 better maybe not even $200 better and to be clear on a TV with
way worse speakers I'd be singing a completely different tune oh yeah but I
was so impressed by the speakers on the TV itself that I just don't feel like I
need the Soundbar nearly as much as I would on another one yep why don't we
check out some HDR content okay had people asking why do we watch this movie
cuz it's pretty and sounds nice also consistency we watch the same movie
across multiple devices then we have a frame of reference for everything is
smoothing on right that's what I thought when we were watching crab Rave I thought I turn thought I turned it off I
thought you turned it off too okay well let's let's make sure it's off real
quick I'm just going to hold the home button wow it's really struggling at
times huh like we're just through menus in Plex hello and we're on Wi-Fi 60 and
we have a really good networking okay it's off now how'd you turn it off I had
to change the pro the picture profile
Dolby Vision standard just has motion
smoothing don't like it Go
yourself yeah it's on again wow it takes
forever to swap modes okay that one wasn't too bad oh there it goes no no that's the
that's the video buffering okay so uh let's connect aor networ cable I guess
cuz this is terrible it's got Wi-Fi 6E like it should be fine I don't want to
blame it our Wi-Fi can be a little sketchy that's true that's
true I'm just going to turn this off okay this definitely feels more
responsive in Plex now so hopefully it was just Wi-Fi maybe it's my server I
just I want to be open to the possibility that it's my server so I'm
just going to all right yeah yeah yeah I'm going to find the same movie hm
totally fine play original quality cuz
that's that's what I that's what I selected here wow connection to the
server is not fast enough to stream this content it should be even if it's only
100 megabit Ethernet should be fine yes
be able to do it could have just been a trans coating issue and then we can just cut all this out and we'll just pick up
right from there it goes you know maybe still figuring stuff out okay let's wait
for one more buffer okay or give it like a couple minutes and then if it's fine I
want to look at how it looks it's pretty okay there it goes
again we're losing a lot of detail the
yeah I know it's not no lead it is mini LED try the uh contrast enhancement
stuff you can turn on intelligent HDR
and it's supposed to make the pixels like turn off or something and then look
a little darker but if that's just turned off then we're going to lose the
detail anyway yeah you can see when you've got that camera flash yeah you
are basically completely losing the oh
wow yeah there's a lot gone here the brights look good they do but you can
tell that they're optimizing for the bright points and losing a lot in the
details to its credit the blacks are quite deep they are and even in HDR I'm
not seeing way over Juiced colors or anything like that like it's if I had to
say something I'd say maybe it's got a bit of a green cast to it but it's not
bad how's the accuracy in HDR it's not too bad actually I think it was a Delta
ITP average of like 12 and that's pretty good for HDR yeah for Delta ITP that's
actually pretty good these really don't pop though no it gets to a Max of 1,600
nits with the right settings uh we'll talk more about it later in the Labs
results sections but realistically out of the box you're going to hit more like
1,200 which is 200 below the 1400 in its rating that it's rated for and given
that it doesn't get that dark you don't get that pop and also the 512 local
dimming zones because it's only 512
you're going to get brightness in like bigger flashes but you're not going to
be able to do like that little pin prick of a star or whatever like an could or
even just a mini LED with 1600 zones yeah I'm finally watching 2001 Space
Odyssey you've never seen it so we can uh we can pop that on for a minute here
man the the Stars just get lost in its
attempts to bring the black levels down mhm I don't see much of a halo around a
big bright object I see some yeah it's
totally tolerable though and there should be way more detail in this
landscape here yeah I watched this on my phone last night so then again my phone
literally costs more than this TV and yes I know it's a different class of
device or whatever but on a $400 phone you would probably get a better
experience and you could just like hold it here yeah cuz it's OLED it's perfectly acceptable for the kids or
even just like the average family who just needs a decent TV in the living
room to game on this is bad this is bad
okay never mind I can't even see the Monster design no that that even here
you can usually see more detail in toothless's Wings yeah okay it's kind of
it's not great the parts I can see are actually really good yeah and color
accuracy looks good but it can't do those deep blacks yeah just the way it
rolls off yeah but can you game on it wait shut up what what what you found
the select button there is no dedicated inputs button no way actually they've
got Prime Netflix apps and Amazon music
and the little TV icon whatever the hell that means what do this do live TV oh
Christ yeah it is I I shouldn't have gone to that unbelievable I don't even
know how you got there I don't even know how you got there I don't even want to try hold the whole buttton click click
click and then select one for something that you're going to use that often
unacceptable okay so where am I supposed to set oh input settings probably game
now in Windows check if we've got 144 as well yeah it's set to 144 now we had to
go through a convoluted thing of nonsense in order to get it to detect
that that but yep we're set to 144 we're in HDR uh what do you think do maternal
yeah input leg feels good I'm going to go out on a limb I'm going to say not
the best we've ever seen But perfectly acceptable perfectly good here's one
weird thing we actually measured worse response times at 144 vers at 120 so the
input leg is about the same but the actual response time of the pixels is
worse yeah huh so they just need to do some fine tuning in their overdrive or
something I guess and an update could fix that will they update it oh no
there's no way they're going to fix that but it looks okay like this looks fine
oh this is totally fine yeah we're in warm 2 game mode 144 Herz HDR on Dolby
Vision it's okay it is markedly better
than the LED TVs that we had back with no local dimming zones absolutely it's
not on par with a higher end TV but it is totally acceptable no one's going to
complain about going to someone's house and watching this TV or gaming on this
TV 100% but they're also not going to be impressed or wow or anything either no
but it's totally fine and just like with watching movies I don't find myself
distracted by the bloom oh yeah even though I'm sure if I you know move yeah
move a mouse cursor around on it I can I can see it in summary pretty darn okay
way better audio than I expected and as long as you're willing to play around in
the very unintuitive sometimes menu system I think you can eek pretty darn
good image quality out of it in almost any scenario now that the subjective
stuff's over then let's throw to the lab for their thoughts it's better than we
expected for color gamut we're reaching about 94 or 95% of P3 depending on which
mode you're in and about 71% of bt2020
when it comes to SDR color accuracy it's kind of all over the place we found the
best results in filmmaker mode with local dimming off netting an average
Delta of 1.86 but if you're willing to sacrifice accuracy for brightness and
full array local dimming which you probably are with a TV like this then
surprisingly standard mode warm 2 stood out with an average Delta e 2000 of 8.03
and a Max of 13.24 as for HDR in
filmmaker mode at default backl brightness we measured a very solid
Delta ITP average of 12.76 with a Max of
42.29774
brightness filmmaker mode set to default got us about 12200 nits but maxing out
the backlight we reached a whopping 1630 either way plenty bright just wish
we could see that in a smaller window size than 25% this is likely due to the
lack of extra dimming zones 512 is a bit lackluster even on a 55 in display like
this one even after measuring it objectively this thing is not bad so
then if it's not bad why am I having such a hard time recommending it well
for starters remember those 500 12 dimming zones that we've talked about
well that's not bad for a 55 in TV but what it is is a little last gen in 2024
especially at the non-prime member discounted price of
$820 and that right there is another problem Amazon and their services are
baked into this experience start to finish For Better or For Worse which is
going to be a major turnoff for some folks and unfortunately unlike some of
their other products that justify the intrusiveness with industry beating
value even the Prime member price here isn't that compelling see at the time of
filming one of the competitors to this TV the high sense u8 is priced around
the same and is a measurably better TV
same size resolution and refresh rate but rated it up to 1,800 nits with a
significant bump in dimming zones also worth noting unlike our Fire TV here
that add zones almost linearly as you go up in size if you spring for the 65in
version of the high sense which is also price competitive you more than double
those zones at 1,600 total now obviously
the u8n isn't always going to be on promo but it also often is and I think
that it's the better value admittedly it doesn't come with fire OS but a fire
stick is pretty cheap and frankly the included fire experience on this one is
not fire so I would still recommend something like an NVIDIA shield for a
more featur and smooth experience
with that said if all you're looking for is validation of the thing that you
already want or already bought then I guess the Fire TV mini LED mil 55 is
okay go ahead and buy it but just do me a favor and use the link down below to
buy it or or hear me out we will also have the high sense UA linked down there
it's also a perfectly cromulent TV and
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enjoyed this video hey make sure to check out some of our other TV videos
like the one we did on the high sense 110 ux that thing was
mindblowing sorry it took my hat off there