Black + Decker A1 seems to be a well-rounded affordable option. Compromises have been made and that’s understandable considering the price point, but overall the TV offers good value.
You get excellent colour accuracy in SDR, high contrast and decent HDR performance with Dolby Vision support. The 36W audio system and gaming performances are additional perks that add to the experience. If you have a higher budget, you can also consider some decent-performing QLED options like Acer Super Series 55-inch TV and TCL C645B.
The budget TV segment is booming right now. New brands like Black + Decker and JVC are stepping in, shaking things up. Today, we’ve got Black + Decker 55-inch A1 Series TV – an affordable 55-inch TV that is licensed and distributed by Indkal Technologies in India.
We’ll talk about all the details in this review and I’ll also reveal a hidden setting in the menu that can dramatically improve this TV’s picture quality.
This Black and Decker TV comes with a VA LCD panel. Initially, I assumed it was a QLED TV but when I ran the colour gamut tests I realised it was not.
The panel can reproduce almost 96% of the Rec 709 colour space used for SDR content.
DCI-P3 and BT2020 coverage stands at 83% and 62%, which are relevant to HDR content.
Colour Volume, which measures colours at different luminance levels, is also in line with what we expect from regular LED LCD TVs.
We recorded a native contrast of 5000:1 from the VA panel, which is great in this segment.
Viewing angles are not very wide as is often the case with VA displays on affordable TVs. We noticed a shift in colours off-axis which is the trade-off you make for higher contrast.
We noticed a peak brightness of 515 nits which certainly exceeded our expectations.
The Movie preset has a white point close to standard D65, and it is also the most colour-accurate mode on this TV.
The display is tuned for viewing in a normal or bright viewing environment and follows a tone curve close to gamma 2.2 for SDR.
Initially, there seemed to be a lot wrong with picture quality, like too much red in skin tones and several colour inconsistencies. The culprit was AI which is enabled by default. This is the sneaky setting I referred to at the start and it’s buried deep in the advanced picture mode settings.
AI is prominent in marketing material and is enabled by default. Perhaps, Black and Decker considers this a better presentation for people who prefer boosted colours. However, if you prefer colour accuracy it is better to disable it. Also, if you are watching in an exceptionally well-lit room, these AI issues aren’t as prominent.
After disabling AI, the average delta error in SDR dropped from 4 to just 1.5 which is excellent.
Colours and skin tones in SDR content look natural, but I can’t help but notice that blacks aren’t as deep – which is again totally acceptable at this price point.
The TV supports HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision HDR formats. Overall the HDR performance is decent but falls a little short of what you’d get with some QLED options in the same budget.
Dolby Vision support counts as an advantage, despite the modest panel capabilities. That is because quite a lot of HDR content on streaming apps is in Dolby Vision these days and the A1 at least performs better for such content as compared to affordable TVs that don’t support Dolby Vision.
MEMC or motion smoothing is enabled by default in Dolby Vision. I prefer to disable it to avoid unnatural motion or soap opera effects. The TV tends to slightly over-brighten HDR, so Dolby Vision Dark seems to be the best profile, more so when viewing dark ambience.
Colour accuracy for HDR10 is slightly off and we recorded an average delta error of 4.1 which is still fairly above average in the affordable segment.
This is mostly because the TV tracks brighter than the reference in HDR as is evident from the PQ EOTF curve.
This is also evident in bright HDR sequences where specular highlights appear burnt on the TV.
If we factor out the luminance error, the colour checker stats look significantly better.
We also noticed that the lack of a wide colour gamut impacts HDR scenes which results in a lack of pop and paler skin tones.
Compared to other affordable TVs, the A1 does a decent job with upscaling legacy content. Motion handling is reasonably smooth as well.
The Acer Super Series QLED TV supports useful gaming features like HDMI 2.1 connectivity with ALLM and 120Hz motion accelerator, which do make a difference. The gaming experience with the console and PC exceeded our expectations. The gameplay felt smooth and responsive considering the price.
The TV has a 36W Audio System with Dolby Audio support. The sound stage is wide and dialogue clarity is above average. No complaints here.
This TV has a ‘Dual AI Processor’, which is a quad-core processor backed by 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. The performance is not particularly snappy but it is once again decent for the asking price. The Google TV software is based on the latest Android TV 14 with some basic customisations on top.
There are several useful extras like the Fastconnect option that bundles all casting and mirroring options in one place. It also includes a workable alternative to Apple Airplay for mirroring from iPhones.
Some other useful features include meeting mode, world clock and Enjoy music mode which you can use to turn off the display while listening to music.
The TV has a very customary design with narrow bezels and a metallic back. The Black + Decker branding is on the Power button module. The feet are made of polycarbonate but have a metallic finish. There is a decent assortment of connectivity ports on the rear and they are also easy to access.
The remote is quite familiar and ergonomic. The build quality is at par with what we usually see with affordable TVs. The odd thing is the Menu button, which is not for the TV menu but for playback controls when content is playing via USB.
Apart from hotkeys for four popular apps, you get a few extra buttons like the Smart button for additional software ad-ons.
So, overall, Black + Decker A1 seems to be a well-rounded affordable option. Compromises have been made and that’s understandable, but overall the TV offers good value.
You get excellent colour accuracy in SDR, high contrast and decent HDR performance with Dolby Vision support. The 36W audio system and gaming performances are additional perks that add value.
If you have a higher budget, you can also consider some decent-performing QLED options like Acer Super Series 55-inch TV and TCL C645B.
