Harper 50U660TS TV: a big screen with a cinema picture

Today we are testing Harper 50U660TS TV set: smart TV with 50″ screen and 4K resolution. Its main task is to become the center of multimedia entertainment in the house. Also suitable for use as an information panel, e.g. in a canteen, school or health center. Especially appetizing will look in 4K menus for lunch, and electronic queue at the doctor will save visitors from the bustle in the clinic … So, a budget TV with a big screen will be interesting to many: for home, for family and for business.

Appearance, controls and connectivity

The design of Harper 50U660TS can be described very simply – “minimalism is our everything”. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Strict, precise shapes, alien to avant-garde gloss like red inserts or chrome legs, allow the large TV to successfully fit into any interior.

The frame and the front side of the legs of Harper 50U660TS are still glossy and the sides are matte. But it is almost imperceptible under even illumination. As a glossy fan, I like that the matte surfaces start to take over the Harper technique.

It is important to note that the leg span of the novelty reaches 109cm. If you plan on putting the Harper 50U660TS on your nightstand, it should be a pretty wide specimen.

If such a capacious cabinet does not fit into your interior, you can go another way: You can easily hang your TV on a VESA 400×200 bracket. Despite their impressive size modern TV-panels have a moderate weight, in our case it is 10,5 kg that fits well on the swivel and tilt bracket. For example, HARPER TVK-1755 has a maximum load capacity of 30 kg, so the Harper 50U660TS will hold your TV with one hand.

The control buttons are on the back wall on the left side. There are signs on the side. So, there is a possibility to see them in an emergency situation, for example, when the remote control fails.

Separately, I liked the mechanical power button on the bottom side. It’s easy to find by touch, and it can be useful, for example, if the owner is away on vacation and the TV plug is hidden so deep that you can’t access it.

The remote control of Harper 50U660TS turned out to be a bit inconsistent. Note that the successful battery pack ensures that your thumb can reach the navigation buttons – for Smart TV, definitely the right solution. There are two “ribs” on the back that serve as tactile navigators through the individual key blocks.

No claims to these units. The remote has everything you need. But the buttons themselves are stiff, without feeling of pressing and feedback. For delicate children’s fingers or ladies with manicured fingernails they certainly will have to press with the pad such a procedure may not be very comfortable.

If we take into consideration the segment that Harper 50U660TS belongs to, I would like to have the remote control air mouse in the set. Nowadays such gadgets are not that expensive, they make controlling Smart TV much easier, especially on Android, where not all apps are “confined” to the remote control. However, you can use and alternative control. There is a wireless keyboard and touchpad hybrid in Harper’s lineup – KBT-570.

What to choose – air mouse or wireless hybrid, the question remains open, as they say, for taste and color… If you often need to type only the title of the video from YouTube on the screen, you can do without air mouse, but if you have to correspond or look through emails via Smart TV, the “keyboard” paired with the touchpad will be a real godsend. And it will cost about 2 thousand Dollars. Whether it’s a lot or not? There are, of course, more budget solutions, but for a convenient gadget, sometimes it’s cheaper to pay more..

Personally I like this hybrid very much, because often I have to type a lot of text on the screen. I was able to test the keyboard with the touchpad in real “combat conditions”, so I can personally confirm that the doubled ergonomics was on par! Pressing is soft and crisp, the moment you press it is palpable. The touchpad is also very nice. If you get used to it, you can even work in Excel tables. By the way, such a keyboard device perfectly complements the tablet, turning it into a full-fledged computer.

Back to the Harper 50U660TS TV, though. The set of connectors for this TV is wider than the standard one. Here, for example, there is a rare for modern models SCART jack, which allows you to connect to the screen many devices from “old life. Otherwise, the interface is quite traditional. HDMI supports ARC, which simplifies the connection of home theater speakers.

Despite the presence of mini AV and YPBPR connectors, adapters are not included, this is worth considering if you plan to connect to these connectors. By the way, the MHL function in this TV model is not supported. This standard seems to be dying out.

Practical Use

Digital TV

“The hour has finally come when I won’t see you again. Analogue is dead, – that’s minus. But there is “digital” and that’s a plus… From 2019 we will only watch digital TV.

Since most Android Smart TV shells are very similar, the Harper 50U660TS is fine with “digital”. Let’s note only the most important features:

* Automatic crops work perfectly, turning your 4:3 square image into a 16:9 wide-screen one with different ways.

* Rather informative electronic schedule panel EPG, allowing you to quickly see the program for the coming days.

* Channels can be switched with some delay. It’s because of the nature of digital TV.

* Quite decent sound. No bass, but no wheezing and squeaking at high volume.

* There is a time shift and recording the broadcast on an external drive.

By the way, if you open the main screen of the Smart TV, the TV program playback continues in the background, and with sound. An interesting, non-trivial solution.

Thus, in the area of playback conventional television in Harper 50U660TS any significant problems identified, although driven the device on all possible channels and a wide variety of programs, from talk show Andrew Malakhov to soccer matches of the English Premier League.

Smart TV

Modern televisions have long ceased to be devices for watching only terrestrial content. They can find on the network and display on the blue screen almost any information: videos from YouTube, cartoons, photos, letters from e-mail, an order in an online store, not to mention the usual publications in the social networks. networks. Therefore, when choosing a Smart TV, it is very useful to understand the hardware of your new TV. The Harper 50U660TS model has the following features:

* The dual-core processor ARM Cortex-A9 1.2 MHz.

* 1.5 GB of RAM, of which about 0.7 GB goes to the operating system.

* For graphics is responsible no longer young MALI-400 MP.

* Built-in memory – 5.2 GB. Available to the user 4.8 GB. This is more than enough for a variety of applications. And here to store movies or other “heavy” content, of course, you need an external drive.

The latest Android 6 is used as the operating system.0. The shell of Harper 50U660TS is simple and laconic. The bottom of the screen displays a menu of nine applications in a row. There is a TV program in the background. Nice and handy.

Perhaps the unexpected fact that most of the usual applications from Play market and the virtual store Aptoide TV are not available for downloading to Harper 50U660TS is a disadvantage. Have to download the roundabout way by installing applications manually through APK files.

The Smart TV power is enough to play 4K content both online and from external media.

Harper 50U660TS has a pretty good player built in, allowing you to change the cropped and other picture settings. But it can hardly compete with the best external applications – like Kodi.

So, even a cursory review of the smart capabilities of the TV set Harper 50U660TS shows that it is designed only for watching normal TV, movies from the network and surfing the Internet. It is not even possible to play trivial “chase” and “shoot” games on this model.

Matrix quality

Backlight uniformity and viewing angles

The TV Harper 50U660TS has IPS matrix. Viewing angles are very good. Even in extreme situations, there will be practically no change in brightness or color.

For a television with such a large diagonal, the uniformity and quality of the backlighting plays a very important role. That is why to test the uniformity of brightness and color temperature we have chosen 35 points instead of 15, as we usually do. This allows for a more detailed and detailed picture.

The brightness of the backlight in the center at first, when we turned on the device with the factory settings was 268 cd/m2, which is slightly lower than the manufacturer’s claimed 300 cd/m2. After some manual adjustments we got the declared 300, even 308 cd/m2, but at the price of lowering the quality of the picture. I think the factory settings are better not

The brightness in the center of the screen is 267 cd/m2, it is more than enough to work in extreme conditions, when the sunlight pours directly from the window.

To the corners of the image brightness decreases by 10-15 percent, but, in fact, with the naked eye no one will notice the difference in backlighting. In addition, the brightness drops by a smooth gradient from center to edges, as if a vignette. This option is more natural and less noticeable than the “mosaic” or “frame” options.

I was very surprised by the color temperature stability of the matrix plane. The average deviation does not exceed seven percent. This is an excellent indicator! For example, the herringbone will be equally green all through the frame – without bluish or red tints in the corners as it happens on cheaper TVs.

To conduct another test – on the presence of light spots on the screen, a special device is not required. The trained eye will immediately see these very spots of light. Harper 50U660TS also has them in the form of horizontal stripes localized in the center of the matrix. But you don’t have to be afraid of them. They are not noticeable in the “live image” mode at all. Another thing is if you use this TV for presentations with monochrome backgrounds – stripes can be noticeable, especially when you look at the panel at an angle.

So, overall, I liked how the TV screen performed during the test measurements. Note the quite decent backlighting of the matrix, the brightness difference from the center to the edges is within normal range and the color temperature stability was just fine.

Colorimetric measurements: color gamut, color temperature and contrast

Harper 50U660TS TV set has several preset color profiles. But the difference between them is not too noticeable. In order not to multiply tons of similar graphs, we will take the user mode as a basis. This gives you access to the available adjustments like brightness, sharpness, etc. d.

Color gamut is very good and covers almost all colors Rec.709/sRGB. This means that color saturation and brightness is nothing to worry about. Not every office monitor is capable of such accurate color rendering. And we won’t even say anything about notebook displays.

Color temperature is noticeably shifted to the cold zone, about 10000K, while the reference is 6500K. To get a truer picture we turned Harper 50U660TS color temperature to warm mode. By the way, you can adjust this parameter by three values – normal, warm and cool.

The warm mode let us get very close to a perfect picture and get the color temperature of about 8000K, which is a bit cool, to put it simply: white is the color of a “white” office sheet of paper. As we remember, true white has a yellowish tint.

On the other hand the color temperature just reeks of stability. It doesn’t deviate more than 10 percent over the entire brightness range. This is an awesome result!

The gamma curve also looks very nice.

This curve shape ensures good detail display in light and dark parts of the image.

However, in all tested modes the contrast the real one, not the dynamic one is only 200:1, of course, we would like to have more values. Let’s try to increase the contrast by playing with the TV settings.

I have found by experience that the factory brightness setting simply kills the contrast by brightening the dark tones. That’s why the picture looks like it’s covered in a haze and you just want to add black.

Once the backlight level dropped to 80 percent and the brightness dropped from 50 percent to 40 percent, the contrast jumped as much as 2380:1 !!! – almost 12 times! But the brightness has decreased from 260 to 85 cd/m2 and the gamma value from 1.9 to 2.3. That is, as a result of manual adjustments we have got the brightness of the screen like in the cinema, but in the daylight it will not be very comfortable to look at such a screen. But the compromise is possible.

Immediately after purchasing a Harper 50U660TS TV you can dim the backlighting so that the daylight does not interfere with the comfort of watching your favorite shows. You can find quite a significant amount of contrast in the settings.

So the image on the screen Harper 50U660TS after adjusting the screen can be very harmonious. Bright areas are homogeneous, without gray flecks, the dark areas are not flattened. The picture as a whole is kind of a little lightened, but the colors are bright, natural, not screaming. I would say that, overall, the picture of this model looks very advantageous against the background of modern “plasticine-cartoon” trends, it is more like a cinema.

Bottom line

In the TV set Harper 50U660TS has a matrix with great technical potential. Excellent color gamut. Stable color temperature, excellent viewing angles. Its weakness is only a weak light bars in the backlight, but that’s a misfortune of most large panels. Harper engineers obviously have some reserves to bring the software part of the image to perfection and to pull the main modes to reference values. The quality of the matrix itself, in our opinion, is quite capable of withstanding such a challenge. And remember, to get the sharpest, most vibrant picture possible, you have to turn down the backlighting to at least 90 percent.

Conclusion

We have a very good quality big screen TV for our test. It doesn’t pretend to be of the premium segment, it is a good “workhorse” that justifies every ruble invested in it. The Harper 50U660TS is based on an excellent IPS matrix we believe can be further developed in future modifications. When an external source with its finest settings such as a computer or tablet is connected, this matrix is capable of performing virtual miracles in real life.

The austere minimalism of the design is emphasized by a pleasant image with accurate color rendering. The picture on the screen moderately bright, moderately contrast and moderately saturated. Although the hardware is not of the Hi End level, the processor and memory power is enough for everyday tasks, as well as for Internet surfing.

Pros

Excellent color gamut, color temperature and contrast of the matrix when reducing the brightness to 90 percent

Great viewing angles

Working Smart TV

Disadvantages

Hard keys of remote control

Full technical specifications

Analog TV reception PAL7 SECAM TV System PAL7SECAM yes

Color systems for AV NTSC/PAL yes

Sound Reception B/G D/K/l Sound B/G D/K/I Yes

Stereo NICAM/A2 Sound NICAM/A2 decoder yes

Teletext page count/TX pages 1000

The type of panel

Screen Diagonal Matrix Size, inch sm 50″ 127 cm

Screen Format Aspect Ratio 16:9

Resolution, dpio 4K ULTRA HD 3840×2160

Brightness Brightness, kd/m2 300

Dynamic Contrast Dynamic Contrast 120000:1

Number of colors Display Colors, min 1 billion.

Pixel response time, me /Response time, ms 8ms

Angle of view Angle of view 178/178

Screen refresh rate Hz 60 Hz

Type of panel IPS VA TN VA

LCD panel RGB color filter

Backlight Type Edge/Direct Direct

Digital TV reception

DVB-T2/DVB-T/DVB-C digital tuner Yes

DVB-S2 digital tuner yes

Record TV PVR Yes

Electronic TV Guide EPG Yes

Timeshift Yes

Connectors

Antenna input yes

Satellite input LNB IN F yes

Composite AV input CVBS+Audio R/L yes mini

Composite AV output no

Component YPbPr input yes mini

SCART in SCART in yes

VGA input yes

Headphone input 3.5 mm Headphone out yes

USB 2.0 3

HDMI/HDMI 3

PC audio /PC audio in yes

USB 3.0 no

Ethernet RJ-45 /LAN RJ-45 yes

Connection no Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Network 2.4 HGz yes

PCMCIA Cl Common Interface Yes

HDMI version 1.3/1.4/2.0/2.1 2,0

S/PDIF optical no

SD card reader no

Other Features

3D Noise Filter 3D Noice Filter yes

Sleep Timer yes

Rotating Stand Move Stand yes

Speaker Power 2x10W

Equalizer Sound EQ yes

HDMI ARC yes

HDMI CEC yes

No HDMI MHL

DLNA no

e-share no

AirPlay no

DVD/CD no

Picture in Picture no

Voice Control no

Light sensor yes

Surround sound yes

HDR yes

Basic video files and codecs

MPEG2 Yes

MPEG4 Yes

ASF Yes

AVI Yes

DivX yes

Xvid yes

FLV yes

MOV yes

ts/trp/tp yes

WMV9/VC-1 yes

VOB +

H.264 MKV, MP4 Yes

H.265/HEVC Yes

Basic audio files and codecs

ACP yes

MP3 yes

AAS yes

t4a yes

ARE no

FLAC no

OGG yes

WAV no

WMA no

Basic graphic files

jpg yes

jpeg yes

bmp yes

png yes

mpo yes

HDD support and USB memory sticks

FAT/FAT32 playback and recording yes

NTFS playback only yes

Power

Power supply voltage 110-240 V 50/60 Hz

Maximum power consumption 120W

Standby power consumption 0.5W

Wall Mounting

VESA mounting standard mm 400×200

SMART TV

Smart TV functions Android 6.0

Keyboard and mouse Network yes yes

Device Manager

1.5 GB RAM

Internal memory 8 GB

Processor CA9*[email protected]

Mali400*2 video processor

TV weight and dimensions

Weight with stand Kg 10.5

Weight without stand kg 10

Packaged weight lbs 14

Dimensions with stand WxHxD 1126×686.6×25