Last year, Xiaomi launched an extremely affordable smart TV called the Mi TV 2, which packed a 49-inch 4K Ultra HD panel from LG for under $650. Today the company announced a brand new Mi TV 2 model, one with a 40-inch 1080p display, and it's just as affordable.
The 40-inch Full HD panel used in the Mi TV 2 is an LED-backlit LCD from Sharp's SDP X-GEN line, which has a rated contrast ratio of 5,000:1. On the SoC side, this TV comes with an MStar 6A908, which includes a quad-core Cortex A9 CPU clocked at 1.45 GHz alongside a Mali-450 MP2 GPU. There's also 2 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal NAND.
Running Android 4.4 with MIUI (upgradeable to Android 5.0), the 40-inch Mi TV 2 doesn't skimp on format support. Thanks to support on the SoC side, the Mi TV 2 can hardware decode 10-bit HEVC/H.265 videos, as well as H.264 and other common formats in popular containers like AVI, MP4 and MKV.
The new Mi TV 2 includes built-in speakers with Dolby MS12 virtual surround technology, unlike the 4K Mi TV 2 which uses an external sound bar to keep the TV as thin as possible. Despite the integrated speakers, the new Mi TV 2 is still pretty thin: 14.5mm at its thinnest point.
The 1080p Mi TV 2 will go on sale in China on March 31 priced at RMB 1999. This equates to just US$322, which is very affordable for this sort of smart TV. Unfortunately, like with many of Xiaomi's other products, there are currently no plans to sell the new Mi TV 2 outside of China or India.