The smart TV market in India is one of the fastest growing consumer tech categories, matching the smartphone growth in the country. Xiaomi challenged the incumbents with its own Mi TV lineup last year and since then a number of brands have launched affordable smart TVs in India, to varying degrees of success.

The Thomson UD9 TV sports a 40-inch panel with 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution, and the body is surprisingly light for such a large panel. We had no issues getting the TV up and standing on the supplied feet. Thomson also provides its version of a VESA wall mount within the box, if you want to put the TV up on a wall.

Thomson UD9 40-inch 4K TV: Picture Quality

To be quite honest, the picture quality on the Thomson UD9 40-inch 4K Android-powered Smart TV leaves you feeling underwhelmed. While the panel itself is bright and the viewing angles are sufficiently good, the picture quality was under par. We could notice graininess in the smart TV UI, while the panel 60Hz panel was slow to refresh some UI elements when you quickly scrolled through the menus.

Stay tuned for our full review of this TV to know whether our less-than-impressive first encounter with the Thomson UD9 is an anamoly or whether this is the best it can do.

In terms of ports, the Thomson UD9 comes with three HDMI ports, two USB ports, Wi-Fi support, and an Ethernet jack. You get two 10W speakers, which sounded pretty decent in our brief time with the TV.

The main smart TV UI of the Thomson UD9 4K TV, shows you a curation of movies, TV shows and music, pulled from the content partners. At the moment, it seems to be only showing you videos from YouTube, which involves the same click-bait content and mix of Bollywood music that you would get on standard YouTube. The selection of content is a shadow of what you get with Xiaomi’s PatchWall UI.

The Thomson UD9 is priced at Rs 20,999 in India, and will be available exclusively through Flipkart, starting March 16. As such, it is easily one of the most affordable UHD TVs in the market. But that doesn’t mean it’s automatically worth your money.

Do let us know if you want us to test any particular feature or aspects of the Thomson UD9 40-inch 4K TV, and we will make sure it’s included in our full review.