Can the 17TV, which can’t stop thinking about “Boonie Bears”, be considered a good TV?

On January 8, 2012, Lenovo released its first smart TV product. One year after the launch of the smart TV, relevant data showed that in April 2013, the Lenovo brand ranked 25th in the overall color TV market, with a retail share of only 0.02%. Three years later, in 2015, Lenovo withdrew and sold its smart TV division, and merged the team's business into the "Personal and Small and Medium Enterprise Division", and the established plan to subvert the living room entered the reorganization stage.

Regrouping means pulling back and striking again. In May 2015, Lenovo's smart TV Internet brand 17TV was launched. As a new brand focusing on the online market, 17TV even went so far as to bring in long-time competitors such as Xiaomi and LeTV to promote its new name, which is not easy to pronounce.

Lenovo, a giant in the technology industry, has not given up on the big screen in the living room because of its failure in the market. But is this 17TV a good TV?

Design

Although at the 17TV launch conference, 17TV CEO Xiong Wen stressed that he was a "non-famous TV manufacturer" in an attempt to distance himself from the relationship between 17TV and Lenovo, Lenovo elements can still be seen everywhere in 17TV products.

The outer packaging of 17TV is marked with "Xiangjia Technology Co., Ltd." and, of course, it is "produced by Lenovo Group." The paper labels are all designed in the form of stamps, which is very unique.

The 55-inch 17TV is obviously not designed for small bedrooms. For a TV, the screen border of the 17TV is narrow enough, and the real-face viewing experience is impactful.

In addition to providing an excellent front view, the 17TV's frame has a more complex three-layer design. Although it is not made of metal, the middle layer has a gold color scheme and the third layer of panel that extends to the back cover has been finely textured. Great care has been taken in the details that are not often noticed in daily use.

The only logo of 17TV is placed right below the screen. However, it is hard to tell whether it is "i7TV" or "19TV" at first glance, and the logo design is not eye-catching. In order to achieve a narrow bezel effect, the brand's more prominent display opportunity on the product was sacrificed. 17TV has done a conscientious job in this regard.

The seemingly simple golden feet on both sides of the TV require six screws of different sizes to install, which is quite troublesome. It is worth noting that the JBL logo appears in the lower right corner of the 17TV. JBL appears quite frequently in Lenovo products, such as the "tough little Y" notebook commonly seen in university dormitories.

JBL means excellent sound quality performance. The 17TV uses a large raised area on the back of the body to accommodate the audio unit, which also uses gold color.

All the interfaces of the TV are concentrated on the right side of the back, with a full range of data interfaces for network cables, headphones, audio and video cables, one HDMI interface 1.4 and one 2.0 version, two USB interfaces, one of which is USB3.0, and a full-size SD card slot should be prepared for photographic equipment, which is rare in TV products.

In terms of display effect, we did not have high expectations for the 55-inch 4K smart TV priced at less than 4,000 yuan, and the 17TV did meet our expectations.

The screen's viewing angle is good and can fully meet the viewing needs of ordinary families and users.

User Interface

In the startup screen of 17TV, in addition to the familiar Lenovo, another attractive word is "Powered by Alibaba YunOS". Of course, this is the same routine as the YunOS version of Meizu mobile phone, except that the underlying Android of the system is replaced with YunOS. It is still very different from the YunOS on Tmall Magic Box.

Just like previous Lenovo smart TVs, the remote control that comes with the 17TV also has a unique "interesting" shape, and with a hanging rope, it looks particularly lifelike.

Except for the changes in the button position and shape, the actual use of the remote control is not much different from the common Android-based smart TV. The remote control has its own microphone for direct voice recognition, and the recognition rate is very ideal.

The remote control of 17TV adopts the somatosensory aiming control, which is generally not very mature at present. Fortunately, 17TV performs quite well in this regard. The remote control accuracy is high enough and the distance is far enough, so there is no pressure to control in any direction. In our actual use, it can still be operated smoothly under non-aiming conditions across two rooms. Analyzing the reasons, the Freespace technology developed by Hillcrestlabs in the United States, which was previously used on Lenovo smart TVs, must be the internal factor for the mature and stable performance of 17TV in somatosensory control.

Back to the interface UI of 17TV, the most direct feeling it gives people is "more", with more content, more categories, and more displayed information.

The main interface is divided into three screens: TV, Film and Television, and Applications. Each interface has densely packed sections and various icon styles, which is very different from the simple style of Xiaomi MIUI. Fortunately, the 17TV has the advantage of a 55-inch screen display area, so this layout is acceptable.

In the sub-section of film and television resources, the display method of film resources is also quite dense. Each icon is not the cover of the movie but a screenshot of a clip. The film introduction and the film name are presented above and below. For example, "Women After Awakening" and "I Am the Queen" appear at the same time. It is really hard to tell which is the title and which is the introduction at first.

The content resources provided by 17TV come from Shiyun, and free film and television projects account for the vast majority. Recently released popular films including "Everything Grows" and "Left Ear" are priced at 5 yuan/7 days, which is a price that users can barely accept.

However, the 5 yuan/7-day viewing fee is not a uniform price for all content. For example, the price of the American blockbuster "Avengers 1" released in 2012 has doubled to 10 yuan/7 days. Even if you use the randomly given 169 yuan quarterly movie discount card, you can only watch the movie from 3 years ago less than 17 times within 3 months. Such pricing is definitely overconfident.

In the actual video playback stage, the 20M bandwidth of the test environment can handle ultra-clear picture quality without any pressure, and the viewing experience is excellent. However, the trigger points for the upper and lower sidebars on the 17TV playback interface are not well grasped. The upper and lower sidebars will appear if the trigger cursor of the remote control is slightly moved.

Users cannot click the center of the screen to cancel it, because that means playback is paused. They can only wait 5 seconds for the navigation bar to disappear on its own. The subtitles in these 5 seconds of video are blocked by the sidebar below. So the prerequisite for enjoying the fun of watching movies with 17TV is to find a stable place to place the remote control during the movie playback.

The product slogan of 17TV is "Love means being together", which highlights the product positioning based on family usage scenarios. The most direct manifestation of this is undoubtedly the tiger mom mode prepared for parents and children.

The Tiger Mom Mode, after all, is to further filter the content provided by TV for young children and make the display interface more cartoon-like to suit children's tastes. In this mode, 17TV only retains children's programs and cartoons.

At the 17TV press conference, we also learned that in Tiger Mom mode, the blue light in the TV screen LED will be automatically filtered out, and the screen will automatically adjust parameters such as brightness to minimize the damage to children's eyes caused by the TV screen.

It is worth mentioning that the setting and switching of Tiger Mom mode is very creative. Parents can set their children’s age and viewing time in advance, and to exit Tiger Mom mode, they need to answer questions, such as "What is the lowercase letter of three?", to ensure that young children will not easily return to the standard interface to see "content that they should not see."

Is 17TV a good TV?

17TV originated from Lenovo, but it has "drawn a clear line" with Lenovo. People feel that under the leadership of CEO Xiong Wen, the new brand is ushering in a wave of reform.

What has 17TV changed? It has a name that is more in line with the taste of the Internet, a new system based on YunOS, and a 55-inch 4K screen at a very competitive price of only 3,999 yuan.

Is 17TV a good TV? After trying it out, I can confirm that for such a size, such a price, plus various practical and innovative features such as somatosensory control and Tiger Mom mode, 17TV fully deserves this title.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.