Xiaomi is conquering the budget electronics industry. It seems we read about a new Xiaomi device almost on a daily basis. Xiaomi phones caused a splash at the Mobilie World Congress in Barcelona, a games console is rumored, a cut-price smartwatch is in development and today, the Chinese manufacturer announced a smart TV.
The new Xiaomi Mi TV 2 is a 40-inch Android-powered smart TV with a 1080p HD screen that will, incredibly, cost only $320.
The TV features a 40-inch full HD LED panel by Sharp with 5000:1 contrast ratio, a Cortex-A9 quad-core 1.45 GHz CPU, 1.5 GB of RAM, 8 GB of flash storage and a MIUI TV Android-based OS. It permits playback of multiple digital video formats, including MPEG4, AVI, MOV, and FLV files, among others.
The flat screen is extremely thin, measuring just 14.5 mm deep at its thinnest point, and users can individualize their sets with a range of bright rear casings that come in blue, green, yellow and red.
Somewhat unusual for a new tech device, the Mi TV 2 boasts lower specs than its predecessor from 2014. Last year's model had a 49-inch 4K screen, in contrast to the smaller, lower-definition 2015 model. The change has allowed Xiaomi to lower the price from $670 to $320, easily making the Mi TV 2 one of the most inexpensive smart TVs that boast high specifications.
Xiaomi isn't happy with just producing television hardware. The company has also announced that it will be investing $1 billion in TV content creation and will be partnering with several Chinese content providers to create an extensive video library containing 240,000 hours of programming.
The TV goes on sale in China on March 31 for 2,000 Chinese Yuan ($320), but you can't get your hands on one in the U.S. yet. Xiaomi doesn't sell its phones in the U.S. but is due to start selling some products stateside in 2015, so there's a chance that Xiaomi TVs will be in stores eventually.
