We test TV 2024: Strong SRT 43UD6593 Lower sensitivity, excellent equipment and price/performance ratio

The small TV with a diagonal of 109 cm (how times change…), with Ultra HD (4K) resolution and basic HDR10, is equipped with the Android 11 operating system. You will pay CZK 6,990 for it, and we are close to the 2024/25 season.

Although the SRT 43UD6593 is made of plastic, the external style is modern, frameless, so the frame is only on the side and the active part of the screen is surrounded by an inactive part a few millimeters wide. As you can see from the opening picture, the classic border is, as usual, only in the lower part where the panel is inserted.

With this receiver, the manufacturer aims mainly at the price/performance ratio, not forgetting about “red button” HbbTV, which is in the latest version 2.0, and is also aimed at gamers, thanks to the surprising equipment of the HDMI interface. Although the product pages talked about four, and in reality there are “only” three, but more importantly, we have confirmation from the representative that it is always version 2.1. You will also be pleased with the wireless connection, which is Wi-Fi 4 version (what it is), but also works on a less noisy 5 GHz frequency.

Interfaces are oriented on the left side, others are on the back and go downwards. The power supply is classically integrated, but this time the cord is solid and about 170 cm long.

As you can see, there is everything you could wish for in this class and at this price. Basically, it looks like an almost ideal TV, typically for a children’s room…

Traditional installation, surprisingly excellent sorting of channels

Screws and plastic feet, as well as the right and left sides not marked on them. You can find the page only on the panel, which is, so to speak, equally valid. And since the securing pins on the legs and their counter pieces are not made just perfectly, the assembly will take a bit of testing. But all of this belongs to the lowest class products, and we are not surprised.

Getting the TV set up with Android TV has been described many times, so just pearls. As usual, Google does not help you in any way with the installation, and the Czech language is sometimes even tragic. For example, for one of the consents (personal data protection) there was a choice: “Accept” or “Decrease”.

But that’s more to laugh at…

The final tuning of the DVB-T2 tuner consisted of saving everything found in one list and at the very end we automatically ended up on the home screen (Home) with a notification “New look, easier navigation” and a postscript “Using TV is now easier”.

Um…

In Home you are of course on Netflix, luckily the access to the live TV broadcast was already in the third position, which was also one of the two ways to get into it. And since the usual access via the TV button on the remote control did not work, the second way is the inputs and outputs.

The list of stations is a mixture of radio and TV channels, they were also placed in DVB-T2 “satellite” from 8xx. Also expect, subjectively speaking, a lower sensitivity of the tuner. The receiver did not tune in FTV Prima stations, which our new reference TV Hisense 65U7KQ (2023) handled without problems at the same time, and the larger Strong SRT 50UF8733 (2024) handled them some time ago. Channel sorting worked very well this time. Whether to delete or move, we could select multiple items, even on the skip. You then control the operations themselves with colored buttons.

Control takes some getting used to, again double menu

The remote control works in combination, i.e. via infrared and Bluetooth, so it is not a problem to control or even turn off the TV from the next room. But to turn it on, you have to solve the access of the signal, which goes via infrared.

The driver is almost the same as the larger Strong SRT 50UF8733 (test). “Almost the same” except for the important middle part, where everything is a little different and this will take some getting used to! For example, the Home and voice assistant buttons are arranged differently (doesn’t work in Czech), and “home” initially represented the biggest problem for us. In truth – it was much more enjoyable with the larger model!

There is also a TV button for OK/Enter, but it does not work for entering the tuner, it calls up the EPG in it, so we ask why the live TV icon is actually there?

On the remote control you will also find separate volume buttons and step-by-step channel selection, in the latter case you can also use the up/down arrows. The OK/Enter button then reliably displayed the list of tuned stations, but it behaved a bit non-standardly. We mostly moved through it in the normal way, i.e. by items while the list was at rest. But sometimes it was the other way around and it was as if we were pressing on a computer keyboard “Scroll Lock”.

This really needs fixing!

As you can see from the picture of the controller, the colored keys are at the very bottom, above them is, for example, Info and teletext, followed by an application block with a USB button for calling up the file manager, or built-in multimedia player.

We are on Android TV 11, however, after the update, the home page was likened to Google TV, with the difference that some horizontal bars could be moved or removed, and we have already encountered the same thing at least once on devices directly with Google TV. The company is in a bit of a mess at the moment and can’t seem to decide which direction to take with its operating system.

A second menu is also available – in the tuner, i.e. after calling up a live TV broadcast. As with the aforementioned larger TV, it is horizontal and located at the bottom of the screen. In the Power item, you can turn off the image and leave only the sound, you can find more about the menu in the SRT 50UF8733 test. I would also like to modify this menu, or would like to bring at least three or four of the most necessary items to the front. Including the aforementioned picture off…

EPG without notifications, seamless HbbTV

The program menu is simple, swiping to a new station in the list also causes a change in the tuner. You can see the image in the background, the sound did not break when entering or leaving.

Program notifications are completely absent, swiping to the next day is simple and just use the colored buttons. As you can also see in the image above, you can also leave a more detailed description displayed.

HbbTV 2.0 was tested on the channels ČT and Novy. Playback of one program and several short samples did not show any problems, and the follow-up after the advertisement was fine, or after a change in quality.

On CT, there were no problems even with playing the currently broadcast program from the beginning, but this may not always be the case, because there is sometimes a problem with one specific program, especially right after the start of the broadcast. However, CT does not deal with this in the long term in the same way as, for example, the so-called bar.

Good behavior not only when installing applications

It works in the style of “find, run and go to the next”, so you have less to worry about when you put it into operation and it is also significantly faster. We have arranged the TV for a long-term test, so we will take the applications rather briefly, or let’s look at just a few. Generally speaking, what IPTV and VoD will this TV play, or operating system Android TV, you can find in a separate article, the source of which is the official data of the manufacturers.

For the purposes of this test, we tried Lepší.TV, which was functional, only here, unfortunately, Strong could not turn off the picture and leave only the sound (fortunately, it has its own screen saver), which also applied to Disney+, and this seems to be a feature and, of course, a minus.

The aforementioned Disney+ had to be reinstalled because the originally offered application refused to connect with the mobile application, so be careful here even though it is not unusual.

Prima+, which we gained access to thanks to further cooperation, was completely problem-free, the manufacturer introduced an excellent pairing with the mobile application and all you have to do is launch it, navigate to the appropriate option and remove the QR code from the TV screen. That’s all!

There was no problem with other applications either, such as Canal+ (again, a great pairing with the APP on mobile), iVysílání, Voyo or Youtube, which lately stands out for its absolutely crazy design of recommended programs.

We are on Android, so screen mirroring from a mobile phone is not general, but requires an application compatible with Google Chromecast. Here we tested the output to the TV with the excellent mobile phone Samsung Galaxy A54 5G (Android 14, test) via the iVysílání application. Everything happened classically, i.e. without problems and with very high image quality on TV.

Simpler video, but both BMP and FLAC HD playback

The TV has a built-in multimedia player, so we also briefly checked its compatibility. It only supports playback from USB, but since we’re talking about Android TV, you can of course also install something that can handle server media.

The USB file formats, as usual, were not indicated, after testing it turned out to be the usual FAT32 and NTFS, for exFAT, the TV gave us a message instead of reporting that it does not support it – something like the media is broken…

The built-in player can handle ordinary photos, plus BMP and GIF (not TIFF), as well as music, including FLAC HD! In the case of video, the critical Xvid and Divx formats for televisions (doesn’t accept either) and work with external subtitles are also possible. Those were fine and you set their character set and color, but not the size. But the standard one was – surprisingly – sufficient, which is interesting considering the small characters used for EPG and Info.

We used the same player to verify playback of HDR High Dynamic Range content (what that is), on the usual mostly completely official demos.

Playback of content with HDR10, which is still by far the most widespread in this area today, was pretty standard. On the darkened scene, the details were rather more pronounced (for the author’s eyes, this is the current slightly above average), on the overlit scene, it was the classic standard, or average if you like. In addition, that content is generally played better today (to the eyes of the author). However, as mentioned, high dynamic range content is a very subjective matter.

What is? He remembers…

Unlike the larger 2024 model still mentioned here, the Strong SRT 50UF8733 (test), this TV entered the last used mode when switched on. What was entering! He did it so perfectly that if, for example, we hovered over the third icon from the left on the home page, after turning on the TV, we were there too! Of course, it also returned to the TV tuner, which many TVs have recently had a problem with, and also returned directly to the application (tested Lepší.TV and Disney+) and sometimes even to the program.

Excellent!

Why can’t it be done elsewhere?

Among the advantages that Google fans will most likely appreciate is the fact that Android TV 11 is here, but with a more modern look of Google TV, combined with the ability to move (and delete) horizontal bars, which is not usual in an update of this kind, it has been improved ( finally) and application search. For game fans, three HDMI 2.1 will be a clear advantage, for all wireless Wi-Fi 4 operating on less noisy 5GHz.

The image and sound are classics that don’t make sense to spread, of course don’t expect anything special here. Both correspond to the class and the price, however, you can still improve the picture a bit (the basic presentation is classically a bit “crazy”, but rather less), you can’t do anything with the sound, DTS is of course not available. But we wouldn’t even expect that!

Evaluation

• FOR: price/performance, after switching on the TV is able to return to the appropriate mode (and sometimes even more…), 3x HDMI 2.1, excellent channel sorting (surprise), including multi-station selection (more…)
• AGAINST: subjectively speaking, the tuner’s sensitivity is lower, the TV’s DO button does not work to enter the tuner, sometimes the non-standard behavior of the station list, unnecessarily small characters, for example in the EPG, for some even the fact that the EPG lacks a program notification