there is no denying that OnePlus TV Q1 Pro turned out to be a huge success for the company. At the time of its launch, it not only established OnePlus as a force to be reckoned with in the television space, but also helped drive growth in the industry by democratizing the borderline-expensive QLED panel technology.
But that was 2019, and here we are in 2023. QLED TVs are no longer a novelty, with several players jumping into the fray with their own offerings featuring this panel technology. So does this mean that OnePlus is already ready to ditch QLED TVs and move to something more high-end?
Sadly the answer is no.
OnePlus has just launched the successor to its popular Q1 Pro, yes you guessed it, a QLED panel TV. The only difference is that the Q2 Pro is bigger, better in terms of specifications and offers a lot more in terms of features than the Q1 Pro. But the big question still remains, does all this together make the OnePlus Q2 Pro a good TV for 2023? Especially when we put it up against some of the other television sets available in the segment.
Well, let us find out in our review of the new OnePlus Q2 Pro.
OnePlus Q2 Pro: Design
First things first, as you can see, this is one good looking TV, it will definitely liven up your living room if you choose to have it in your home. OnePlus has retained the design language of its previous generation OnePlus TV Q1 Pro, with clean corners and slim bezels. The Q2 Pro is definitely a TV for minimalists and looks quite premium with its brushed metal aesthetics.
Another big thing to note in the design department is that OnePlus has decided to do away with the sliding soundbar setup, which was one of the major talking points about the design of the OnePlus Q1 Pro. So instead of a soundbar moving with hardware, we now have a fixed soundbar that’s stuck just below the Q2 Pro’s panel.
In my opinion, this was a wise decision as the Q1 Pro’s retractable soundbar proved to be a nuisance at times and had its own documentary issues. As a result of the design change, the soundbar on this Q2 Pro shouldn’t face the same issues in the long run, making it already an upgrade over OnePlus’ previous generation flagship TVs.
OnePlus TV Q2 Pro: Audio
Talking about the sound system of TV, it is also necessary to tell that how powerful it is in terms of performance. This time around there are two distinct parts to the sound system, the first being the 40W Horizon soundbar which works in conjunction with the 30W subwoofer to create one of the most complete on-system audio setup I’ve seen on a TV in some time. ,
But while the speaker system is a nice addition, no good TV experience can be complete without making sure that there is a good panel to make all the visuals come alive.
OnePlus TV Q2 Pro: Display
For that we have a massive 65-inch panel that uses a quantum dot sheet placed over LED backlighting to improve color and contrast on the TV. Now as we mentioned earlier, QLED TVs are no longer a novelty, with several brands using the technology in a range of TVs. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a negative in favor of the OnePlus Q2 Pro.
In fact, I firmly believe that QLED TVs have a role to play in the growth story of the still-evolving mid-range and affordable TV segment. And OnePlus’ Q2 Pro with its price tag barely manages to make its way into this spectrum.
But don’t let me demotivate you. For now, let’s stick around to go into a little more depth about the panel’s performance.
So in our time testing the TV, we found the Q2 Pro’s performance to be quite satisfactory, but only after a few tweaks. As a 4K TV with a large 65-inch panel, the TV is capable of recreating some stunning visuals on screen. With its support for technologies like Dolby Vision, HDR 10+ and the company’s in-house Gamma Engine Ultra, users are treated to visuals that look pretty impressive at first glance. Skin tones are handled well and scenes look detailed and cinematic thanks to the TV’s ability to boost colors and contrast on the fly for moving frames.
But for this we had to make some changes to the color management profile of the TV to improve the picture performance. For example, we learned early on that turning the Backlighting up to 100 and switching to the Cinema preset and then finally changing the Base Color Temperature for the profile from Standard to Warm for every piece of content was the way to go. except live sports and games. Another quick hack is to not switch to the HDR10+ preset, even when playing HDR10+ mastered content on the TV. This color preset isn’t mastered very well for the TV, leaving scenes looking washed out and colors lacking.
Similar was the case with the Dolby Vision Dark preset, where instead of boosting the contrast of entire scenes to provide depth to scenes, the colors on the panel just looked washed out. The Dolby Vision Bright preset did well though, handling visuals adequately.
The viewing angles are also quite good, so if you are planning to put this TV in your living room, you will have no problem watching content on the TV from slightly odd angles.
But all is not well with TV. Due to the size of the OnePlus Q2 Pro, if you use it as the centerpiece of your living room, know that you will have to manage the lighting around it well. While OnePlus claims the TV has a decent peak brightness of 1200 nits, we achieved more modest numbers in our testing.
Our Spectral C6 colorimeter attached to the Calman Ultimate registered numbers close to the 680 nits mark as the typical peak brightness of the panel. While we’re sure that when HDR or Dolby Vision mastered content is played on the TV, the TV is approaching the advertised 1200nits mark on a small portion of the panel, but the typical brightness we tested is unfortunately something to be gained. Neither is it. Very excited about and this can prove to be a problem if the TV is placed in a bright room.
Dark scenes are also a mixed bag if you go looking for trouble on the OnePlus Q2 Pro. While in general the panel does a good job handling dark scenes, there were a few scenes when we noticed some slight bleeding at the edges and a blooming effect in scenes.
Despite it not being OLED, we get decent black performance on the panel, with details and highlights being retained in most dark scenes. However, taking a closer look at darker scenes and putting a better OLED panel TV next to the Q2 Pro will reveal that blacks still aren’t true blacks and have shades of gray.
But it’s perfectly acceptable since this TV doesn’t use self-dimming pixels and instead uses around 120 dimming zones to control darker scenes on the TV.
Far from being subjective, we also tested the TV using CalMAN Ultimate to better understand the TV’s visual performance.
While we tested various presets on the TV, our test data also revealed that the best results were always to be obtained when the TV was set to the Cinema preset. For both sRGB and HDR content, this preset had top-notch color accuracy and handling of gamma.
Set to the Cinema preset and testing the panel for color accuracy for the sRGB container, we found the panel to be throwing up some really good numbers, with an average DeltaE clocked at 3.1 and a maximum variation point in color accuracy of 6J But going to 7.4. which is brown in colour. In our testing we found the panel to cover pretty much the entire sRGB color container in terms of gamut coverage.
For the more challenging DCI-P3 container, we again tested good numbers, with deltaC jumping up to just 3.7 for color accuracy and Max DeltaE also staying within acceptable limits for the TV at 9.1. Gamut coverage here was also good at 93 per cent, which was slightly lower than the advertised 97 per cent mark for gamut coverage.
The grayscale tracking of the device revealed some interesting results and also revealed some of the visual performance of the device. Despite changing the panel’s color temperature to warmer, we felt that the panel’s output was still a bit cool, with an average color temperature of around 7200 Kelvin. The RGB balance explains this even further, with TVs using significantly smaller amounts of red than green and blue to create white at various stages of luminosity.
The best RGB balance was seen here at around the 10 percent luminance mark, with the TV using a significantly smaller amount of red to produce white light past the 10 percent brightness mark.
The gamma tracking of the OnePlus Q2 Pro’s panel also revealed some interesting things. During our tests, we found that the device’s gamma tracking was set in such a way that it over-darkened dark scenes and over-brightened bright scenes for most brightness points.
We think OnePlus is using this gamma to compensate for the TV’s lack of very high brightness and that could have improved average dark scene performance. Overall, I would say that a good job has been done by OnePlus.
OnePlus Q2 Pro: Gaming performance
Apart from benchmarks and cinema performance, we also tested the OnePlus Q2 Pro for gaming performance. This is because gaming is a big push on TV at the moment. And it is understandable.
I mean, we have a 65-inch 4K panel with 120Hz variable refresh rate and ultra-low-latency support for visuals that uses ALLM. All this combined ensures that when you do finally connect a supported console to the TV, it can handle fast refresh games effectively and bring alive, fluid, ultra-responsive visual experience, Which looks as good as playing on screen.
It’s also nice that we get support for VRR on the two HDMI ports, as we’ve seen on many competing TVs. Then there’s also support for the Gamepad feature that lets you connect your smartphone to use it as a gamepad for gaming apps that you’ll find on the Google TV OS that ticks off the TV’s hardware.
Verdict: Should you buy the OnePlus TV Q2 Pro?
Well, the answer depends on what you ask of your next TV.
If you are looking for a large, detailed screen with support for high-end HDR formats like Dolby Vision and HDR10+ then this could definitely be your TV. The Q2 Pro offers good picture quality and sound and enhances it with impressive features like VRR and ALLM that promise to improve gaming performance on the TV.
The only question I have here is whether the TV is worth buying for anyone and everyone wants to buy a TV around 1 lakh. Especially if you don’t mind going down a bit in terms of panel size.
If a 55-inch panel is sufficient for your needs, I would recommend taking a look at the Xiaomi OLED Vision, or better, even the LG A2, which you can buy for roughly the same price in the market. Both of these are OLED panel TVs, which should give you better dark scene performance and a more immersive visual experience overall.
But if you do, know that you’ll be missing out on not only a large panel-fitted TV, which is the OnePlus Q2 Pro, but also a TV that offers a better feature set for gaming experiences, and of course Provides a better sound system. So choose wisely and decide how much price you are ready to put on additional gaming features, sound system and most importantly bigger panel size on OnePlus Q2 Pro and then go ahead and make your buying decision.