Tag Archives: Mi TV 2

Xiaomi Breathes New Life into Its Product Mix

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Xiaomi Mi Weight Scale

Known for so much more than just excellent smartphones and tablets, Xiaomi has recently expanded its portfolio with several entirely new products, and some reiterations of its classics.

When it’s not busy breaking Guiness World records by selling 2 million smartphones in 24 hours, the Chinese company is quite busy working on its wide range of products. Two weeks ago, it celebrated its fifth anniversary by launching five products: Mi Note Pink Edition, a 55-inch Xiaomi Mi TV 2, Redmi 2A, Mi Power Strip, and the Mi Weight Scale. The 55″ Mi TV2 has a MSRP of $806, which means that it will ever be available outside of China, resellers will most likely take that price north of $1K.

The Mi Note was launched in January, but back then, Xiaomi announced it would only be available in black and white. Both are very elegant solutions, but some ladies prefer pink, so the manufacturer had to comply and launched one in that color. All of the other specs are the same to the black or white versions, but Xiaomi bundled a 5000 mAh Mi Power Bank for free with this one, just to make sure that your lady’s phone never runs out of power.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 was already available in two variants, one with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, and the other one with double of that. So what can the Redmi 2A bring new to the table? A new CPU, in the form of the Leadcore L1860C quad-core Cortex A7 1.5GHz, as well as a better price, respectively $96. Frankly, the performance of the 2A is lower than of the previous two versions, but so is the price, and if the company believed that there are people in the market looking for such a device, then it must be so.

The Mi Power Strip doesn’t have any smart functions, but that doesn’t mean that it would be out of place in a smart home. It includes three universal power sockets, three USB ports and a switch that enables you to turn everything that is connected to it on or off, at the push of one button. By no means is this product revolutionary, but it carries a very small price – RMB 49 – and this should make it attractive enough.

Probably the device I’m most excited about is the Mi Weight Scale, a smart product that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, in order to display your weight and BMI in the Mi Fit app, which already works with the Mi Band. The scale was teased (most probably by mistake) in a version of the Mi Fit app back in December, but in the absence of the product, not much could be done with the two added screens. According to Xiaomi, the Mi Weight Scale can record data from 16 different persons, so it doesn’t matter if yours is a very numerous family.

GearBest, one of the main Xiaomi resellers in China, has some of these products up for pre-order, and more. For example, you can get the travel version (with the selfie stick) of the Xiaomi Yi Sports Camera for $96.99 with coupon code XMYSW, or you could buy the green version for $89.99 by entering XMXYCAM at checkout (the white version is even cheaper – $78.99 with coupon code XMYCAMW). In addition, the Mi Bluetooth Gamepad is $23.99 with coupon code XMGamepad. Audiophiles can pre-order the Mi Headphones for $99 between 2015-04-29 to 2015-05-08 using the coupon code XMheadphone, or they can opt for the newly launched Piston 3 earphones for $19.89 with coupon code xmearphone, if they’re in a hurry to listen to their music.

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Xiaomi Launches $320 40-Inch Android-Powered Mi TV 2

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Xiaomi Mi TV 2 - 40-inch Android-Powered TV 01

To prove that it’s not only after Apple and Samsung, but also after the whole TV-manufacturing industry, Xiaomi launched today a new version of its smart TV, at an unbeatable price.

In a world where bigger is almost always better, Xiaomi has decided to trim down the size of its TVs. Whereas the previous Mi TV 2 was a 49-inch 4K smart TV, the current iteration measures only 40″, but it packs so many improvements that I’m going to gladly overlook the size difference.

First of all, the new Mi TV 2 features a 40″ Sharp SDP X-GEN Full HD LCD panel with a contrast of 5000:1.

Since it measures only 14.5mm in thickness, Xiaomi’s smart telly will fit perfectly in minimalist rooms. I only hope that other TV manufacturers jump in this bandwagon and start producing television sets that are as thin as this one.

The included media player has H.265 10-bit hardware video decoding and Dolby MS12 virtual surround sound for the perfect multimedia experience.

Still think that Netflix is the best thing in the world? Well, Xiaomi has partnered with several China content providers and invested $1 billion in order to bring Mi TV 2 users more than 240,000 hours of online content. Most of this content will probably be available in Chinese, but one of the promotional images depicts the Baymax robot from Big Hero 6, and if that’s not just Photoshop, users might get a chance to watch international movies, as well.

Remember the Mi Bluetooth controller that Xiaomi launched in January? Considering that the new Mi TV 2 is advertised by the company as an entertainment center and Android 4.4 gaming console, everything makes a lot of sense now. Xiaomi didn’t want people to play Android games solely on their Mi phones and Mi Pad, but also on larger screens. What sets this scenario apart from the competition? The fact that the Chinese giant did not launch a separate console, but rather decided to integrate the electronics into a TV. And what a TV it is!

Sadly, the chances of the new Mi TV 2 selling outside of China are slim, despite Xiaomi’s announcements that it will open stores in the US and Europe. While it did say that it won’t sell smartphones in these stores, it’s more likely that it will sell accessories and peripherals, rather than tellies. But we can still hope, can’t we?

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