Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) Review: A Competitive and Decent Package

Last year, we reviewed the Acer I-Series 43-inch smart TV, and we were impressed with how it had the guts and calibre to go up against big players such as Xiaomi. A year later, Acer has come out with a refreshed version with an all-new look and Google TV support while offering the same goodness of 4K resolution and MEMC. With a starting special price of Rs 24,999, it stands with an aggressive stance, but should it find a place in your living room? Find out in our review.

Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) Review: Unboxing, design and connectivity

• The Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) has a wall-mounting bracket.
• It offers a brand-new dual-tone bezel design.

Just like the last time, Acer has included a mounting bracket along with a couple of high-quality legs in case you want to keep it on a table. Also in the box is a bunch of paperwork, a smart remote and a couple of AAA batteries.

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The TV was light enough (for us, at least) to be carried around and mounted solo. That has a lot to do with the all-plastic build of the TV. The TV’s bezels get a dual-tone treatment to keep things new, so the bottom bezel or the chin is a dark grey colour. It keeps things interesting but, at the same time, blends in well with most surroundings without looking tacky.

A little hump on the rear of the TV lets you connect the power inlet and other ports. Acer has kept things organised by keeping nearly all the physical connections on the right. So, you have three HDMI 2.1 ports (with HDMI 1 supporting eARC) for connecting consoles and TV sticks. There are two USB Type-A ports, one of which supports a USB 3.0 interface for faster storage speeds. You’re also covered when it comes to older devices because there’s an RCA port and a coaxial and Toslink port for old-fashioned cable and Blu-ray connectivity.

Wirelessly, you have a built-in Chromecast for tossing things on the TV screen from your smartphone or laptop and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity for connecting a soundbar or other peripherals.

Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) Review: Display and speakers

• The Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) can display content at a resolution of 3840×2160 pixels.
• It has a peak brightness of 380 nits and supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

Getting down to the brass tacks of the display, the 43-inch model we received had a resolution of 3840×2160, peak brightness of 380 nits and compliance with two major high dynamic range standards, Dolby Vision and HDR10+. Further, the 60Hz panel also takes advantage of motion interpolation, which makes visuals appear smoother by enhancing the frame rate of the content being played on the display.

Viewing angles are decent, but we had to manually adjust the colours to our liking because sometimes the content on display appeared a bit too boring. This is a personal preference thing, you may actually end up liking the neutral colours of the TV right out of the box.

We also watched a lot of content on Hotstar with Dolby Vision turned on. Sometimes, the TV gets the exposure and brightness spot on, but sometimes, especially in scenes that have very complicated lighting, you can see the colours and brightness going all around the place.

We also liked the fact that the TV lets you choose the amount of MEMC or motion interpolation. Different movies or TV shows react differently to MEMC, and we loved the fact that we could tune it to our liking.

Accompanying the display are two 15W speakers, offering a total of 30W sound output. They sound alright out of the box, but we had to fuss around with the audio settings to get the best out of them. We would still recommend getting a soundbar if you wish to listen to more music, but for everything else, the built-in speakers can cover you.

Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) Review: Hardware and software

• The Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) is powered by ARM Mali G31 GPU and is available in a single 2GB/16GB configuration.
• It runs the new Google TV interface out of the box.

The Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV is powered by the ARM Mali G31 graphics processor found in its predecessor and comes in the same RAM and storage configuration of 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM. Compared to smartphones, the processors used in Smart TVs tend to stick around for a longer time, but we would have loved to see some improvements made in UI speeds.

Speaking of which, the TV runs the new Google TV interface out of the box, with a nicely organised home screen displaying the most relevant cards ranked on how you use your streaming accounts. With the smart remote, you get system-wide Google Assistant voice search and quick access to apps like Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube.

Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch Smart TV (2023) Review: Verdict

The Acer Advanced I-Series 43-inch smart TV is still a great value-for-money offering if you want a decently-sized, decently-priced 4K TV. It’s almost as good as the competition from Xiaomi, except you get an all-stock Google TV interface without any secondary UI. Audio and the overall speed of the UI are areas that Acer might want to improve next year if they really want to win hearts, but for the time being, this will suffice just fine.