Haier C11 OLED is more than ready to fight with LG, Samsung and Sony TVs

When shopping for a high-end big screen TV, the last thing you want is a compromise. This is likely a long-term purchase, and it’s good practice (budget permitting, of course) to check off as many specs as possible on the checklist – Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dolby audio Atmos, etc. With it comes an OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, display panel. An OLED display is the gold standard experience for consumer TVs, and this is now increasingly the case for computing devices. LG, Sony and even Samsung could have a problem to face now. Haier’s new C11 OLED TVs, available in 55-inch and 65-inch options, deliver impressive pictures and sound.

Haier has priced the C11 OLED around ₹1,58,990 for the 55 inch and ₹2,15,990 for 65 inch screen sizes. Samsung’s S90D OLED TVs (also in these screen sizes) match the price tags pretty closely, but LG may have reason to be concerned about how much extra you’d still pay for the Evo C3 OLED line. Sony’s A80J OLED TVs come at a price ₹From 2,49,900. The advantage of an OLED panel over a QLED or any other form of LED display is the lack of a separate backlight layer.

An OLED panel uses electric current to illuminate, which means blacks are theoretically deeper and contrast ratios are much better too. Disadvantage ? A static image on an OLED, left unchanged for an extended period of time, can lead to “burn-in,” a way of describing a fingerprint. This makes for an incredibly thin TV panel and, to be honest, it makes for a better viewing experience with the table stand which has been very well designed and has a more traditional central placement (rather than the edges of the frame).

Before you can get the best visuals from the 65-inch Haier C11 OLED, you need to spend some time tweaking the picture settings. A little warning here, the default settings that emerge from the box are set for high lighting only, and you would see terrible skin tones as well as sharpness. The good news is that the detailed controls are waiting to be tweaked and can align the image to what you prefer. This is where this OLED panel really starts to show its strengths.

This OLED panel offers fantastic colors (when tuned correctly) and deep blacks should be relevant for most content. The depth of detail is quite impressive, quite evident when playing video games or watching Formula 1 races live. This panel retains sharpness quite well for streaming applications and Ultra HD content with HDR, even when the noise reduction algorithms are set to their most aggressive settings – however, Full HD sources such as direct-to-home set-top boxes (STB) tend to exhibit some softness around most on-screen subjects (some troubleshooting points include STB output resolution and HDMI cable quality).

Fast-moving visuals are handled well (good news in equal measure for sports and movie fans), although my only complaint is that it’s really difficult to get the perfect balance between backlight and contrast adjustment for more comfortable viewing at home. It takes time, but you have to persist. It’s an effort you have to repeat with every source change (each HDMI, then streaming apps), and even within a source (non-HDR content, versus HDR streaming). In the future, we might hope that a software update will add an option to replicate image settings across multiple sources, but again, this is a one-time process that you would undertake.

Sound is a spec that most TVs tend to struggle on, especially ones that are this thin. Not the Haier C11 OLED though, for two reasons. Firstly, the soundbar implementation sees more physical space opened up for the stereo setup. Haier has not attempted any experimentation with surround sound direction or perception, but it is a conventional front direction placement that simply provides clarity, depth and audibility. Secondly, the sound is tuned by the Harman Kardon audio brand.

That’s before you get to the integrated dual subwoofer towards the middle of the rear panel. This won’t vibrate the windows, but just adds a sufficiently low frequency layer to the sound, largely eliminating the need for a separate soundbar system that people usually supplement high-end TVs with. That said, if movies are your primary TV viewing exercise, you’re probably still hoping for a more focused sound system to pair with this panel. In the sound settings, you’ll be able to manually adjust the EQ for lower frequencies, but the trade-off is that Dolby Atmos must be turned off to enable the EQs. I wouldn’t recommend it, as the default sound setting from Harman Kardon and Haier is quite impressive.

The only aspect where Haier could have done a little better is adapting the remote control to the premium experience of the C11 OLED. If the design and ergonomics are there (lateral volume controls worthy of a smartphone, pleasant touch), the responsiveness is often inconsistent and requires a second tap on the keys to obtain the desired result.

Haier, with the C11 OLED in 65-inch and 55-inch size options, is effectively putting the big three, namely Sony, Samsung and LG, on notice. It’s obvious that a lot of work has gone into improving the overall experience, for which the OLED panel provides a solid foundation. The audio experience is more than equal to the visual proposition, as is the vivid performance of the Google TV platform. It all comes together nicely to add weight to the argument about spending your money on this TV. As I said before, rivals should be worried.