Image: TCL
After briefly halting sales of its 6-Series and 5-Series Google TVs due to sluggish, buggy software, TCL this evening announced that the TVs are back. “Recent software updates have allowed us to make significant improvements on the stability and speed of the TCL televisions featuring Google TV,” spokesperson Rachelle Parks said by email. “With these updates, this product now represents the powerful performance that TCL and Google believe is the future of TV.”
The Google TVs represent TCLs effort to take a platform agnostic approach with its TV hardware; the company is best known for its popular sets that come preloaded with Roku software, but it has also manufactured Android TV products. The 6-Series (R646) and 5-Series (R546) are the company’s first TVs with the newer Google TV interface, however, and early buyers complained of slow performance and some significant bugs when operating the products.
I can report that the 6-Series unit I’ve been reviewing just received yet another software update today, and this seems to be the version that TCL thinks is up to snuff for customers.
The 6-Series Google TV offers improved hardware over the Roku TV version: the Google model has full HDMI 2.1 support for 4K gaming at 120Hz, for instance.
Stay tuned for our full review now that TCL has resumed sales of its premium Google TVs.
TCL’s full statement is below:
TCL is committed to delivering premium products with world-class experiences and the new product featuring Google TV is certainly no different. Recent software updates have allowed us to make significant improvements on the stability and speed of the TCL televisions featuring Google TV. With these updates, this product now represents the powerful performance that TCL and Google believe is the future of TV.
Owners of the TCL Google TVs should be prompted to update their sets to the latest firmware automatically, but they can also manually get the update by following this process on the company’s website.