Better than expected
Overall, this TV is pretty well designed for outdoor use, with great picture quality, good brightness, and a really solid matte/anti-glare coating that makes this type of TV shine in outdoor viewing. I was a bit skeptical ordering this because I couldn't actually see this before purchasing, but rest assured, the picture quality is outstanding for being an outside TV. 4K is sharp with good contrast, it gets plenty bright, and the matte/anti-glare coating makes this a winner for outdoor use. It's the coating that really makes a difference here compared to normal TVs as there really is zero glare. I actually prefer this coating to the super high gloss stuff you get with normal TVs. It makes that much of a difference, especially for outdoor use. Overall build quality is pretty high, with an all metal construction, though I would have like to see the "media bay" use high-grade plastic to let things like WiFi and Bluetooth signals through much better. If you stick a Chromecast or something similar in the media bay, you better have a WiFi AP near the TV, because that signal is going to degrade very quickly. The other two things I am not a huge fan of are the front IR/LED SunBrite badge and the Ambient Light sensor algorithm. The IR/LED SunBrite badge just looks cheap and sort of slapped on. It's not even level with the TV, and just is an eyesore on a pretty decent/modern looking set (for being outdoors). This is a pretty minor nitpick though. The real issue is with the Ambient Light sensor algorithm. First, the ambient light sensor is not even used in the factory default brightness mode (SunBrite Day). I couldn't figure out why the brightness wasn't adjusting at night until I read the manual and found that the only way the auto brightness will work is if you put the picture mode to "User" and then go into the menus and enable the ambient light sensor. Once you do enable this though, even with some of the tweaks they offer (like setting the threshold/floor values) it's just too sensitive. In many cases, the TV's own brightness can reflect off of outdoor furniture and cause the unit to ramp up the brightness at night to blinding levels. I would MUCH prefer the Night/Day modes to auto enable based on sunrise/sunset times. Since the unit does offer OTA updates, please SunBrite, add this! In terms of its weatherproofing abilities, I have left this outside all spring/summer long so far and it's handled it just fine. Remains to be seen how long this will last outdoors, but it's been through 90F+ days, heavy rainstorms, some snowfall, and high winds. Still operates as it did on day one after all of that. Of course, it's only been 3 months, so I hope it can keep this up. Overall, I've been very happy with this TV and its picture quality. If SunBrite could design a new badge and updates its Day/Night modes based on sunrise/sunset, this TV would be near perfect, but even without that I am satisfied with my purchase. Read more
