Element 4K Smart LED TV-Fire TV Edition

Okay, so I am changing my review once again and this time giving it 5 stars now. I started to get very annoyed with this set, the remote would work when it wanted too, some buttons you had to press for a long time in order for it to work. The tv had a major update that took at least 20 minutes and Bam! The tv now works perfectly, and the colors have improved tremendously. The blacks are blacker and the color all around has improved. This happened at the perfect time because I was just about to get rid of these TV's! So I changed this review from 3 to 4 stars... My original review will be at the bottom of this new added information. So, there is no way to professionally calibrate this TV, so after speaking with my friend who professionally calibrated TV's for a living, he came over and we worked on the TV until we got the picture to my satisfaction. So the first thing he did was go into the first color setting and put that into custom, he lowered the sharpness to 0 but didn't touch any of the other settings. Then in the second color setting which is in advance setting he turned it to warm, then he lowered the backlight brightness to 76. All of this is with the motion setting to bypass which means off. Now the picture looks pretty good but still not amazing but it's 100 percent better then it look out of the box and I am sure you'll be more than happy with this setting, that setting was for my 55 inch, for the 50 inch the only difference was he lowered the backlight setting to 64 instead of the 76 that he did for the 55 inch. Now what I noticed is that you have to manually changed each input to this setting because it doesn't automatically change all of the outputs to this setting. These settings help out trust me, it took days of working on it and hours with a professional to get it right. So, as like most of the other reviewers here, I bought this and the 50 inch on sale and basically bought two TV's for the price of one.... With that said, the two TV's combined still cannot match the quality of the one that I was going to buy. However, that is the video snob in me. First, a little bit about me, I come from a high end audio system and TV's and once the family started growing, the high endness started shrinking and the more money I have to save and college I have to pay for the more budget minded I have been forced to become... Except I will never get a minivan! I put my foot down! So, my pioneer elite plasma finally started dying (RIP) that I bought many years ago and til this day it's picture tops expensive TV's that are available today and imagine I paid almost 9k for that TV and I'm replacing it with a 400 dollar TV... Please don't throw your remote at the screen after reading that... And the funny thing is I was able to sell it as is for 600... So, back to the element... The picture quality out of the box is bad, real bad, only those whom say it's amazing or good are those who have never seen a fully calibrated TV on the mid to high end side... So, first thing first, please turn off the motion setting which forces the TV to have what is called a soap opera effect which is horrible on this TV, that alone will help the picture quality. Then lower the backlit brightness, this TV forces brightness which is horrible, that alone washes out the blacks, lower the contrast and put it on movie mode, this alone will help out a lot... This TV doesn't let you really dig deep into setting the picture quality to perfection but do what I have recommended and you'll see a major difference. One major recommendation is, please make sure that your internet is steady and fast enough to do a wireless update, if not connect it to Ethernet. Because if your internet isn't steady and is choppy you will have software issues from a bad update. People have complained about this and it isn't the TV's fault, it's the internet service that you are offering to the TV. The remote is bad, sometimes I have to press the remote buttons hard for it to send a command to the TV which is frustrating, to make it worse, connecting a universal remote is a waste of time as you will still end up needing the remote that it came with for certain button functions. I wish I was able to use the number functions on my harmony remote to change the channel which isn't an option, also the universal remote will not change the TV to an input, which isn't bad because it's easy to switch from the menu but if you program a remote to switch everything for you that's what you want it to do... Now, for those who send this TV back right away due to the picture quality, I don't blame you, however every TV needs a break in period, give it a few days to break in and then make the decision to return it, but if you have the chance to get an LG or Samsung then go for it. This TV does not have HDR, it's a basic 4k TV, for me I have the dvdo edge which allows me to tweak the TV setting further which and made the TV look even better when using an input. I hate the fact that the TV doesn't automatically switch over to an input when you turn something on. I like the fact that the TV turns on right away and off right away, that alone is a major plus, because with both my pioneer and lg and Samsung TVs they took a while to turn on. If you're use to the fire TV home screen then you will love this TV, I have always had a fire TV so this works for me very well. The TV Turner on these TV's are amazing, in fact, these are the best TV tuners I've seen on any other TV so far, I am in NYC with a large old school TV antenna on the roof, with my other TV's I was only able to get 40 channels and with these TV's gave me exactly 63 channels. So that's a major plus. The TV is very fast as well, I click on an input or channel or movie and it switched over right away with no lag. This TV is amazing with gaming as well, I watched my son play Forza 7 and it looked amazing, I watched my daughter play Minecraft and that crappy game look amazing and I played my MLB the show 17 and amazing... The sound quality sucks bad no matter how much you try to work on it, but I have a Bose solo which helps in a major way, I can tell that Bose made the solo system for TV's like this This TV also has a lot of inputs, enough for everyone.. Pros: Amazing speed Amazing tuner Bang for the buck Cons: Picture quality is bad and nothing like amazon brags about in their literature, but after major tweeking it will look decent but will not surpass the decent stage. Remote is horrible Lack of picture tweeking functions Other than that, it's worth getting on sale, but it may be worth to spend an extra 60 or 100 on a better name brand.