Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review – Decent Display With Mediocre Google TV Performance

The Skyworth Q6600G is a budget-friendly 4K QLED TV that is developed locally in South Africa. Skyworth sent over the TV for me to test out in December, and I was originally only going to do a written review of the unit over. However, looking online for some information about the TV, I noticed there are barely any videos of the TV to watch. There are a few so-called “reviews,” but many of them are just the TVs’s web page being read out without really testing any of the features. So here you have it, a full review of the Skyworth Q6600G. Watch it below.

The Skyworth Q6600G comes in a 43-inch, 50-inch, 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch panel. The TV is made for users who want a 4K TV but aren’t looking at throwing money at big features. If anything, this Skyworth TV is the most humble display I have reviewed in a long time because it has a subtle feature list, and the asking price of R10,999 isn’t so bad. Are there better TVs on the market for the same price? More or less, but I will tackle that in a bit.

The Skyworth Q6600G comes in a full-print box. I haven’t seen a full-coloured box for a TV in a long time. It looks pretty good. Setting up the TV was a breeze. The box unclips at the bottom, the top lid opens up to reveal the legs and a bag including the remote, screws, battery, and power cable. I was able to install the legs myself thanks to my long arms. I pulled the TV out of the box, laid it flat on my TV stand, removed the plastic, and screwed in the legs.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

The legs are attached with two screws, and there’s nothing else to it. When standing on the TV stand, the legs sit at 122cm apart from one another. They are 27cm in length from the front to the back. The TV then sits 7cm off the stand. This 7cm is measured from the stand to the sensor under the display.

The TV looks decent. The silver legs are likely my favourite part about the entire design. They are a little different from the usual black legs you get in almost every TV box. There’s a silver strip at the bottom of the TV that adds a little style to the panel. It is plastic but looks shiny and clean. The logo is in the middle of the display, and the rest of the front is display and thin bezels. The bezels on the TV are quite thin at only 0.6cm.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

At the back, the TV includes quite a large base. The bottom of the TV is much thicker at 9.5cm. However, the top of the TV is thinner at 6.5cm. So if you’re mounting the TV, the larger, thicker base is where the mount will be installed. Keep in mind that this won’t be centred on the TV and more to the bottom, so you’ll need to accommodate the difference. And if you are replacing an existing TV on your current mount, this TV will sit higher than your current model.

When it comes to the ports, the Skyworth Q6600G includes three HDMI 2.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet capped at 100Mbps, optical audio out, one antenna interface, an AV in combo port, and one aux cable out. It is all powered by one figure 8 cable.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

All the ports are on the left-hand side, while the power cable is on the right. There are no cable management clips or trunking on the TV at all. You’ll need to neaten this up yourself somehow. I do feel like a tiny clip on the back of the legs would have helped a lot here.

The TV is generally quite clean and sleek. It looks good once installed, and I have no complaints. It is a bit on the fatter side of TVs that I have tested out, but I don’t think it makes a difference. The panel has very little wobble to it too, and the general structure and design are quite sturdy.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

Before we get onto the panel and performance, the TV comes with Android Google TV installed. The remote is your standard Google TV model. It includes a voice button, some shortcuts to YouTube, Netflix, and YouTube. There’s also an additional shortcut button that you can assign to whatever app you want to open. It is quite handy; not only is there a single-press function, but you can assign it to work with additional shortcuts by holding down the button and pressing the directional buttons. So an extra four shortcuts can be assigned to the standard single-press one.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

Google TV on the Skyworth 65Q6600G is okay. It does get sluggish at times. For example, when opening up the settings during video playback on YouTube, it took a few moments for the panel to appear. It was also annoying to have the menu kick me out of the tab each time I tweaked something. So I would change the gamma from “Bright” to “Middle” and it would take me out of the tab as a result. TV users often toggle settings on and off constantly to see the best result, and this does get in the way of quickly previewing a change.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

I also felt like the general performance was just too slow for my navigation. I would often be moving ahead of the typing input and pressing buttons while the TV was catching up on my actions. Even moving around the home page can feel slow and unresponsive. I even had times when my YouTube videos would simply freeze. These were 4K HDR videos, so I am not sure if they were too much for the TV to handle or what. It wasn’t a buffering issue because the timer kept counting. I no doubt had to practice a bit of patience when making use of the built-in OS here.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

The Google TV experience does have all the settings you’ll look for here. Even though naming Gamma as “middle”, “dark”, and “bright” doesn’t really give you any understanding of what the TV’s actual value is sitting on, Gamma isn’t the only strange naming convention I spotted. MPEG Noise Reduction is called MPEG NR. There’s a setting called DNR, which is Digital Noise Reduction, and Luma Control is then Contrast Adjustment. These names aren’t wrong by any means, just strange to see them referred to this way.

Google TV, of course, lets you install whatever apps you want, so there’s an incredible amount of freedom here to do what you want to do. You can install Kodi and other media apps. If you make use of other media players, you can install them here too.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

Performance on the Skyworth 65Q6600G was generally good for the TV with this specification. HDR content looked bright and vivid especially. There’s no local dimming on this TV at all, so the backlight remains enabled even if the TV has nothing displayed on it. While there’s no local dimming, I was impressed by the contrast ratio on the panel. It results in some decent black levels which complement the HDR peaks.

Peak highlights are also quite good. Once I calibrated the panel, HDR content was bright; the specular highlights popped. I measured 471 nits in a 25% window, which is quite good for this TV. It wasn’t remotely bad, and I can’t even say I was the slightest disappointed by the black levels and HDR content on the TV.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

Even the panel itself was clean. Cleaner than some more expensive TVs I have reviewed. There was next to no backlight bleed on the edges of the panel, and general grey uniformity was incredible. Even near the corners of the panel where most TVs display the worst panel flaws, this Skyworth 65Q6600G was clean. It was quite remarkable.

Again, we are looking at a TV that costs R11,000. To have this level of HDR, contrast, and a panel this clean is rarely found in TVs double the price, so much respect to Skyworth here.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

The TV performed well across all my tests. Gaming was limited to 4K 60Hz without VRR, but it was still enjoyable and looked good. I did have to lower the sharpness on the HDMI input while gaming because, out of the box, it was overly sharp. General content watching was also good. Dolby Vision and HDR content is obviously the way you want to experience this TV, and I think you won’t be disappointed.

Skyworth does include this anti-blue light tech in the TV, which is meant to help with eye care. There’s no real way to test this, but if it is a selling point for you, then it is available on this TV.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

From a sound perspective, the Skyworth 65Q6600G doesn’t have any real killer speakers. They are pretty basic TV speakers, and you’ll likely want to get a soundbar if you appreciate your music and content. The TV speakers are weak and lack any real kick.

Lastly, for the viewing angles and panel, Skyworth says this TV includes a matte screen pro. While the panel is definitely matte and not shiny, it doesn’t mean there’s no reflection. The panel is quite reflective still, but it does a good job clearing up the image. Is the panel as reflection-free as other matte TVs? Definitely not, but it is cool to see a matte TV in this price range.

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV Review

Viewing angles on the TV are also good. The panel holds up quite well until around the 50-degree mark. However, even then the image remains detailed and colourful. It makes the TV a good option for wide viewing spaces.

I think the fact that this Skyworth TV is just R11,000 for the 65-inch is pretty impressive. Granted, it is not perfect. The Google TV experience isn’t up to standard at all. I would go as far as to use an additional Google TV box on this TV just so I don’t have to handle the sluggish menus. However, outside of the Google TV problem, I was actually surprised how well this Skyworth TV performed. It is a relatively feature-packed TV with some great picture quality. Again, comparing apples with apples in this case.

The closest competitor for this TV is likely the Hisense E7N Pro. That TV does have local dimming so you might get better black levels. However, that comes with bloom and the problems of local dimming. The Hisense U6N Pro is also a tough competitor here. Better brightness and local dimming. It is slightly more expensive though.

So if you have ever wondered what Skyworth TVs are like, I hope this review has helped. I won’t lie, I don’t think I will sleep on the brand going forward because this is one of the brand’s cheaper TVs. I wonder how the more expensive models hold up?

Skyworth Q6600G 4K QLED TV

Summary

The Skyworth Q6600G is a value-packed 4K QLED TV that delivers some impressive performance for its asking price. While there are definitely better and brighter TVs out there, this display was bright enough and capable of some decent HDR performance. It does lack high-end gaming features and the Google TV experience is quite rough due to sluggish menus and the TV’s inability to handle CPU-intensive apps. But if you’re looking for a well-rounded HDR TV, this is definitely an option.

Overall
7.5/10
7.5/10
Marco is the owner and founder of GLITCHED. South Africa’s largest gaming and pop culture website. GLITCHED quickly established itself with tech and gaming enthusiasts with on-point opinions, quick coverage of breaking events and unbiased reviews across its website, social platforms, and YouTube channel.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *