With its new smart TV, Xiaomi is redefining what 'TV' means

[Thakur]

When you think about smart TVs – and it’s hard to buy any other kind of TV these days – you probably picture something that looks like the image above: a big rectangular screen with a speaker and a stand under it. But Xiaomi’s new Mi TV 3, announced on Monday, is bucking that trend. In fact, Xiaomi is doing away with the most fundamental part of what we call a television: the screen.

To be clear, you can still buy a Mi 3 TV from Xiaomi that comes with a screen – a gorgeous, 60-inch 4K LG screen, to be specific. But with this model, Xiaomi has decoupled the smart TV’s brain from its screen, dropping it into a bar-shaped speaker called the Mi TV Bar that can be connected to any television to turn it into a smart TV running Xiaomi’s MIUI system. The Mi 3 TV doesn’t actually go on sale until November, but any screen – TV, computer monitor, projector – that’s in your home right now could essentially become a Xiaomi smart TV once you buy the bar, which costs RMB 999 ($157).

With-its-new-smart-TV-Xiaomi-is-redefining-what-TV-means
Although the Mi TV Bar might sound like just another set-top box, I’d argue that this is actually a significant change. First, by decoupling the smart TV “brains” from the screen, Xiaomi is looking to get its smart TV system in front of more users – even if those users are connecting it to smaller screens, or screens from other vendors. Second, by combining the Mi TV Bar’s smart brains with a powerful speaker, Xiaomi is offering a product that theoretically makes the smart TV experience portable (or at least more portable than a big TV). You can get a smart TV experience and big-screen-quality sound from any screen you plug the Mi TV Bar into.

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