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Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: 30-second review
Products that fuse technology to create something interesting aren’t a new concept, and with the advent of the Smart TV, most of us have one or more in our homes.
But the Apolosign 32″ Smart Portable TV takes the technology crossover idea to a whole different level, as it combines a 4K display, an Android 16 tablet and a battery backup into a single roll-anywhere solution.
This is perfect for promotional signage, but I could also see this as being the perfect way to explain mobile apps in an educational setting.
If there is a caveat to lumping this much technology together, it’s the weight, and this product is 22kg in the box, and not much less out of it. Therefore, getting it assembled is probably a two-man job, and should it fall over and hit anything, there will be breakage.
Also, at nearly $1000 / £1000, it isn’t cheap for what on the surface looks like a 32-inch TV, but that doesn’t account for all the technology underneath.
If you need a huge 4K Android tablet that can run all the standard apps and be operated by touch or voice while on battery power, then the options are limited.
And, while there are a few places where it might have been a little better, overall Apolosign has done a decent job making this fusion product design work.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? $820/£1000/€1100
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from the maker or via an online retailer
The Apolosign 32″ Smart Portable TV is $819 from its maker, although it can be found on Amazon.com for almost exactly the same price plus 99 cents. UK customers pay £999.99 at Amazon.co.uk, and in Europe, €1,099.99.
Therefore, Americans get a much better deal here than anyone else, for no obvious good reason, since the hardware is made in China.
If you want to save some money but still like the concept, Apolosign also makes a version with a 1080p screen for $719. And, for $619, you can have a 1080p model with a 24-inch panel. While these are cheaper, saving a few hundred dollars might not provide the best experience, and that’s what this device is all about.
I did notice a few other brand names selling what looked like similar hardware, but their prices were typically higher. Although I did find one on Amazon.co.uk selling what seemed to be similar equipment for only £699.99. But, I did note that the product only had 128GB of storage, a 10500 mAh battery and no HDMI input.
So, you get what you pay for.
When you factor that with the Apolosign 32″ Smart Portable TV, you get an Android tablet, a 32-inch 4K display, a 4K webcam, a remote control, a battery system that can power everything and a high stand, the asking price even outside America isn’t excessive.
And, for those in the US, it might even be a bargain.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Specs
|
Item |
Spec |
|
Processor |
Rockchip RK3576, 8nm, octa-core (4x Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.2–2.4 GHz + 4x Cortex-A53) |
|
GPU |
Mali-G52 MC3 |
|
RAM |
8GB |
|
Storage |
256GB |
|
Display |
32-inch 4K 10-point capacitive touchscreen, IPS technology, 300 nits |
|
Main Camera |
4K Webcam (provided) |
|
Battery |
15000Ah dual-cell |
|
Charging |
Charges from PSU |
|
OS |
Android 16 |
|
5G |
N/A |
|
Networking |
Wi-Fi 6, BT5.3 |
|
Dimensions |
18 x 32 x 151 cm |
|
Weight |
22kg in a box |
|
Colours |
White |
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Design
- Assembly fun
- Power options
- Dual-purpose design
In the box, this hardware weighs an impressive 22kg, and the box isn’t a huge part of that weight.
That mass is mostly because of the construction of the base, which has some intentional extra weight, and also a battery, to increase the stability once fully assembled. Assembly starts with the base, connecting it to a two-part pillar, and then, once that’s together, attaching the monitor using a VESA 100 mounting.
I’d strongly suggest that, unlike me, anyone doing this have a second support person handy, because some of the parts and the assembly are heavy.
The added complication of this design is that the PSU plugs into the base, and power is passed via a series of connectors up the support arm to the display.
My install was made extra fun because on the inside of the box lid was a set of instructions that I decided to follow. To connect the base to the bottom half of the pillar, I was told to use the screws labelled B3x16, and this was the only screw bag that had a label.
Except someone in the packing department had taken B3 to be the number of screws, and put three screws in there that were for the VESA connection stage, and they weren’t anywhere near 16mm long. I found those in an unmarked bag, give of them, four to attach and one spare. But anyone following the box instructions to the letter would be stuck because the VESA screws aren’t long enough for that attachment.
Once I realised the mistake, it was all plain sailing, and soon the support arm and screen were treated as one item.
For those wondering, there is a panel you can remove on the screen that provides access to the USB ports and an HDMI port for those wanting to use a PC or smart stick with it. And, also in that location is a place to directly power the system with the PSU. However, if you use that power input, the battery in the base won’t be charged, and it will need to be plugged in to use. It’s a choice, but it does allow the display to be used on a different VESA support, like one on a table.
The support column can tilt, rotate, and swivel, and there is 18cm of vertical movement. And, as the base is on casters, it can spin completely around.
Included in the box is a webcam, and there are two points to connect it to the display, depending on whether you are using it in landscape or portrait mode.
My only concern is that, given the size and mass of the monitor and how it’s supported, it wouldn’t be impossible for this whole thing to go over, especially if someone pushed it onto a slope, like the one designed for wheelchair access. And, if that happens, the chance of the panel surviving seems remote.
If the screen doesn’t need to be moved around, a set of rubber feet is included to go over the casters, making it less mobile.
On the back of the display are a power button and a volume rocker, and pressing the power button will launch the Android installation routine, which anyone with a phone or tablet will be familiar with.
There are two accessories included with the display: a remote control and a webcam, but you can’t use either of those until Android is fully operational. When I first did that, the tablet part of this device was using Android 15, not the Android 16 that the maker’s page promises. However, a system upgrade was ready, which converted it to Android 16 and also fixed a few limitations, such as adding Widevine L1 encryption.
I wouldn’t call the The Apolosign 32″ Smart Portable TV a unique design, but there aren’t many hardware makers offering anything like this. It combines a monitor, tablet, mobile signage, information kiosk and presentation tool into a single device. And, for those who want all those things, it might be ideal.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Hardware
- Rockchip RK3576
- VA display
- 15000 mAh battery
When I saw that this Android device used a Rockwell chip, I was initially discouraged, but that might have been a mistake on my part.
The Rockchip RK3576 first appeared on Rockchip roadmaps in late 2023, alongside the smaller RK3506. At the time, it looked like a cheaper sibling to the mighty RK3588, and that reading turned out to be correct. Rockchip officially launched the RK3576 in the second quarter of 2024, built on an advanced 8nm process, with low CPU junction temperature that allows fanless designs in many applications.
The RK3576 uses the familiar octo-core layout, and in this design, the cores are split 50/50 between performance and efficiency. Four ARM Cortex A72 cores handle heavy lifting, and four Cortex A53 cores manage lighter tasks, with an additional M0 co-processor for background duties. Together, they deliver around 58,000 DMIPS of computing power, which isn’t a huge number, but it’s enough to build an Android tablet around.
Graphics and media are where this chip earns its keep. Video decoding stretches up to 8K at 30fps or 4K at 120fps, and it supports H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1 and AVS2. Encoding covers H.264 and H.265 up to 4K at 60fps, with JPEG encoding and decoding also reaching 4K at 60fps. The embedded GPU supports OpenGL ES up to 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0 and Vulkan 1.1, so it copes comfortably with modern display demands, although it’s not got the sort of GPU power that games like.
A new sixteen megapixel image signal processor adds real muscle for camera work, with accelerators for HDR, noise reduction, sharpening and lens distortion correction. Rockchip also built in a 6 TOPS NPU for on-device AI, enabling things like facial recognition and voice interaction without needing the cloud. Rockchips
The chip supports dual-channel LPDDR4, LPDDR4X, and LPDDR5; later revisions added LPDDR5X support, giving manufacturers plenty of flexibility depending on cost targets.
In this implementation, it’s got 8GB of memory, but try as I might, I couldn’t discover what it is, and, in the same vein, it has 256GB of storage, but the type is unclear.
As this device is mostly bought for the 4K screen, that’s the one part of this that was clearly under the most price-saving pressure.
I’m reasonably confident that this is IPS, not VA or AMOLED, it has only a brightness level of 300 nits, and a refresh of 60Hz. The quoted response time is 8ms, and it supposedly has a contrast ratio of 1:3000.
When I get into the performance weeds, I’ll return to the screen, but my initial view was that while it’s workable, it’s the one part that Apolosign needed to probably make better to justify the cost of the ensemble.
The final hardware part I want to discuss is the battery, something I wasn’t actually expecting, that turned out to be genuinely useful.
Deep in the base, but replaceable is a 15000 mAh dual-cell Lithium-ion battery rated at 14.8 Volts. This is charged when the base is connected to power, although it charges much faster when the unit isn’t in use. Apolosign states that if the unit is in use and the battery is flat, it could take 6 hours to fully recharge. If you turn the screen and tablet off, it charges faster, probably in less than two hours.
The moral of this tale is to provide a PSU with enough umph to both charge and power, not do only one of those things effectively.
Makers quoted discharge is also six hours, but that longevity is dependent on the brightness set on the monitor and what the tablet is doing. But, during that time, you can wheel it around without any connected wires, and it remains fully functional.
Overall, the hardware in the tablet part of this design is decent if a bit underwhelming. I do wonder if a more modern SoC at 4nm might be more power efficient and an even better performer, allowing for more time on battery. But then, given that most of the power in the battery will be used on the 4K display, there might not be much of an advantage to gain.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Performance
- Modest SoC
- Display is of good quality
- 95% AdobeRGB
|
Phone |
|
Apolosign 32″ Smart Portable TV |
|
SoC |
|
Rockchip RK3576 |
|
GPU |
|
ARM Mali-G52 MC3 |
|
NPU |
|
Integrated 6 TOPS |
|
Memory |
|
8GB/256GB |
|
Weight |
|
20kg |
|
Battery |
mAh |
15,000 |
|
Geekbench |
Single |
344 |
|
|
Multi |
1228 |
|
|
OpenCL |
1438 |
|
|
Vulkan |
1436 |
|
PCMark |
3.0 Score |
6164 |
|
|
Battery |
8h 23m |
|
Charge 30 |
% |
15% |
|
Passmark |
Score |
7180 |
|
|
CPU |
3704 |
|
3DMark |
Slingshot OGL |
1941 |
|
|
Slingshot Ex. OGL |
1473 |
|
|
Slingshot Ex. Vulkan |
1694 |
|
|
Wildlife |
864 |
|
|
Wldlife Extreme |
241 |
|
|
Nomad Lite |
100 |
Since this is a unique product to me, I’ve not put it in comparison to any other.
However, this, under the skin, is a tablet, so I’ve used the same benchmarks I’d do if it were one I could carry around.
Compared to the typical rugged tablet I cover, this is probably one of the slowest I’ve ever tested. Looking back at my data, the only tablet I’ve tested that was remotely similar in performance was the Ulefone Armour Pad Pro, which uses the MediaTek Helio G88, and the Ulefone Armour Pad 3 Pro, which uses the MediaTek Helio P60.
This arrangement is slightly quicker than those tablets, but the difference isn’t huge.
If the numbers don’t speak for themselves, the graphics performance here is fine for block puzzles and Candy Crush, but it’s not amazing when asked to do 3D.
The makers had predicted six hours of running, but it exceeded that amount by some way, running the PCMark battery test for 8 hours and 23 minutes. That’s not enough for the full day at a trade show, but it’s acceptable. It’s worth remembering that the battery here is not only running the tablet but also the 4K display set to 120 nits of brightness.
For anyone wondering why I didn’t hook this display up to a PC and run a full Datacolor analysis on it, initially, there was a snag. Due to its integration with the tablet components, this monitor doesn’t have OSD, so selecting the various brightness settings I needed for analysis proved challenging.
What I was ultimately forced to do was swap back to Android, alter the brightness when required, and then go back to the PC HDMI input. Not impossible, but the process took much longer than it normally would.
Here are my results:
|
Colour Gamut |
Percentage |
|
sRGB |
95% |
|
AdobeRGB |
79% |
|
P3 |
80% |
|
NTSC |
74% |
|
Rec2020 |
57% |
|
Gamma |
2.1 |
|
Brightness/Contrast |
|
|
Maximum Brightness |
287.8 |
|
Maximum Contrast |
1860:1 |
For an IPS panel, the one used here is decent, especially in Gamut and Tone Response.
It’s also strong on colour uniformity and contrast, even if it doesn’t hit the maker’s quoted 3000:1 levels.
Its weaknesses are colour accuracy and luminance uniformity, with the latter being quite poor. This is an edge-lit design, and most of the light seems to come from the upper left, making the bottom centre and right much darker than the rest of the display. At its worst, we are talking 22% darker at 50% brightness.
The viewing angles on this screen are 178 degrees, so that’s not an issue for people viewing content at an angle.
Overall, the tablet part of this package isn’t anything special, but the display is better than anticipated.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Final verdict
As a solution, I enjoyed the Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV, since it delivered in a small but important niche.
Signage, presentation and educational rolls are all satisfied by this product, and for marketing companies needing show stand equipment, the price isn’t crazy.
In retrospect, a bigger battery to deliver a whole working day might have been worthwhile, and a high-end model with an AMOLED screen would be an eye-catching option.
The only question any prospective buyer needs to answer is whether they need 4K or if one of the 1080p models would do the job just as effectively.
Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV: Report card
|
Value |
Limited choices make for good value |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
Awkward to assemble but nice when together |
4 / 5 |
|
Hardware |
Modest SoC, but decent spec otherwise |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Mediorcre tablet and decent screen |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Total |
Not cheap, but useful for so many jobs |
4 / 5 |
Should you buy a Apolosign 32-inch Smart Portable TV?
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