Kogan KAQL55XQ98GSVA (55")

4/5 Stars = Sound (Personal) 4/5 Picture (Personal) 4/5. Frame Rate on Sport, 5/5. Gaming Frame Rate on console, 5/5. Colour Definition 4/5. Set up Options 5/5. Sharpness Processing QLED Display 4/5 - This depends upon network feed quality, and the TV processor ability is not as advanced as a 55" $3000 QLED 4K TV equivalent because you haven't… Read more ·  1

bought a high level processor. The processor 3/5 in this TV is adequate to provide a decent pixelated and NON fragmenting frame rate, sharpness 4/5 is quite okay for everything observed on screen. Controller button placement and design 5/5, Apps work like any other Smart TV, 5/5. Controller Remote Microphone Talk with Google TV, 5/5, Child TV Lock 5/5. As it's new, there are lots of hidden features you have to discover.

FYI for buyers of this unit - this review is a set-up guide because Kogan doesn't have an advanced option to understand the menus inside this TV. Below is my TV set up for most content, stereo amp connection and media hub options and picture refinement for movies, sport and games:

Picture (Personal) Sharpness 82, Brightness 55, Colour Saturation 41, Hue 53 (be careful - less is magenta, middle is yellow, higher is green), Contrast 64 (back to front - higher is crisper and lighter), Gamma 1 (changes lightness). Advanced Settings - Colour Temperature WARM, Dynamic Contrast - ON (use this to make colours chromatic - very good for games), Noise Reduction - OFF (don't know why this exists - might be useful for stills photographic images and using TV as monitor for photo editing) ALLM - OFF, Motion Estimate and Motion Compensation (MEMC) - Middle or (HIGH for action sports and never OFF). Screen Brightness 55 (this is the setting for lighting in your room - it helps to reduce reflection on the display from external sources). WCG - WCG (this makes the colour overall a little more RED, warmer.) Some movies do not need this, and it is easy to turn on or off to adjust colour bias (but note here, I don't like this setting on Auto).

Sound for TV Speakers Only - (Personal setting Only). Dolby - OFF or ON (depends on feed type - note digital feed likes this setting ON, whereas TV from Aerial input it really should be OFF). Surround Mode - OFF, Advance Settings - OFF (if you are going to use advance settings they are below and not here).

To access Personal Equaliser: In the window which displays - Personal Settings - Press Personal Settings x2 times - this opens Personal Equaliser. 150Hz 3, 250Hz 4, 500Hz 3, 1000Hz 2, 2000Hz 0, 5000Hz -2, 10000Hz -3. You can do without a soundbar with this EQ set up, as it's pretty beefy and has good midtone balance with softer tweeter end note makes dialogue clear as the sharpness is chopped out. No hiss whatsoever.

TV Speakers Warning: Sound Audio Output TV Speakers is very sensitive out of the box - You have a +/- bar controller which is 0 -100. The highest I have used is 21 and that is obnoxious loud. There is no way to correct or reduce this skew, except for the almost deaf 3/5 will hear clarity and destroy neighbourhood peace. Don't accidentally destroy your TV speakers, it's a little scary how sensitive this really is 2/5 (needs firmware update to fix slider audio output volume).

Adding External Devices: TV Audio to Audio Amp or Soundbar instruction guide as this is not in the Kogan instruction guides online - Install your cable connections to SPDIF/Optical (optical OUT on TV direct to Optical IN on Amp) or HDMI-ARC (be aware this TV uses HDMI-ARC port 2. You must use an ARC-Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable. You cannot use a standard HDMI cable for this type of connection. Connect from HDMI-ARC 2 direct to Digital Amp, HDMI-ARC dedicated port. As this is a fairly new type of connection, a lot of oldish media amps do not have a dedicated ARC port. Network amps will have a dedicated ARC TV port. If your Amp does not have ARC, you must use SPDIF/Optical instead.)

SPDIF/Optical Configuration: Note with using SPDIF/Optical configurations from TV: The multi device use option is to run optical to the Media Amp and control all your external devices from that input/output whilst having a completely separate digital feed for Aerial only which throughputs to TV from your Network or media Recorder/Player which uses an RCA Digital Coaxial Stereo connection. This set up allows you to be using 3 systems at the same time. 2 can record separate channels from TV signal inputs as 1 is external network online input doesn't require TV to provide signal whilst the other is using TV aerial input indirectly whist the 3rd is live network input feed on primary HDMI 1 channel. You cannot do this using HDMI-ARC set up.

Advanced Connections: *!* If you are going to change a setting in this area, it overrides the preset setting, as you are now in Manual Advanced Menu for the entire TV OS. (You may want to write down your setting procedure and if you get stuck you can reset all the settings to default and start again).

Click on COG button on your controller to open the Setting Menu on your TV. The COG icon in the top right corner of your TV screen menu should be highlighted. Tap the Black Circle on the controller 2 times quickly. This opens all settings menu on your TV.

Channels and inputs - Channels: You can create a Favourite list. You can also delete unwanted scanned channels, do diagnostic of signal strength to get the best quality for your area, and you can organise your channels the way you like to see and use them. < back to settings.

Display and Sound - Audio Output - Output Device: TV Speakers for TV Speakers, SPDIF/Optical OUT to Stereo 2 Channel Amp SPDIF/Optical IN connects to external speakers or Media Amp SPDIF/Optical IN connects to surround speaker system or Soundbar, (note here you cannot connect a Soundbar direct unless you dedicate that Optical OUT/IN to just Soundbar use and it turns off the TV speakers and the Headphone connection too).

HDMI-ARC to HDMI-ARC input on Media Amp (mutes TV audio when device is on and in use. This blocks TV audio use for another purpose.) Or you may buy a Digital Audio Controller with all the above INPUT/OUTPUT types and connect to PC Audio Visual Controls rendering turning the TV into a monitor with stereo speakers.

When using SPDIF/Optical you must turn ON PCM. This is in Sound Settings.

In - Audio Output Type - turn on PCM. This can stay this way forever as it doesnt affect TV Speaker output quality.

Picture Quality: 4/5 is purely dependent on the feed you get from either Aerial or Network - (Ethernet cable connection ) online speed via your modem and ISP. It varies. All your cables should be CAT7e. You can observe the input signal speed at the top of the channel when it is loading - e.g: 720p, 1080p, 4K / Hz Audio quality. Note network speed from steaming apps varies based on the network load in your server connections, your local area usage and the account subscription feed type from location stream connection.

A 4K TV of this type cannot enhance quality. Go buy a $6000 UHD 8K OLED TV as you will be paying for the multiprocessor chipsets with separate motherboard CPU & GPU which refines the input to feed a REFINED cleaner result. This is what you pay for mostly in any Smart TV today. It is less important to discuss how to refine picture quality beyond measure, as this TV is good enough for general use, especially sport and computer gaming, but it does lack slightly on Cinematic Delivery 4/5, out of the box without doing anything you will have 2.5/5 picture quality at most.

Direct Recording: Setting up recording directly from this TV is tricky. *!* You must not allow the TV to assign your device after it has been formatted. If you do - you cannot record live TV to the device. Doing so will automatically assign your external drive to be your Download Content media Library, which I find pretty useless because what am I going to download if I use online feeds from streaming like Netflix or On Demand. Both of these save your Content and Makes a Personal Library Online. And, this TV has 16GB of dedicated Library Space without any external attachment. But if 16Gb isnt enough, you can record directly to a large USB or SSD. Mine is 1Tb, and I can see 0.9Tb of that space. I can't set the buffer, but formatting sets a buffer equivalent to the TV recording settings. 1 important factor here is that you should remove this device connection whenever you do a firmware update on your TV.

Google TV: Offers a lot of Movie content on the fly. You don't really have control of the feed, but you can exclude (erase) some references in Advanced Settings if you are not using accounts for Network Entertainment. YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney are preset locked. Unless you have an account, you cannot access these. And note here as this TV is a Smart Google TV you must have a Google Account to use the feature User profile for creating a Personal Library and getting rid of all the suff you will never use as it declutters the system and makes your TV more economic on power need. You can prioritise your Apps on home screen including Antenna which is all free to Air TV feed - see Channels and inputs settings for other options.

General Thoughts: This Kogan TV is fairly easy to set up - Bare-bones 3/5 out of the box, it's a little rough and the settings which go into Advanced Options for setting up external devices is vague or non-existent in Kogan's Setup guides1/5. I just spent 4 days playing around to figure out this TV's setting, and they are pretty comprehensive 5/5, just a little tough to get right because I havent got a technical guide to help me clarify what I'm doing. I don't want to change these settings ever again if possible. The best thing about doing advanced set up is that each area is a separate process 5/5, so just make a checklist and work through each device you are connecting to be seamless with, how you know and expect it to work. TV OS Set up does not reset when you turn power supply off at wall socket 5/5.

Gaming: Gaming on this TV is superb. Frame rate with a Series X is 120Hz. I set this to Auto as some games wont run 120Hz and it can cause flicker if you try too be too demanding on older games and indy type content is better on 90 or 60Hz. The 4K visual quality is crisp, no aberation at edges of frame or fuzziness in center section of screen, is very good with fast movement games, framerate dependent on device input quality. No bloom with aliasing or aberration with fog, haze, rain effect, dust storma and lightning are beautiful. Again, here you must have good network setup and a higher than average internet speed makes a big difference in what the Hz rating is going to be consistent in visual outcomes. If you stream online, Hz will vary dependent on where it is coming from, or going to, and what you pay for may not be received the same because the quality is inferior between upload and download qualities.

Overall: This TV isn't 5 Stars. It is because you have to do a fair bit of tuning to get the right picture and sound, plus there is a slight bias toward yellow in picture lighting. I've done my best to remove it to neutral, but it is extremely hard to get neutral tone. But for a Smart TV, which is under $900.00 is a rediculously good price for what it delivers. My TV was build in July 2025.

I have updated this review 18/10/25 as I have finished the advanced set up options and added them to thiss review as I consider them worth doing.

This TV has a really nice screen saver which you can customise with family photos from your Google Account Folder if you wish or the Google pictures are spectacular quality 5/5 if you decide to just have those.

Get to know your TV.