Sharp FQ5 and FQ8: what they ship with and what can come off

Let us start with what saves time: the FQ5 and the FQ8 are the same television. They share a European registration and they share a spec sheet; what changes between them is what comes in the box, not the machine. If you were comparing the two, stop.

And the second thing, which is the trap in this model and is not Sharp's fault: its sheet says "4× HDMI 2.1", and that is half true.

Four ports, two of them fast#

The official sheet spells it out in brackets, and credit where it is due — not everyone does: 4× HDMI 2.1 [4K@60Hz (HDMI1,2); 4K@144Hz (HDMI3,4)].

Translated: all four ports carry the 2.1 label, but only 3 and 4 accept 4K at 144 Hz. The other two stop at 4K and 60. Plug the console into the first port you find and there is a fair chance you are playing at 60 Hz on a 144 Hz television.

A second detail is chained to it: eARC is on HDMI 4, one of the two fast ones. With a soundbar connected there, you are left with one single port capable of 144 Hz. Console on 3, soundbar on 4, and that is the lot.

This deserves two minutes before any app clear-out: it pays better.

The 144 Hz on this one are real#

Worth saying, because at this price plenty of sets claim numbers that are not. Sharp's official sheet declares, in its specifications table, a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz, and VRR reaches that same figure.

Alongside it, on the same sheet, sit two things that are not that: "AQUOS Smooth Motion 144", which is frame interpolation, and an "Active Motion 1400" that is a marketing index with no physical equivalent. Having all three numbers on one page is confusing, but the panel is 144 Hz native.

What it is, in two lines#

A 2024 4K set with a VA panel, a quantum dot layer —hence the QLED— and Direct LED backlighting. Sharp claims between 450 and 500 nits of peak brightness.

What it does not have, and it explains a good deal: local dimming. Without it, HDR amounts to displaying the format rather than making use of it, because the television cannot darken one part of the screen while lighting another. Normal at this level, but worth knowing before buying it in the hope of reference HDR.

It accepts HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision IQ. It does not support HDR10+.

The sound is 30 watts across two 15-watt speakers, tuned by Harman/Kardon: a silk front tweeter and a bottom woofer. For what mid-range usually offers, it is above average.

One figure Sharp does not publish#

The memory. Neither the RAM nor the storage appears on the official sheet, in the manual or in the regulatory declaration. This is not an omission on our part: it is not published anywhere at all.

And it is the figure that decides how many years the machine lasts you: when the storage fills up, apps stop updating and in the end the television cannot apply its own update.

You can find it out yourself, and it is the first thing to do. With ADB connected:

df -h /data tells you how much there is and how much is left free.

cat /proc/meminfo | head -1 tells you the total memory.

Without ADB, Settings → System → Storage shows at least the free space, which is already half the answer.

How to tell whether this page is about your television#

Sharp's European catalogue holds four different systems side by side, and the model is the only thing that tells them apart. Checked one by one on the official sheets:

• GR, GP, HR and GF run Google TV. That is where this page belongs.
• GD and GJ run Roku TV.
• GM, GK, HM, HK and JM run TiVo OS.
• In the short naming, the EG suffix is Google TV and EA is Android 11.

A rule doing the rounds online says the model letter marks the year —F for 2024, G for 2025—. It may well be true, but Sharp does not publish it anywhere: neither its product pages nor its spec sheets carry a model year. So we do not take it as given.

What never fails: under Settings → System → About you get the model and the Android version. With ADB, getprop ro.product.model gives the same without walking through menus.

What ships on it#

Google's part. The launcher (com.google.android.tvlauncher), the recommendations engine (com.google.android.tvrecommendations), voice search (com.google.android.katniss) and the services (com.google.android.gms). That is the layer deciding what you see when you switch the set on.

Sharp's part. Little, compared with other brands: a setup assistant and an own app or two. The exact names change between firmware versions, so list yours instead of trusting a list off the internet.

Third parties. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and company ship installed by commercial agreement, not because the television needs them.

What comes off without much thought#

The streaming apps you do not use. They take up space, they update themselves, they show up in the recommendations row and they talk to their servers. If you subscribe to one tomorrow, it reinstalls from the store in two minutes.

The free content channels that fill the home screen are the second clear case.

What to look at first#

The recommendations engine. Removing it leaves the home screen clean, but it also empties the "continue watching" row, which in a household with several people gets missed.

And before touching any package, go into the privacy settings and see what the television is sharing. A fair amount can be cut back from there, with no ADB and no risk.

What not to touch#

Google Play services. They are the foundation of the store, of the accounts and of a good share of the apps. Without them the television boots and little more.

The launcher, as long as you have no other one installed and working. A television with no launcher switches on to a black screen, and fixing that with the remote alone is far harder than having thought about it beforehand.

Anything starting with com.android. that you cannot identify: com.android.systemui is the system interface and com.android.settings is the settings app itself.

And on this model, with particular care, anything to do with HDMI and with external device control: the eARC on HDMI 4, VRR and the 144 Hz all run through there, and they are exactly what makes this television good.

What you actually notice#

The home screen stops suggesting series from services you do not have. Content notifications disappear. And the television answers the remote a little sooner in the first seconds after switching on.

What does not change: the 144 Hz, the brightness, the HDR or the Harman/Kardon sound. None of that depends on the apps installed, and no clear-out is going to give it the local dimming it does not have.

All of this comes undone#

Packages disabled over ADB come back with one command, and a factory reset returns the television to exactly the state it left the box in. Nothing here touches the system: you are only telling the set not to load something that was already installed.

If you own one#

The app list from your FQ interests us, but the output of df -h /data and of cat /proc/meminfo even more. With two or three replies, this page will finally be able to say how much memory a Sharp in this series carries, which is something nobody says today, not even Sharp.