Toshiba UF3D and QF5D: what they ship with and what can come off

These two televisions share a page because they share almost everything: the same hardware platform, the same system, the same three HDMI ports, the same electronics. What changes between them is the panel —the QF5D is QLED and the UF3D is not— and that the QF5D carries a subwoofer and the UF3D does not.

For what this page is about, which is the software, they are the same machine.

What their manufacturer does not say#

Let us start with what makes this page different.

On almost every television in this directory we can tell you how much memory it has inside, because the manufacturer publishes it. Not here. We looked for the figure in Toshiba's official UK and German spec sheets, in the full manual, in technical databases and in Amazon's own specification table for Fire TV devices. Neither the RAM nor the storage appears anywhere.

This is not an oversight on our part: Vestel, which builds these televisions for Toshiba in Europe, simply does not publish it.

And it turns out that on an entry-level television that is precisely the figure which decides how many years it will last you: when the storage fills up, apps take longer to open, some stop updating, and in the end the television cannot apply its own system update.

The good news is that you can find it out yourself, and it is the first thing you should do.

How to find out the memory yours has#

With ADB connected —the same procedure the rest of this site explains— two commands give you what the manufacturer keeps quiet:

df -h /data tells you how much storage there is and how much is left free. That second number is the one that matters.

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

In the output of the first command, /data is the partition where the apps and their data live; the column to read is the free space, not the total. Do not be surprised if it does not match the menus to the gigabyte: the system keeps a reserve of its own that the settings screen does not count.

Without ADB, under Settings → My Fire TV → About → Storage you will at least see the free space, which is already half the answer.

Do it before you install anything else. If you have less than two gigabytes free, the clear-out this page describes is not optional: it is what will keep the television usable.

What these televisions are#

Two 2023 4K sets with 60 Hz panels and 350 claimed nits. On the 43-inch UF3D 299 nits have been measured, and on the 55-inch around 430: the same spec sheet, two different behaviours depending on the size, which is worth keeping in mind when comparing.

They accept HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision, but not HDR10+. Measured input lag is around 10 milliseconds, which for a television at this price is very good, although there is no VRR.

The sound is 2 × 10 W up to 55 inches and 2 × 12 W on the larger ones. The QF5D adds an internal subwoofer that the UF3D does not have, and that is the difference you hear most between the two.

Being Fire TV changes the whole list#

If you have come from reading the page for a television with Google TV, forget the names you knew:

There are no Google packages. No com.google.android.tvlauncher and no com.google.android.gms. Here the prefix in charge is com.amazon..

There is no Play Store. The store is Amazon's Appstore (com.amazon.venezia), with a smaller catalogue. If you overdo the removals, going back costs more than on a Google TV.

The home screen is Amazon's, and it is among the most commercial there is.

ADB works the same. Fire OS is Android underneath, so the commands are the same as on any other page of this site. What changes is the list of names, not the method.

What comes off without much thought#

The streaming apps you do not use. On a television whose memory you do not know until you look at it, every one of them is space you may well need.

The games and associated services that ship on it and that you have never opened.

What to look at first#

On Fire TV two settings take away a good share of the noise with no ADB and no risk at all: under Settings → Preferences → Privacy Settings you turn off device usage data collection and interest-based ads. Start there.

What not to touch#

The launcher (com.amazon.tv.launcher), as long as you have no other one installed and working. On Fire TV this is more delicate than on Google TV because there are fewer alternatives and Amazon's store does not offer them.

The store (com.amazon.venezia): without it you cannot reinstall anything you remove.

And everything to do with the remote and its bluetooth pairing.

Write down what you remove#

Amazon reactivates things with updates more often than Google does. Keep the list in a text file with the full command beside each entry, and save the complete package list before you touch anything: it is the only faithful picture of how your television arrived.

What you actually notice#

A considerably less commercial home screen, storage recovered —which here matters more than usual— and less background activity.

What does not change: the 350 nits, the 60 Hz of the panel or the HDR. None of that depends on the apps installed.

If the hardware falls short for you#

These televisions are from 2023 and from the entry level. If yours still struggles after the clear-out, the reasonable way out is to leave it as a screen and put an external player in front of it. The panel will go on giving the same 350 nits, which is what you paid for, and the interface becomes one you can choose and one that gets updated for years.

All of this comes undone#

Packages disabled over ADB come back with one command, and a factory reset returns the television to 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 Toshiba interests us, but the output of df -h /data and of cat /proc/meminfo even more. If you send it to us, this page will finally be able to say how much memory these televisions carry, which is something nobody says right now.