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LeEco TVs, Phones Hitting Retail

LeEco, the Chinese tech manufacturer, content provider and new Vizio parent, is bringing its line of titular phones and TVs to retail.

The products, which made their U.S. trade debut last month, have thus far been sold direct through the company’s LeMall website in a series of intermittent flash sales.

But starting tomorrow (Dec. 1), the devices will be available at select Best Buy locations and wireless dealers (100 stores in all), and online at Amazon, BestBuy.com and Target.com, the vendor said.

LeEco’s e-commerce site has also officially opened with 24/7 service.

Following the Amazon model, the products are competitively priced and tied through a proprietary interface to a content and services catalog, where LeEco hopes to make back its investment.

“We continue to bring to life our vision of a connected ecosystem that puts content at the center of the experience,” noted Danny Bowman, chief revenue officer, LeEco North America. “We’ve had tremendous success with our direct-to-consumer e-commerce site, LeMall.com, but we’re thrilled to be working with the top retailers to make our products more accessible.”

Those products will include the company’s Le Pro3 and Le S3 GSM smartphones and Super4 X Series and uMax 4K UHD LED-TVs (see specs, below).

And to help kick them off at retail, LeEco is offering free-with-purchase access to DirecTV Now for up to one year, in an introductory offer that’s good through Jan. 5.

The company, which also sells bicycles, VR goggles and electric cars, recently received a $600 million finance infusion after CEO Jia Yueting warned that the business was overextended, and cut his salary to 1 yuan (about 15 cents) a year.

LeEco paid $2 billion to purchase Vizio in July.

TVs hitting retail tomorrow include:

*The 4K Super4 X Series , featuring Dolby Digital Plus and Bluetooth 4.1 technology; dual-band high-speed Wi-Fi; 3GB DDR3 RAM; 16GB of onboard flash storage; and a quad-core ARM Cortex CPU and a multi-core ARM Mali T820 GPU. They’re available in 43-, 55- and 65-inch iterations for $649, $899 and $1,399, respectively, with $200 instant rebates.

*The top-of-the-line 4K uMax85, featuring full-array backlight and 448 active local dimming zones; Dolby Vision with HDR10; 4GB DDR3 RAM; the same workstation-grade CPU and GPU as the Super4 X; and Dolby Digital Plus and Sound by Harman Kardon audio. Only available in an 85-inch screen size, it sells for $4,999.

The 5.5-inch GSM phones include:

*The Le Pro3, with Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 CPU; 64GB of onboard storage; 4GB RAM; and 4,070 mAh battery for $399 with $80 instant rebate.

*The Le S3, with Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 octa-core processor; 32GB of onboard storage; 3GB RAM; and 3,000 mAh battery for $249 with $80 instant rebate.

Both models feature FullHD LCD displays with 403ppi resolution; Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0; 16-megapixel front and 8-megapixel rear cameras; USB Type-C ports for charging and headphones; Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screens; Dolby Atmos and CDLA audio; aluminum unibody casing in gray or gold; and Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

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