Hisense 55P7
THREE NEW SCREENS TO CATER FOR THE WHOLE MARKET.
FORMERLY KNOWN AS a maker of models focused at the entry-level, Hisense continues to go from strength to strength in 2018, and is now offering screens for the premium market. In April the company unveiled its new range TVs, with three different tiers of TVs targeted at different price brackets.
At the top of the chain is the Series 9, which differs from the other sets thanks to the inclusion of its ‘Prime Array Backlight’ system. This range starts at $4,499 for the 65-inch screen. All of the TVs across the ranges are based on ULED technology, which is similar to LED TVs in that it requires a backlight. However, this causes issues with dark colours, as there is light bleed between the backlight panels. The solution to this is to make these light panels smaller, and the Series 9 has over 1,000 dimming zones that do so.
The more affordable Series 8 starts at $3,699 for the 65-inch screen, while the Series 7 starts at just $1,499. Both of these ranges cut back on the number of light panels, making them more affordable, but decreasing their ability to pump out rich blacks.
The Series 9 is also the only one in the range to be Ultra HD Premium certified, which means that each of these TVs is fully 4K resolution, supports 10-bit colour depth, meets the BT.2020 colour space representation, and is also HDR certified. Finally, they must be able to produce blacks that are less than 0.05 nits and whites that are greater than 1,000 nits. In fact, Hisense claims the Series 9 can pump out an astonishing 2,500 nits of brightness, which it calls HDR Supreme, making it one of the brightest panels available.
Dropping down to the Series 8, and we see that, instead of having HDR Supreme, this range uses the more commonly available HDR Plus technology. This still means it’s amazing at colour reproduction, but it’s not as bright.
Finally, there’s the Series 7, which doesn’t appear to have the Quantum dot technology used by the other two series, again lowering the colour accuracy. We tested out the Series 7 55-inch, also more formerly known as the 55P7, and were very impressed at the image quality considering the price point, at just $1,999. It’s not in the same league as the likes of the OLED and QLED sets, but it’s also half the price.
Like all of the Hisense ranges, the 55P7 is very thin, at just 52mm at its deepest point. With support for HDR Plus, our demo disk displayed images that popped, though it didn’t have black levels as rich as OLED TVs.
Like all of Hisense’s new TVs, it uses the VIDAAU 2.5 Smart TV OS, which is custom designed for Hisense TVs. It can be controlled via your smartphone, and you can cast video and pictures directly from your phone without the need for a Chromecast. Support for every major streaming app is included, though we did find that the linear scrolling layout of the menu is more time consuming than a layered menu approach. It’s also one of the few ranges that doesn’t support voice recognition, though this doesn’t always work with other TVs.
Overall, we were very impressed with the 55P7 considering its excellent price. In the past, we’d expect to pay double for this level of colour accuracy and brightness, and we can’t wait to see how Hisense’s upcoming OLED range will improve their quality even more.