hisense XT 910
HISENSE MAY NOT BE A HOUSEHOLD NAME, BUT CHINA’S MOST POPULAR TV MANUFACTURER DESPERATELY WANTS TO PROVIDE YOUR NEXT TELLY. WILL ITS XT910 MEET THE DEMANDS OF HARD-TO -PLEASE TECHNOPHILES?
China brings its A-game: a relatively accessible flagship 4K panel with curves in all the right places. You need to see it!
High-end picture performance without an upmarket price tag. That’s the promise of Hisense’s range-topping XT910 ULED 4K TV. With a full-array backlight and a Quantum Dot colour filter, it looks well specified. But just how sharp is this UHD newcomer? Should the big four TV brands be quaking in their boots? We took delivery of the 65-inch curved screen to find out…
Hisense hails from China but, like many brands, the XT910 is assembled in Europe. It’s undeniably handsome, with a thin, shiny bezel mirrored by a curved chrome stand. The set reclines on two rear-placed feet, for a lazy, languorous look. Curved screens like this one may look a tad foolish when wall-mounted, but on the right low-profile stand the XT910 would easily pass for posh in polite company.
Set-up offers an intriguing dilemma. In addition to Home and Shop, there’s a Premium mode that promises top performance but with increased power use. Fears of a surge on the National Grid are unfounded, though. We measured the screen at 227.7 watts (with 100 per cent colour bars), equivalent to a couple of 60-watt lightbulbs more than the regular Home mode. For what it’s worth, the Home mode doesn’t greatly diminish luminosity, so you don’t get a duller viewing experience. Some may even find Home a more comfortable watch. More on this later…
Connections include a quartet of HDMI inputs, three USBs (one being a fast 3.0 variant), legacycomponent and AV inputs, plus an optical digital audio output. While the screen supports HDCP 2.2 sources (such as the Amazon Fire TV 4K box and upcoming Sky Q 4K STB), only two of the HDMI inputs are compatible with next-gen 4K content devices that use the copy protection.
If you’re unsure about the merits of a curved screen, be sure to see this set up close. As the curve is quite pronounced, you get a rather bendy EPG and some weird reflections. Off-angle viewing is good, though, with no major loss of colour or contrast.
Niceties include an HEVC decoder (as used by Netflix and Amazon), as well as support for V9, which is the YouTube UHD codec of choice, although the quality of tagged 4K clips on YouTube is variable at best, and downright awful in many cases.
The Hisense smart interface is a simple tiled affair. Accessed via the Home button on the remote, the main page features iPlayer prominently, plus BBC Sport and News apps, Netflix, Chili and YouTube. Routing