Hisense 55A7GQ
This Hisense’s low price, long feature list and attractive design give it oodles of on-paper appeal, that quickly evaporates when you switch it on
The 55A7GQ’S headline appeal is that it gives you 55-inches of 4K, Hdr-capable pictures for just £499. Adding more bang for your buck, there’s also a smart system built around Hisense’s increasingly impressive VIDAA platform, support for Dolby Vision on top of the more standard HDR formats, built-in Dolby Atmos sound, and even a Quantum Dot colour system. So, what’s the catch?
Premium feel
The 55A7GQ looks more expensive than it is. The bottom edge sports a smart silver, metallic-looking finish, while the other three edges are exceptionally trim with a black finish, and the screen sits flush with the frame. It’s a little deeper round the back than many TVS, likely due to the set’s promising use of direct LED backlight.
The 55A7GQ delivers a native 4K resolution and support for HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision. Add support for a wider colour gamut than regular LCD TVS, backed by a Quantum Dot colour system, and this set seems to be punching well above its price weight. There’s no local dimming with the direct backlighting, though, and the set uses an Ips-style LCD panel rather than a VA one. Experience shows that while IPS screens can provide wider viewing angles, they tend to struggle to deliver good black levels and contrast.
While there’s no support for 4K/120HZ gaming, the trio of HDMIS handle variable refresh rates (up to 60Hz) and non HDR 1080p at 120Hz – despite the screen using only a 60Hz panel. The 55A7GQ’S HDMIS support ALLM (Automatic Low Latency Mode) switching and, when in its Game picture preset, the TV delivers a very respectable 14.6ms input lag. Two USB ports, an optical digital audio output, an Ethernet network port, a headphone jack and wi-fi complete the set’s connections.
Smart features are provided by Hisense’s VIDAA system, which has evolved into a pretty effective platform, with a crisp, clean layout, good responsiveness and a solid set of video streaming apps. Built-in Dolby Atmos decoding supported by an EARC HDMI can ship lossless Atmos to compatible soundbars or AV receivers, too.
Black level woes
Let’s cut to the chase: the 55A7GQ’S picture quality is hugely disappointing, especially as it arrives amid a generally upward trajectory for Hisense TVS. The main problem is a pretty devastating lack of black level response. Dark scenes appear behind a wash of excessive greyness that’s so severe at times that it can become hard to make out what is going on in the picture. As the camera spins around Voldemort’s army amassing on a hill above Hogwarts at night in the final Harry Potter film, you would be forgiven for thinking the Dark Lord had turned up by himself, so hard is it to make out anything else amid the unwanted greyness generated around him.
In fact, any shot that isn’t pretty much blazingly bright ends up having its depth flattened, its colours shifted and its contrast hammered by the cloying greyness that hangs over everything.
Hisense does provide a couple of picture tweaks by way of a range of picture presets and an Adaptive Contrast mode with multiple settings. It quickly becomes apparent, though, that the black level problems are so fundamental to the 55A7GQ’S image characteristics that nothing in the picture menus really helps. The Low and Medium Adaptive Contrast settings actually make black levels worse. The High setting does improve it a fraction, but it can also cause distractingly extreme shifts in the image’s baseline brightness level as the TV tries in its rudimentary way to boost black levels by automatically adjusting the backlighting in response to an ongoing analysis of image content. This system is so sluggish and heavy handed with its responses that if anything it just makes the contrast issues even worse.
The only thing that really makes a significant difference to the 55A7GQ’S black levels during testing is reducing the backlight setting to pretty much zero. As you can imagine, though, this leaves images looking so dark and dull that they are just as tough to watch.
It might have been easier to forgive these black level woes if it was pumping out extreme levels of brightness. But, side by side with a number of rival screens, it’s clear that this TV is actually delivering peak brightness levels only in line with other budget sets, and substantially lower than those pushed out by most mid-range sets.
The 55A7GQ’S limited brightness levels would limit its abilities with HDR images even if its black levels were decent. By the time you have combined the limited brightness with the 55A7GQ’S lack of black level depth, though, you have got HDR images that scarcely look HDR at all. In fact, playing HDR on the 55A7GQ tends to make black levels even worse.
Our guess would be that the 55A7GQ’S issues are down to a combination of its IPS panel and its budget QD colour system. Assuming we are correct on this, it’s ironic that the IPS panel doesn’t seem to deliver even the viewing-angle advantage we normally expect such a panel to provide.
Despite all this, we try to peer through the greyness to see what else is going on; and we spot more problems. Despite the general high levels of greyness lying over
the picture, you can still sometimes see a inch-wide ‘border’ of extra brightness running right around the image’s edges. A few other less specific areas of backlight clouding crop up from time to time, too.
The 55A7GQ’S upscaling of sub-4k sources is also rather basic. The upscaling does quite well at making pictures look sharp, adding eye-catching emphasis and definition to lines, edges and textures; but it seems to make little effort to distinguish source noise from real image information, and so ends up sharpening and emphasising noise as well as ‘real’ image information while over-exaggerating grain.
The 55A7GQ avoids a complete picture quality wash-out with impressively sharp and crisp native 4K pictures which remain reasonably if not brilliantly intact with motion in the frame, thanks to minimal judder and surprisingly little blurring and resolution loss if you call up the set’s decently effective Clear Motion setting.
While colours are routinely impacted by the screen’s inescapable grey overwash, there’s enough subtlety in the way blends and tones are presented to reveal that the TV’S core colour processing is pretty good, and the set’s black level and brightness limitations seem much less damaging with game graphics than they are with video – especially in SDR. Contrast looks better, and colours look richer and more credible. The clean, precise, defined nature of gaming graphics suits the screen’s knack for detailing and sharpness, too, while motion remains decently clean even in the processing-light game mode.
Satisfying audio
The set’s audio is much more satisfying than its picture quality, though that’s not saying much. Sound is relatively crisp, clean, detailed (especially with Dolby Atmos soundtracks) and can go reasonably loud without succumbing to cabinet buzzing or low-frequency distortion.
Heavy bass lines can sound muffled amid a lack of really deep low frequency extension, while highs occasionally land a bit harshly during dense soundtrack moments. The mid-range is wide and dynamic enough, though, to keep you involved, despite the speakers not being able to project the sound any great distance to the left, right or forwards of the screen.
Hisense’s recent strong run of form comes to a shuddering halt with the 55A7GQ. Any good work this TV musters is overwhelmed and undermined by a contrast performance so poor that dark or even mid-bright scenes never look remotely convincing. The 55A7GQ may be cheap for a 55in TV, but sadly its price does not equate to great value.