Hisense 100L9GTUK Laser TV
Can a projector really become a TV?
Hisense’s Laser TV is not a TV in the normal sense. Instead it comprises two elements: a 100in fixed-frame screen, and a separate ultra short throw laser projector. In other words, it’s a projector system. But it’s a projector system with a difference.
The screen is in the box as standard with the projector, as a package deal. What’s more, Hisense will even send someone round to install it for you (at the time of writing) without any additional cost.
The projector is an ultra short throw design that can be placed on a sideboard right next to your wall and a few inches under the screen. So, unlike with regular projectors, you don’t have to find a place for it in the middle of your room. Also unlike most projectors is the presence of a 2 x 20W speaker system, complete with built-in Dolby Atmos decoding. Another tick in the ‘I am a TV, honest’ box.
The 100L9GTUK’S connections also have much more in common with TVS, especially the provision of three HDMIS where most projectors carry only two; built-in wi-fi to support video streaming via the VIDAA smart platform; and even an RF port feeding into a Freeview HD tuner.
One billion colours
The big story here is the simple fact that the 100L9GTUK Laser TV can give you a 100in picture, so it feels at least a bit like you are watching a massive TV for £4499. The screen is no ordinary projection screen. It deploys ambient light rejection (ALR) tech, where the screen’s structure is able to keep ambient light from hitting the screen by only reflecting the light that hits it from below (where the projector sits).
The ALR screen design, claimed ability of the projector to pump out 3000 nits of light and short distance it has to travel are key in its aim of delivering pictures bright enough to combat ambient light in a light room and rival the brightness you can get from regular TVS in a dark room.
The tri-laser arrangement provides separate laser light sources for the red, green and blue picture elements. Hisense’s cheaper L5 Laser TVS use a mono laser system instead, which means their single-source light has to be fed through a brightness-reducing colour wheel. Not needing a colour wheel should see more light actually reaching the screen, as well as increased colour volume. In fact, Hisense claims the 100L9GTUK covers as much as 107 per cent of the BT2020 colour space and delivers one billion colours.
The 100L9GTUK’S lasers are rated as good for more than 25,000 hours of working life. That’s 12,500 two-hour films, or 4166 days of viewing based on an assumed six hours of daily use.
The Hisense claims to be a 4K projector. As usual with projectors which are, like this one, based on DLP technology, it doesn’t actually carry a native 4K resolution, instead using ‘double flashing’ technology to get its DLP mirror/pixels to deliver two pixels per frame.
The 100L9GTUK delivers HDR in the standard HDR10 format, and HLG. The Hisense’s HDMIS support ARC for passing Dolby Atmos out to compatible audio devices, and the projector itself carries a built-in Dolby Atmos decoder, despite having only a stereo speaker arrangement.
Running the 100L9GTUK first in fairly bright, typical daytime living room lighting conditions yields seriously impressive results. The triple laser optical system pumps out ferocious amounts of brightness, enough to ensure that pictures really do remain watchable even with the curtains open – or all your living room lights on at night. The ALR screen clearly contributes to this daytime watchability, maintaining the brightness of the images coming from the projector while doing a strikingly good job of keeping out reflections from all the other light sources in your room.
The brightness and colour intensity goes from surprisingly good in daylight conditions to flat out dazzling when you turn the lights off. In fact, just as the Laser TV solution as a package produces arguably the most watchable pictures in regular living room conditions we have seen from a projector, so it also produces the most punchy images we’ve seen from a single packaged solution in a dark room.
Bright HDR scenes dazzle in dark rooms with the sort of intensity you would normally expect to see only from a TV. In fact, many budget and mid-range TVS would struggle to look as potent and punchy with bright HDR imagery as the 100L9GTUK does. Colours in dark rooms additionally look much more vibrant but also more natural on this tri-laser solution than they do on Hisense’s mono-laser L5.
Impressive sharpness
Joining the brightness and richness of the 100L9GTUK’S daylight-condition pictures is some seriously impressive sharpness. And there’s no hiding place for soft pictures on a 100in screen.
The clarity holds up decently well when there is motion to handle too. Hisense’s motion processing can cause the picture to feel a little unnatural and ‘billowy’, but actually there’s little blurring if you just turn the motion processing off (though judder is a touch stronger without it).
Dark scenes watched in a dark room, however, have the problem common in projectors designed to deliver pictures bright enough to stand up to high levels of ambient light: poor black levels. A strong pall of greyness hangs over any dark scene, with no real attempt to deliver anything close to a black colour, leaving those dark scenes looking washed out and flat compared with their bright counterparts.
Another issue with dark scenes that is much more noticeable in dark rooms is the appearance of a pretty large ‘hot spot’ of extra, slightly reddish brightness in the bottom third or so of the picture. This is strong enough to be visible instantly and is impossible to ignore. It’s even faintly visible in bright room environments, but not enough to be a significant distraction.
As we have seen with one or two other three-laser projectors, including Samsung’s Premiere LSP9T, dark scenes also reveal evidence of the ‘rainbow effect’, where stripes of red, green and blue can flit over bright highlights of mostly dark pictures. The way the ALR screen works can result in the image looking dimmer if you have to watch the screen from an angle, too.
The net result of all these picture pros and cons is… complicated. No other all-inone projector system we have seen can rival it for brightness and colour richness in a bright living room environment. Its 4K impact is excellent, too. But its difficulties with dark scenes compromise it against much cheaper projectors – not to mention most TVS – when it comes to serious movie viewing sessions in darkened rooms.
Dynamic sound
Compared with most projectors’ sound systems, the Laser TV’S 2 x 20W speaker system sounds good. Louder, more expressive, more dynamic. It’s less thin and tinny than the sound we hear from some budget TVS, and even manages to sound a bit more spacious with Dolby Atmos too. Compared with some premium TVS, the audio lacks projection, struggling to expand out from the projector’s bodywork in the way it needs to in order to match the
“Joining the brightness and richness of the Hisense 100L9GTUK Laser TV’S daylightcondition pictures is some seriously impressive sharpness. And there’s no hiding place for soft pictures on a 100in screen”
scale of the 100-inch pictures. There’s something quite low-fi and hemmed in about its sound too, and its limitations in throwing sound mean that dialogue can quite often sound dislocated from the pictures appearing on the screen.
In bright room conditions, its pictures hold up better than those of any all-in-one rival projector. Better than you might think possible. The flip side is that it can’t control the intensity of its light well enough to manage dark scenes in a darker setting.
While the 100L9GTUK does enough things right to deserve to find an audience among big-screen devotees, its picture performance sees it falling a little uncomfortably between not being adaptive enough when it comes to changing room conditions to rival a premium (though likely significantly smaller) OLED or LCD TV, but also not as engaging in cinema room conditions as a good, dedicated ‘regular throw’ home entertainment projector.