My Hisense U8N review
So I had a cheap $450 65" Hisense die on me after 2yrs. I can't really blame the TV. This is a bay home where we come to get away and my friends down the street wanted to watch college football and then NFL so for a whole weekend we moved the tv 4 throwing it in the back of a truck and leaving it outside. At some point it got home and started shutting off anytime I tried watching anything. Started looking around and asking questions here and settled for a 75" Hisense U8N.
I purchased the TV at Best Buy for $1599 which after tax came to $1731.99 USD (Texas tax). I looked at several other models but what drew me to this TV was seeing it in person, it's great review at RTINGS.com, and for me the fact that it was stated to have very well reflection handling. This TV is positioned next to a row a windows so that was important. In my main home I have a 48" LG C1 OLED (use as a monitor) and a Sony X950H. I love both of these but given the reflections in the room I didn't see an OLED as being the answer. I also never use a TV's OS. I honestly wish I could purchase a TV without one. The LG's is OK but the Sony's is clunky, older, and I don't like it. I use AppleTV 4ks (gen 3) for everything and won't look back. At home I use a Bose Soundb*r 700 (wtf I literally can't type that word?) w/sub and at the bay home have an Onkyo NR7100 powering a 3.1 Polk Audio setup.
What's important to me:
-Screen Size
-Picture Quality
-Reflection Handling
-HDMI 2.1 ports (PS5)
Not important to me:
TV OS
TV Speakers
I'm really hoping that by going with their highest end TV that longevity isn't an issue. I purchased with my Chase Sapphire Preferred because they'll give me an extra years warranty as well.
The first thing I noticed was how much heavier this 75" is compared to my 65" in replaced. I consider the build quality and more robust TV speakers to be a large reason for this. Hauling it up two flights of stairs and setting it up myself was no easy task and left me dripping with sweat. Definitely would be easier as a two man job but I'm out in the boonies here. I set the stand on the entertainment center then covered the top of the center with a blanket, picked up one side of the TV and sat it on it, then walked to the other side and picked it up and pivoted it onto the table top. After that I put a pillow under one side and lifted the other to attach the back. Not impossible but not easy. I'm 6ft, 206lbs, and wouldn't dare want my mother or sister trying this out.
After setting it up I then turned the TV on, connected it to the wifi, and started a firmware update. The update downloaded rather quickly but the install took probably 20min. Even though I didn't use the TV OS as any part of my purchasing decision I was honestly blown away by how smooth and responsive everything was. Completely eats my Sony's lunch. Not sure what cpu setup they're using but it's so fast it does give confidence that it can handle whatever it needs to.
All hell started to break lose after this point. Originally I had the AppleTV (ATV) going to my Onkyo which has hdmi 2.1 and from there had the Onkyo eARC to the TV's eARC. Colors looked like crap, everything had a soap operate effect, and sound was WAY out of sync. I'd heard of people having sync issues with ATVs but never experience myself until now. It really came down to setup and settings. Having the ATV go to HDMI 2 and using the eARC just for audio made the colors looks better. Ultimately I found the best ATV settings to be:
Format: 4K SDR
HDMI Output: RGB High
Match Content : Range on, Framerate off
Doing this sycned everything up perfectly and the colors suddenly looked right. I then went to the U8's menu (very easy to find and possibly the best menu system I've used on any TV ever) and adjusted the settings there to get the proper look. I'm still working on these.
Menu->Picture->Clarity:
Sharpness: 25%
Smooth Gradient: Low
Super Resolution: On
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off
Motion Enchancement: Custom: Judder = 0; Blur Reduction: 3
Motion Clearness: Off
The next thing I did was let the ATV calibrate the colors using my iphone and I think the results are spot on. I find the video to be incredible. What's impressed me more is how dark this TV gets without being an OLED. Could have fooled me. I find the picture quality to be right there with my LG C1. The reflection handling is much much better than anything I've had before, I don't even notice the windows on the screenwhen any content is playing and it's broad daylight right now reflecting right off it. The brightness of this screen is a laser beam. I found myself going through all the picture modes and putting the above settings in for each that way I could very quickly and easily roll through them using the TV remote. This way when the suns going down I can put it on Theater Night and it's again pretty perfect. This TV is BRIGHT.
So overall I'm extremely impressed with this setup and it really blows my mind how much going from a 65" to a 75" feels. It's such a perfect TV for my setup with the bright environment and again, the black levels are right there with my OLED. For the money I consider it a great buy even though the out of the box experience was the worst ever experienced. It took many hours to figured things out and get it setup correctly but hopefully I'll never have to touch that again and hopefully anyone considering it could find this as a resource to at least save them some time and get the ball rolling. The image quality is wonderful. I ran a series of titles through it to test but no sports. I have a large Plex server and use it exclusively, outside of youtube, for everything. I played Avengers Infinity War, Mission Impossible Fallout (Helicopter scene), Blade Runner 2049, Ready Player One, Top Gun (1986), and Avatar. All of them looked exceptional. I'm not saying I'm done tweaking things and I'll be looking for other reviews with their settings to try but so far its doing very well. Again, I only use AppleTVs for everything so no other experiences.
Being a Hisense the biggest concern for me will be how long it lasts. My $450 made it about two years but again we pulled it off the wall, threw it in the back of a side-by-side atv, and haulted it down to another hose to use for gamedays so I can't exactly blame the TV itself. The screen did have small damage to it after the weekend. If the current price looks doable to you then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. The TV speakers are surprisingly stout but I don't use them now and wish I could order models without them for both a cost and weight reason. Once you figure out the ATV and HDMI setup it's a great unit with it's amazing brightness and dark blacks. Also the remote is premium feeling and is motion based with backlight. If you grab it the backlight kicks on making it very easy to use in the dark.
Hope this helps someone out there looking at this unit. I'd say the first thing you need to do is decide what you need in a TV first then start looking at pricing and models second. As much as I thought I'd want an OLED I knew the bright room wasn't going to cut it and I'm very happy I didn't.
Cheers!