Hisense U8N (65U8NQTUK) 4K ULED Review (2024)

Hisense U8N (65U8NQTUK) 4K ULED Review

Discounting the massive screens of the UX series, the Hisense U8N is the top ULED Mini LED TV in the 2024 line-up and uses a 4K 144Hz VA-type panel with Quantum Dot technology and Mini LED Pro backlighting with 1600 separate dimming zones (65-inch) controlled by the advanced local dimming algorithm of the Hi View Pro image processor.

The U8N is available in two screen sizes starting with the 65-inch 65U8NQTUK at £1799 and a massive 75-inch 75U8NQTUK at £2299. This is an increase of roughly £200 over last year’s models The 65-inch model we are reviewing is a brand new sealed-box sample supplied by Hisense UK.

Hisense has been listening to the enthusiast market

Hisense continues to impress with its use of materials and design language, making its budget-friendly TVs feel much more expensive than they are. However, the U8N is no skinny model, with a wide body to accommodate that Mini LED Pro backlight.

It also continues the trend of providing all of the features you could need, such as full support of all HDR formats, so HDR10, HDR10+, HDR10+ Adaptive, HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma), IMAX Enhanced, Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision IQ compatibility. For Audio there is support for DTS:X, IMAX DTS and Dolby Atmos formats and the TV has a 2.1.2 speaker system with twin rear subwoofers that Hisense claims to pack a punch.

The picture processor on the Hisense U8K is the latest Hi-View Engine Pro with AI Processing that incorporates a quadcore MediaTek MT9618 Pentonic 700 SoC with the OS provided by VIDAA U7.6. The Smart TV is slick and easy to use with a good choice of built-in apps and VOD services. The menu system also feels intuitive and easy to navigate.

Hisense has been listening to the enthusiast market and offers Filmmaker Mode for SDR, HLG and HDR10 content and Dolby Vision Dark so you can be guaranteed accuracy for colour and greyscale. There is also an IMAX Enhanced picture preset available for HDR10 content. These presets are designed to track D65 white and follow the industry standards so you can view content as it was mastered and intended to be seen. This is important for TVs in this market position given that owners are less likely to go down the professional calibration route.

...the U8N is no skinny model, with a wide body to accommodate that Mini LED Pro backlight

Gaming support on the Hisense U8N features two full-bandwidth 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 ports and the ability to run at a maximum of 4K/144Hz with a gaming PC. If you are using consoles you can also get 4K/120Hz (including Dolby Vision gaming at 120Hz), AMD FreeSync Premium VRR support, ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) and eARC support. There is also a game bar for instant feedback on gaming settings and features. Input lag measures in at 13.2ms for 4K/60 and 5.2ms with a 1080p 120Hz signal.

Read more about HDMI 2.1

The VIDAA Smart TV system on the U8N continues to look the part, with an intuitive layout to the smart TV pages and it is joined this year with a Freely tuner for BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and C5 content via IPTV. The whole smart TV system looks modern and fresh with excellent app support and it feels responsive and quick to load items. The only drawback is the use of intrusive advertising banners.

The Hisense U8N looks quite different to last year’s model, with the soundbar now gone in place of a very thin grille at the bottom edge of the panel. The set still weighs a lot and comes with a very sturdy stand for tabletop mounting and the chassis is deep to house the FALD Mini LED backlight. It looks like a premium product with good-quality plastics used throughout.

The only drawback is the use of intrusive advertising banners

Around the back, we have the connections that are placed sideways and rearwards facing. To the side, we have a USB 3.0, a service jack, CI slot, two HDMI 2.0 (4K/60Hz) ports and two HDMI 2.1 (4K/144Hz 48Gbps) ports, plus RF (DVB-T/T2/C) and satellite (DVB-S/S2) sockets, 3.5mm AV in and a headphone jack. Rearwards, we have a USB 2.0 port, digital audio out and a LAN connection.

The new remote control is identical to that seen with the recently reviewed U7N model which includes a solar panel to charge the batteries during use. It is larger than in previous years, but it is also fully featured with direct access keys to the top for VOD services, a central direction pad and menu keys below these, with volume and channel sliders and to the bottom are number keys. The solar panel is a large section at the bottom of the remote. It is well built with a quality feel and sits neatly in the hand.

Out of the Box

As always, we factory reset the Hisense U8N and then measured the picture presets to find which is the most accurate to the industry standards, out of the box, so we can view content as it was mastered and intended to be seen. The best picture preset for this is Filmmaker Mode (FMM), which tries to follow the industry standards to view content as it was mastered and intended to be seen.

We use Portrait Displays’ Calman colour calibration software, a Murideo Seven Generator and a Klein K-10A meter profiled to a JETI Spectraval 1511-HiRes spectroradiometer for measurement and calibration.

The U8N measures well in the out-of-the-box FMM with greyscale tracking that is very good indeed and DeltaE errors that are under 1.5, which is well below the visible threshold of three, meaning no issues are visible to the human eye. Gamma is tracking slightly dark at the brighter end of the brightness scale, but nothing that impacts on image quality to any visible degree.

The Rec.709 SDR HD colour gamut is also decent with some accuracy to the standards and saturation points tracking close to where they should be in the majority of cases. Users who are not planning on a full professional calibration will be happy with the results here.

Calibrated

As we found with the U7N, the Autocal functionality with the U8N at the time of the review was not working as fully intended. This was not a significant problem for us and we performed a manual calibration using the menu controls, our meters and measuring software.

As a result, the greyscale and gamma look excellent with our DeltaE errors now averaging under one which is below the visible threshold of three, meaning there are no visible issues with any TV or film content. Gamma is also improved and no longer tracks dark in the brighter reaches of the greyscale.

Rec.709 SDR HD colour gamut results are good with no major issues seen with the saturation tracking to the standards. It looks identical to the out-of-the-box results, which shows how accurate this Hisense sample is.

As we do with all our TV reviews we used the most accurate picture preset that gets as close as possible to presenting HDR content as it was mastered and intended to be seen. With the Hisense U8N that setting is HDR Filmmaker Mode which follows the PQ EOTF ST.2084 standard, D65 white point and the DCI-P3 colour gamut within Rec.2020. Dynamic Tone Mapping (Active) was switched off during the testing as it deviates from the industry standards.

As we always do with our HDR testing we started by measuring the peak brightness across a number of window sizes from 1% to 100%. The Hisense U8N measured 2629 nits on an industry-standard 10% window and 695 nits fullscreen. That’s higher at 10% but slightly lower at 100% than the U8K. There are no real issues with tone mapping HDR10 content like there is on the U7N we tested recently, probably due to a slightly brighter panel and different processing. The local dimming also introduces blooming suppression which means that the specular highlights are dimmed down to avoid blooming artefacts around them. Unlike previous models the 25% window is not the brightest and points to a slightly better approach from Hisense with the U8N than the U7N and last year’s models.

Moving to PQ EOTF tracking to the ST.2084 standard, the Hisense U8N in Filmmaker Mode tracks slightly too bright compared to the standard track and then rolls off gently to the peak brightness limit. We didn't notice any clipping on the HDR10 1000 or 2000 nit version of the Spears and Munsil demo footage that previous models tripped up on.

The Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) coverage to DCI-P3 was also decent but is slightly towards cyan due to the out-of-the-box white point being slightly off. Colour volume is good (not shown) as is the gamut saturation up to the limits of this set, which is slightly less than the full gamut coverage of DCI-P3. Dolby Vision Dark also tracks well and is not as dark as previous models have been.

We measured BT2020 at 75% XY and 81% UV with P3 coming in at 96% XY and 98% UV.

We are testing a 65-inch Hisense U8N which has been provided to us for review by Hisense UK. It was a brand-new unopened example. The picture quality should be similar for the 75 inch screen size.

As always we start with the screen uniformity tests and on a 5% grey slide we can see there is patchy light distribution with brighter panel edges and a darker central area. This reverses as we move to brighter slides with panel edges darker than the central portion. This results in obvious Dirty Screen Effect (DSE) when watching content like football where you have camera pans across the green pitch which occupies a large area of the image. This is a well-known trait of the technology used and is common for LCD LED backlit TVs in general.

Upscaling is good on the U8N with good quality HD channels looking pristine

Motion performance with 24fps content was very good with correct pulldown applied resulting in no induced judder being seen. There were no trailing artefacts seen behind fast-moving objects and we didn’t note any signs of micro stutters (though they are visible now and again for the eagle-eyed). Motion interpolation produces smooth-looking images but they also exhibit edge break-up and other artefacts the more the processing is applied. Soap Opera Effect is a by-product of using the motion smoothing features on the Hisense U8N, with edges and fine detail also suffering from break-up and smearing effects. We always suggest using the non-smoothing settings (or the off switch).

... issues are few and far between

Upscaling is good on the U8N with good quality HD channels looking pristine with no edge enhancement or sharpening being added. SD channels were less successful and no amount of processing will ever save that type of content from looking soft and fuzzy. 50Hz in 1080i looks impressive for the majority of the time, however, we did see some softness and image artefacts from time to time, with over-the-air broadcasts. Freely, did look good for the majority of our viewing, but this could vary depending on the channel content.

The U8N is designed for use in a bright living room and this is where this TV shines, quite literally. In such an environment with normal TV and streaming content, it performs incredibly well. Colours look accurate with lifelike skin tones and blacks look deep and detailed. In such surroundings, the shortcomings of the LCD tech are mitigated enough to mean that issues are few and far between.

... this TV shines, quite literally

We found that with HDR10 content the U8N tone maps much better than last year’s set (and this year's U7N) with no signs of clipping up to the 2000 nit demo master from Spears and Munsil. With actual film content in HDR10, the U8N looks great with just the slight lack of dynamic range due to blooming suppression holding things back. Blacks look best in rooms with ambient lighting as in dim surroundings or blacked-out rooms blacks are raised and grey. This is most noticeable in the black bars of films, but less noticeable in bright viewing rooms. In such viewing conditions, Dolby Vision also looks very good with correct tone mapping and no obvious issues visible.

We measured the on/off contrast at 6825:1 with local dimming set to high and 5231:1 with it set to off.

The Hisense U8N employs a 2.1.2 sound system with a dedicated dual subwoofer unit on the rear of the panel and up-firing speakers. There is also support for DTS:X, Dolby Atmos and IMAX DTS sound formats.

The sound quality on offer is serviceable and is what you would expect at this price point and with most content it is perfectly acceptable at normal listening levels. Bass weight is slightly lacking and high frequencies can feel a little compressed. We didn’t have last year’s U8K to compare, but it did feel like it was a very slight step backwards from memory. If you are a movie fan or just want to up the sound quality you can of course add a soundbar or other external sound system.

Hisense U8N (65U8NQTUK) 4K ULED Review