A decent 55 inch television for a reasonable price, preferably well equipped and of course with decent image quality. We’re sure that’s a popular question in the store. The Hisense 55U7HQ seems to meet those conditions, reason enough for a test.
Hisense 55U7HQ
Price: 799 euros
What: Ultra HD LCD TV (FALD, 4×8 zones, Quantum Dot)
Screen size: 55 in (139 cm), flat
Connections: 4x HDMI (2x V2.0, 2x V2.1 eARC/ARC, ALLM, VRR, 4K120), 1x composite video, 1x stereo minijack, 1x optical digital out, 2x USB, 1x headphones, 2x antenna, Bluetooth
Extras: Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+ Adaptive, HDR10, HLG, WiFi (802.11b/g/n/ac) built-in, VIDAA U6 OS, USB/DLNA media player, DVB-T2/C/S2, CI+ slot
Dimensions: 1,233 x 767 x 307 mm (incl. foot)
Weight: 15.3 kg (incl. feet)
Consumption: SDR 84 (G) / HDR 140 watts (G)
8 Score 80 
- Pros
- Clear image with wide viewing angle
- Beautiful, wide color range
- Good calibration out of the box
- Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+
- VIDAA U is user-friendly and smooth
- HDMI 2.1 with all gamer features
- Negatives
- Moderate contrast
- Mediocre audio quality
- HDR display lacks impact
- VIDAA You are still missing some local streaming apps
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The eye also wants something, and we are not talking about the image quality. After all, a TV is in the middle of your living room, so a nice design is always a plus. The 55U7HQ is a relatively slim appearance. Viewed in profile, this is mainly due to the softly curved back of the screen, which makes it seem a bit thinner than it really is. The playfully curved foot under the device is a nice accent.
We did notice that the connections are quite close to the edge of the screen. Not too close, but you do manage to route the cables through the cable management in the foot to avoid them being visible on the side.
Very complete set of connections
Hisense has made a good choice with its connections, they are slightly less rich than top models, but in essence nothing is missing from our wish list.
In addition to two HDMI 2.0 connections, you also get two HDMI 2.1 connections with 48 Gbps bandwidth. Ideal for next-gen gamers because they support 4K120 (also in Dolby Vision), ALLM and VRR (HDMI VRR and AMD Freesync) and have an input lag of 8.7 ms in 2K120 and 17.8 ms in 4K60. One of those connections may be used for ARC/eARC.
Two USB ports, a composite video and stereo cinch input, headphones and optical digital audio output, Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth complete the list.
Except for a USB port, the Ethernet port and the optical digital audio output, the connections point to the side. These three point to the back but are a bit deeper in the housing, so they probably won’t interfere with disassembly. With an external USB hard drive you can pause or record live TV, the TV has a single DVB-T/T2/C tuner, a DVB-S/S2 tuner and a CI+ slot.
Bright and colorful but with limited contrast
The 55U7HQ boasts a peak brightness of 480 nits on a 10% window, which even went up to 520 nits on a 25% window. On a completely white screen, the meter stops at 404 nits. Not bad at all, there are devices in this price range that have to make do with less, and it should be enough to see the effect of HDR well. Especially since the quantum dots also provide an excellent color range of 92% P3.
Still, we have to admit that the HDR images are a little less intense than we had hoped. The small light accents are often spread too widely, so that they no longer really sparkle. In clear images, the colors lose some intensity, making them look duller and whiter. And the images lack depth.
In very clearly mastered HDR you see all this much more clearly. These things can almost certainly be traced back to the contrast and the limited number of local dimming zones. The ADS panel only provides an ANSI contrast of just 1,000:1. a.
This can be greatly improved with good local dimming, but the 8×4 zones of this Hisense are not enough. The contrast increases to 1400:1 and sometimes a bit higher, but not much further than 2000:1. And of course you notice that strongly in HDR. Not only are the dimming zones quite large, the algorithm sometimes reacts a bit slowly, so that you can easily see halos in dark images. That doesn’t sound very good, but in general we are still quite satisfied.
Within those limitations, Hisense presents relatively good HDR images. Of course, especially if they are bright, because shadow detail disappears in dark images, and you can quickly see the local dimming at work. The asset with which Hisense still adds a lot of value to the device is Dolby Vision and HDR10 +. Those formats provide better tone mapping and Dolby Vision content certainly looks very good.
In SDR content, those limitations are all slightly less noticeable, the panel is then tested less hard. The Filmmaker mode is calibrated quite well in both SDR and HDR. The gray scale shows no major deviations and the color temperature is good. In HDR we see that the darkest shades are clearly too dark, but the color reproduction is prim
Image processing
We still see room for improvement in image processing, although Hisense already took steps forward last year. The main weaknesses are the MPEG noise reduction and to a lesser extent the motion interpolation. The first cannot really get rid of blocking caused by video compression. A more difficult consequence is that you also have to tolerate color bands in soft transitions. This can be disturbing, especially in dark scenes, combined with the moderate contrast.
The motion sharpness of the 120 Hz panel is good, and with ‘Clear Motion’ you can bring out a minimum amount of extra detail in fast-moving images at the expense of some clarity. We didn’t think it was really worth it, especially since you run a little more risk of a visible double border.
Those who are very sensitive to flickering images may also be able to see it, the flicker frequency is 120 Hz. Without Clear Motion, moving objects have a blurred edge, which is easier on the eyes. Motion interpolation takes the jitters out of pan images, but if the action is too fast, the processor can’t follow, leaving stutter and image errors.
Deinterlacing and upscaling are good, the soft image can give you a little extra detail by increasing the sharpness slightly. If you want to give the contrast a little boost, you can activate ‘Adaptive Contrast’ in the lowest setting. The TV then accentuates light accents in dark images. That gives the impression of better contrast, and is a good thing anyway if you look at ambient light.
Audio is not convincing
It is an old sore that modern TVs often save a bit on the audio. This is not so bad on higher models these days, but in this price category you will notice the difference again. With 2x 10 Watts, the 555U7HQ is not very well equipped. Dolby Atmos tracks deliver just that little bit extra, but you hardly hear any bass and when you turn up the volume rather enthusiastically, you can hear the loudspeakers becoming strongly distorted.
Not a problem for ordinary TV fun, but those who appreciate good audio should turn to a soundbar. There is about seven centimeters of space under the screen. The soundbar will have to be in front of the foot.
VIDAA U, a smart TV system with a future
In the smart TV world, almost every brand now uses a full-screen interface. The theory is that this leaves more room for recommendations and thus helps the viewer better in choosing their next series or film. In practice, however, this is likely to fail. Due to a lack of personalization options, you have little or no control over which streaming services put their offerings in the spotlight. Anyway, that’s a general problem and certainly not unique to Hisense.
In a sense, VIDAA U is still fairly conservative in its recommendations. The top half of the Home screen is largely empty, with one row of apps in the center of the screen. You can adjust it to taste.
Some apps like Netflix show a row of recommendations as soon as you select the tile. The recommendations over which you have no control can be seen especially if you scroll further down, only Disney+ is still visible on the Home screen.
The interface works smoothly and apps open fairly quickly. That’s a good point. The offer is good, especially for international services where the main players are available. For local services, especially for Belgian services, Hisense is still somewhat behind its competitors. But it promised us that it is being worked on.
You can also see from the remote control that there is a lot of streaming content. It just has twelve shortcuts for apps. That seems a bit exaggerated to us, a selection of four would be better, adjustable keys that you can assign yourself even better. The remote control scores well on ease of use, but looks a bit cheap and old-fashioned.
Conclusion
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that you don’t get top performance for this competitive price. The contrast is rather moderate and the limited number of local dimming zones is not enough to significantly improve that. HDR therefore looks a bit less intense than hoped. But it must be said, the Hisense 55U7HQ is very well equipped, and does have a lot to offer.
Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are good assets to achieve a beautiful HDR image. The image processing and the 120 Hz screen provide fine sports images and the viewing angle is wide. The HDMI 2.1 connections have everything a gamer could ask for. VIDAA You provide quite a few international and local streaming services, although it does not yet have everything in-house in the latter area. This is a fine family TV without question.
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