Hisense 110 UX Review | The Ultimate Big-Screen TV?
Guys, I so wish that you could really see what I'm seeing here. I wish you could experience what I've gotten to experience for the past two weeks. I mean, there are times when I know that no matter how hard I work on a review, my narrative is just going to fall short of expressing the true impact that watching a TV in your home is going to have. And I feel
like that's kind of the case here. But that... that doesn't mean I'm not going to try my best. Ready? Welcome back, everyone. I'm Caleb Denison, and this is my review of the Hisense 110 UX, a massive TV that I've been anticipating since I first saw it at CES earlier this year. It has been a long wait, but now that it's here, you know what? The wait was worth it. This TV is almost
peerless when it comes to the total experience you get. Projectors don't quite match it, micro-LED displays don't quite match it. The only other TV you can buy that really competes at this size, anyway, is the TCL 115-inch QM891G, and we'll talk a little bit about that by the end of this review. In a way, the fact that this is only one of two consumer TVs that you can buy in this size class—that would be the well-over-100-inch size class—well, that could make my job a little easier, right? Like, you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit, because you only have two options. So, if the 110 UX doesn't perform as well as a reference-grade TV in a smaller size, we probably shouldn't be shocked. This is new territory,
so we expect first-gen problems. And if you want a TV this big, well, this is what you get. Well, for my part, I went into this review prepared to be a little forgiving, but it turns out I don't have to, because—and I can't believe I'm saying this—this TV is one hell of a performer. I keep looking for a smoking gun, and I'm not finding one. Now, it doesn't get everything right. There's certainly room for improvement, at least if you're a purist with super high standards. But I gotta say, if you're going to spend a small fortune on a TV,
the 110 UX is the best argument in favor of that move that I've ever seen. Not only that, but this TV is a clear sign that Hisense has the processing chops to go toe-to-toe with the best in the business, which is not something I've been able to say before. Guys, when this processing technology trickles down to TVs like Hisense's U8 series, watch out. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though. Let's start out by talking about all the non-picture quality considerations. This is a big TV—I'm sure you got that—and it's also very heavy. Yes, it can safely be mounted on your wall, but make sure a professional does that. That way, if anything were to happen, it's
on them, not you, and you're covered (earthquakes and hurricanes notwithstanding, obviously). Now, surprisingly, this TV has a footprint that allows it to be placed on larger media cabinets, as you can see here in our studio on this BDI. From the outside edge of one foot to the other, you're looking at 44 inches, which is not that far off from the spacing that I routinely see on many 65-inch TVs with feet. Do consider this, though: placing this TV on a media cabinet means the top edge of the TV will probably be over 7 feet high. When seated, that means you do have to tilt your chin up a bit. It’s a little like sitting in one of the forward rows of a movie theater, where you have to lean your head back a little or recline to get the best, most comfortable view.
Now, that's not something I really noticed with the TCL 115-inch, because we have that TV on a floor stand, so the center of the TV is much closer to eye level when seated. Next, the screen. Guys, the screen is glossy. Now, a lot of folks are going to prefer that. It really does give the image a bit more luster. However, anyone hoping that this was going to be the ultimate bright-room TV should probably temper their expectations a bit. Sure, the TV can get more than bright enough to do battle in a sun-soaked room, but bright light sources are reflected with more intensity here than with a TV that has a more aggressive anti-glare coating. On the other hand, there's absolutely zero rainbow
effect when a light does shine on it. So, like I said, some people will prefer it; others will not. Now, if I had to guess, I'd say Hisense probably went with what was going to look best in a dark room, figuring this TV is more likely to land in a dedicated media space than it is to land in a living room. So it's kind of hard to dock points for the glossy screen, but I feel like I must, since even dimmer sconce lighting is going to be a little distracting when watching dark movie scenes. Now, a very quick word on the user interface. This TV runs Google TV
better than any other Hisense TV I've ever tested. In fact, as well as any TV I've tested. So it gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me on that front. Finally, folks, the audio system. I wish my takeaway here was a bit more positive,
but here's the thing: Hisense clearly made audio performance a priority in their design because they had to know that these side-mounted speakers were going to be polarizing. Now, to Hisense's credit, they made them as stealthy as they could be, and I applaud Hisense for not phoning it in with down-firing speakers on this TV. On the positive side, I will say this TV does produce a significant amount of bass, which can at times give the TV a very big feel, or a big presence. I'll also say I appreciate
the stereo effects this TV produces—the wide spacing of the speakers makes that all the more convincing. However, I'm afraid my praise ends there, folks. Despite Hisense's efforts, I'm just not a fan of how this TV sounds. I know most folks who buy this TV will likely also invest in an equally impressive audio system if they don't already have one. But,
well, these polarizing speakers were a gamble that I'm afraid just don't pay off here. Honestly, it hardly seems fair to Hisense. I'm sure there would be complaints either way, right? Kind of a lose-lose situation. If they had not put this much effort into the audio system, we'd complain that a TV this expensive should have had more effort put into the sound. But with
these speakers here, I feel like they really needed to bowl me over, and they just don't. Now, I don't have a measurement graph to show you what's going on. I can just say that when I fire up this TV, well, I just immediately wish that I had a soundbar running. It's such a big,
beautiful image; I want the sound to match. And what I'm getting is just not right. There's a big hole in the frequency response somewhere, and the fidelity is just not what I want. Oh, and any virtual surround sound, including Atmos effects, are just nonexistent in this room. Your mileage, as always, may vary. Now, if it sounds like I'm kind of down on this TV right now, I mean, that's fair. It sounds like I've started out negative, but it just so happens that most of my complaints are around non-picture quality factors. Because, as you'll soon hear, when it
comes to the viewing experience this TV offers, well, frankly, it is delightfully excellent. I'm going to explain exactly what it's been like to enjoy this TV for the last two weeks in just a moment. But before I do that, it's time for a little segment that I like to call "Numbers for Nit Nerds." This is a section where we get into the measurement data on this TV. And if that sounds a bit nerdy for you, no worries—you can skip right
ahead to the next section using the time code links that we have down in the description, where I'll pick up the story on what it's like to have this TV in your home. For all you nit nerds out there, I have some shocking numbers to share with you. Now, I have to preempt these numbers with a bit of a caveat. Over the past few years, as we've been chasing down the best HDR performance from TVs, we've been excited about high peak brightness numbers. Not only do we want dazzling HDR highlights when watching HDR, which you need brightness for, but we also enjoy a nice, bright, vivid TV when watching SDR content in brighter rooms. However, the obsession over peak brightness measurements has, I feel, gotten a
little out of hand. I realize the irony of saying that when I've nicknamed a community "nit nerds." For sure, I've been part of the hype train that some manufacturers have now fed into, but I want to explain first and foremost here that the peak brightness numbers I got from this TV are, in many ways, kind of a party trick. What's more important than the numbers is what the image actually looks like when viewing content, so I'll be sure to put all of this in context for you toward the end. I measured this TV using the Filmmaker Mode picture preset in both SDR and HDR. For Dolby
Vision, I used primarily Dolby Vision Dark, though I did play with the higher APL Dolby Vision Custom Mode, which I tweaked to have the right color temperature while also disabling all motion smoothing. In SDR Filmmaker Mode, with the default brightness setting of just 20 out of 100, I measured peak brightness of about 680 nits, which is well higher than the SDR standard but more to the liking of most viewers. When I bumped the brightness setting up to 45, I got 1,650 nits, and when I maxed it out at 100, I got a blistering 3,700 nits. And this was all with a standard 10% window, by the way. Now, you'll notice in some of these charts that the white balance is a bit off, with the red channel a little high, but those readings changed after the TV had been in operation for about five minutes. When I went back and reran those measurements, the white balance settled into excellent performance, with Delta errors of less than three across the entirety of the measured grayscale. This is excellent performance, considering no calibration was performed to get there, and I'd hope for that from such an expensive TV. Now, to make sure this wasn't a fluke, I remeasured several times, and as long
as the TV had been in operation for about five minutes or so, those measurements held true. So, I guess the TV needs a little warm-up time until it gets to its most accurate point, and before then, it's just a tad warm, like when you first turn it on. Color performance was very good, with Delta errors of less than three almost across the board, and the color checker test came out really well, too — most errors under three. Not reference quality, but in the same ballpark as some of the best TVs on the market before calibration. Switching to HDR, though, is where things got really interesting — and, I dare say, shocking. First, this is the only real negative I have to call attention to: this TV over-brightens everything in HDR. It tracks well above standard on the EOTF test,
as you can see here. Now, this would be fine if this was the result in any other picture preset than Filmmaker Mode, but the Filmmaker Mode is meant to be the accuracy mode, and this is not correct. Will most people enjoy it? I'd argue the answer to that question is yes, but it is not correct for Filmmaker Mode, and I'd like to see Hisense fix this. Now, you ready for the shocking stuff? I know I wasn’t. Peak brightness with a 10%
window was 4,200 nits — impressive but not unexpected from a TV that claims to get up to 10,000 nits peak brightness for HDR highlights. I reduced the window size to 5%, and the 110UX started at 10,000 nits, then pushed up to 13,000 nits, and then it dropped, which is typical. TVs can only do the ultra-high brightness stuff in small areas for short periods of time. Then I reduced the test window to 2%, and the TV came in at a roaring 18,000 nits before falling off after a couple of seconds. Folks, this is really important: the meter that I use is only rated to be accurate to 10,000 nits, though we know that it can read higher than that. But I think the margin for error here is probably in the hundreds of nits, not thousands, so seeing a number in the 18,000s is insane. Now,
it's important to note that while it is exciting to know that a TV can do this in a testing scenario, you are never, ever going to get 18,000 or even 15,000 nits from this TV in real performance. You'll be hard-pressed to get 10,000 nits. Most HDR content is mastered to 1,000 nits and doesn't have information directing the TV to go over that number. There is a handful of content mastered to 4,000 nits — we like to use Mad Max, for example — and no doubt this TV can do that without blinking. There is virtually no content that you can access that is mastered at 10,000 nits, except the Spears & Munsil disc, so this TV will never be called to do any higher than 10,000 nits, not with instructions. However, if you turn on dynamic tone mapping, this TV will push HDR highlights as hard as it can, and folks, it's kind of insane just how bright this TV can get. I'm going to do my best to show you shortly.
One last note here: perceived brightness does not have a linear relationship to the measurement. What I mean is, double the nits is nowhere close to double the brightness. So, the difference between 10,000 nits and 18,000 nits is not nearly as much as you'd think, but the notion that this is the brightest TV that I've ever tested? Well, there is no doubt about that. It's clear when watching content — this is definitely the brightest TV that I have ever tested.
Before I go any further, I feel like I need to clarify something. This TV's brightness power, so far, for me anyway, has not been a liability. I know a lot of people hear these ridiculous brightness claims, and they worry that they're just going to get blasted out of their room. In a dark room with properly rendered HDR, it was never a problem. In a bright room, where you really juice it up, also never a problem. I do think that if you sit really close to the TV in a dark room, and you turn on dynamic tone mapping, this TV does have the ability to make your eyes uncomfortable.
But the thing is, it doesn't have to do that. It's not part and parcel of the TV's screen. It generally only gets bright when it's supposed to, and artistically done, that's not a problem. Now, as exciting as it can be, we've got to move away from peak brightness measurements. The 110UX performs very ably with HDR color, showing marginal deviations from the standard with luminance errors factored in. Rec. 2020 color gamut coverage came in at 83% — we're used to seeing about 76% for context — and the TV did about 99% of DCI-P3 coverage, as expected. Overall, the TV measures extremely well before calibration,
and Hisense makes the tools available to dial it in to near perfection. Outside of those measurements, I continue to get outstanding results in other performance areas. I put this TV through a gauntlet of torture tests, and the 110UX just did extremely well with all of them. In some ways, it was outperforming some of the best-rated TVs on the market. Thanks to Classy Tech Calibrations for suggesting this scene in 1917,
where on some TVs you can see posterization around the flames that results in pinkish and greenish rings surrounding the flames — not present on this TV. Now, the TV does crush black ever so slightly with its local dimming setting on high, but not so much that a significant amount of shadow detail is lost. As long as the lights are dimmed, I'm still seeing low-light detail in the walls in this scene. I feel like the scene is pretty accurately represented. For motion, I am shocked to say that I was downright impressed. Due to the very quick response time on this TV, I do see a little bit of flashing from bright objects during slow camera pans, but it's nowhere near as noticeable as it is on an OLED TV. I have not had a problem with film judder or dropped frames on this TV, and I have watched a lot of content — I think I would have seen it by now. Upscaling and cleanup of low-quality content? Frankly, this is the best
that I've ever seen from Hisense. I mean, I'm looking for reasons to complain, and I'm just coming up empty-handed. This TV far exceeds the performance I've seen from the likes of Hisense's U7N and U8N. I watched some really rough content, and it looks better than I expected on a screen of this size. I will say that when watching content with film grain — whether digitally inserted or carried over during a digital transfer from an actual film — that's where you notice the screen size, if you're sitting pretty close. This is true of just about every TV on the market, where the
grain can seemingly take something away from the sharpness while also adding depth and character. It's just that the grain is more obvious on a big screen if you're sitting very close to it. I have no complaints, though, about how the 110 UX handles film grain. I also lucked out with an exceptionally clean panel here—zero perceivable dirty screen effect. Your mileage will vary, but man, when it's clean, it is clean. Guys, test after test, even the torture tests, the 110 UX does extremely well. I feel like it delivers the experience that you would expect from an extremely expensive TV and borders on reference quality in most cases. I've said this too many times,
but I'm going to say it again: I am shocked at how good this TV looks. Pulling up Mad Max, where we know that the flames and sun reflections off the windows are intensely bright, I've never seen them pulled off with such intensity, even with dynamic tone mapping turned off. But turn on dynamic tone mapping, and man, this TV really juices things up.
Now, I would definitely leave dynamic tone mapping off in a dark room, but in a bright room, it makes HDR content sing, even in the most challenging of environments. Sports—man, sports are a treat to watch on this TV. Even low-quality streaming sports looked surprisingly good, and again, I should caveat that a bit by saying from a screen of this size, when you blow up even a 1080p cable or satellite signal to this size, the low bit rate of that signal makes itself pretty apparent. Still, I was never distracted by excessive noise, blockiness, or banding on this TV.
So, if you're just rejoining us after skipping the nit nerd section, the shorthand is this: the 110 UX is an exceptional big-screen TV. It very much backs up its asking price, not just with size but with a very high-quality image. By the way, I don't know where Zeke is going to put this in the video, but I did measure the TV's heat output, and with just kind of average, everyday content, it measured about 110 to 115 degrees on the screen surface. There is a lot of screen surface, though, so it is a TV that's going to warm up a smaller space. But ditching all the nerdy stuff, I've just had an absolute blast watching this TV and playing video games on it. Everything has been a treat. It's bright,
vivid, punchy, colorful, and everything I've watched on it has just looked really good, not just really big. This TV isn't just fun, though, it's downright impressive. It is easily one of the most brag-worthy TVs I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing and testing. Now, I know some folks have concerns about longevity and reliability, and it's an ongoing frustration that I'm not able to do more long-term testing. But what I have noticed is that the last two generations of Hisense TVs that I've tested seem to be performing just as well now as the day I got them. I think Hisense is taking some pretty big strides in terms of build quality and reliability.
Unfortunately, this TV has to go back to Hisense very soon, so we're going to miss out on the opportunity to put it head-to-head with the TCL 115-inch. But I can say, having watched both of these TVs side by side for a couple of weeks now, that the 110 UX is cleaner looking and has far more accurate measurements out of the box than the TCL model. Now, I'm not sure that is going to be all that meaningful to that many folks. I know a lot of folks would just prefer to get five more diagonal inches for about the same price—bigger TV for the same money. But if you're more of a purist, there is no question that the 110 UX has tested better than the TCL QM891G, which frankly I did not see coming.
For now, I'll applaud Hisense for doing something that is unprecedented—creating a flagship-level TV at a monumental screen size. I've never seen anything like it before. For later, I'm going to ask that Hisense apply everything that makes the processor, the build quality, and the overall performance capabilities of this TV so great, and hurry up with trickling that down to some of their more affordable models. I get that this is the moonshot, cost-no-object TV, but now that we know that you can do it, Hisense, you are on the hook for bringing it to a larger audience. And if that isn't a big tease for CES, I don't know what is. Thanks so much for watching, everyone. What's your take on this TV? Let the people know
down in the comments. Like this video if you enjoyed it so it gets shared with more people. Subscribe if you want to see more content like this. I'll see you on the next one, and until then, here's two other videos I think you might like. Really.
2024-10-10 19:34
