Hisense 55U7N

This Hisense U7N is a step down from the company's premium U8N line, one of our favorite TVs we've tested so far this year. The U7N shares many characteristics and features with the U8N, but it costs significantly less money. Its biggest compromise relates to its mini-LED backlight system, which gets quite bright, but not blazing like the U8N and shows less shadow details. Bright, colorful content looks fantastic, but darker elements can appear a bit muddy or washed out. The U7N is still an excellent TV and a great value considering its price (officially $1,099.99 for the 65-inch model we tested, but regularly available for $849.99), but the U8N ($1,149.99 for 65 inches) remains our Editors' Choice winner.

Editor's Note: This review is based on testing performed on the 65U7N, the 65-inch model in the series. Apart from the screen-size difference, the $799.99 55-inch 55U7N is identical in features, and we expect similar performance.

Design: Sleek and Slightly Silver

The U7N looks very much like the U8N, with a simple screen design featuring a bezel-less top and sides framed by a thin metallic band. A narrow two-tone metal strip runs along the bottom edge as the screen’s only bezel, with a flat bump in the center holding the infrared sensor and far-field microphones. The TV sits on two oddly shaped metal legs that form a trapezoid below the center of the screen, hidden under a black plastic cover textured to look like brushed metal.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

On the back of the TV, four HDMI ports (two 4K144, one eARC), a USB port, a 3.5mm composite video input, a headphone jack, a 3.5mm serial connector for home theater integration, and an antenna/cable connector face left. Slightly further in, a second USB port, an optical audio output, and an Ethernet port face back. The power cable plugs into the right side of the back of the TV.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The included remote is the same rectangular plastic wand that comes with the U8N. It has a large, circular, chrome navigation pad near the middle, with power, input, settings, and voice assistant buttons above it. The top of the remote also holds dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix, Tubi, YouTube, and a programmable shortcut, along with a pinhole microphone. Volume and channel rockers sit below the navigation pad alongside menu and playback controls.

User Interface: Hands-Free Google TV

Google TV is Hisense’s smart TV platform of choice for its higher-end TVs, and that includes the U7N. By default, it supports all major streaming services including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube, along with Google Cast for streaming locally from your Android phone or Chrome tab. Hisense adds Apple AirPlay support on top of that, so you can stream from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac as well.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

A far-field microphone array enables hands-free Google Assistant on the U7N. With it enabled, you can use the voice assistant by saying, “Hey Google,” followed by a command. Google Assistant can search for content, provide general information like the weather and sports scores, control the TV and a wide variety of smart home devices, and perform other useful tasks like setting timers and reminders. If you don’t want the TV always listening, you can also use Google Assistant on command by holding down the microphone button on the remote and speaking into it.

Picture Quality: Excellent, With a Contrast Caveat

The Hisense U7N is a 4K QLED TV line with a 144Hz refresh rate. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It has Wi-Fi 6E and an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p and 4K over-the-air broadcasts.

We test TVs with a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. The Hisense U7N doesn’t reach the wild brightness levels of the U8N, U9N, or 98UX, but it performs admirably for a midrange QLED TV. Out of the box, with an SDR signal in Theater Day mode, the U7N shows a peak brightness of 593 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,030 nits with an 18% white field, along with a 0.02cd/m^2 black level. That would be strong for a budget TV’s HDR performance, and it gets even brighter and darker with an HDR signal: 823 nits with a full-screen white field, 1,528 nits with an 18% white field, and a 0.013cd/m^2 black level for a 117,538:1 contrast ratio. 

That’s half as bright as the U8N (2,755 nits HDR, 18% white field) and comparable with the Roku Pro Series (1,621 nits HDR, 18% white field). None of those models have the effectively perfect black levels of OLED TVs like the LG Evo G4 or some mini-LED TVs like the Samsung QN90D, but both Hisense models make very strong showings.

(Credit: PCMag)

The above charts show the U7N’s color levels with an SDR signal in Theater Day mode compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards and with an HDR signal in Filmmaker mode compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards. With both signals, the TV shows nearly perfect whites, and generally very accurate colors. Greens and yellows fall just a bit short of fully covering the DCI-P3 color space, and cyans lean a bit green, but performance is still excellent.

The “Lion” episode of BBC’s Dynasties looks balanced and natural thanks to the U7N’s accurate colors. The greens and yellows of grass and the tans of lion fur are saturated and neither muted nor cartoonish. The picture is bright, though some high-contrast shots of silhouetted objects show slightly muddy or washed-out shadow details; the contours of a lioness against a sunset are slightly indistinct, while trees against a stormy sky are a bit too light.

The party scenes in The Great Gatsby also demonstrate the U7N’s slight struggles with high contrast. White shirts, lights, and balloons stand out brightly, but black suits can appear just short of very dark gray in the same shots. The suits look properly black in other shots, but the U7N’s mini-LED backlight system clearly doesn’t have the same precision and range as the U8N’s. Skin tones look natural and properly saturated against the stark blacks and whites, though, and splashes of color do pop out.

The demonstration material on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc looks very good, especially most of the nature footage. Sunny landscapes look incredibly bright and show natural colors, though a few dawn and dusk shots again display slightly muddy or washed-out shadow details. Bright, colorful objects against black backgrounds pop out, and the backgrounds are indeed nearly perfectly black in these cases. The telltale glowing haze of light bloom is present around the objects, and a little more pronounced than it is on the U8N.

Gaming Performance: Peppy 144Hz VRR

Just like the U8N, the U7N is packed with gaming features. Its 144Hz panel supports variable refresh rate (VRR) including AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and Hisense’s Google TV implementation includes a useful Game Bar that shows details like framerate and provides quick access to certain options when in Game mode.

It’s very responsive as well; using an HDFury Diva HDMI matrix, we measured an input lag of 6.2 milliseconds in Game mode. That’s actually over a millisecond faster than the U8N (7.4ms), though neither TV can reach the sub-millisecond latency of much more expensive OLED TVs like the LG Evo G4. Still, it’s well below the 10ms threshold we use to consider a TV to be good for gaming.

The Verdict: A Bright Spot Among Budget TVs

The Hisense U7N is a good TV at a reasonable price that’s outshined by the superior U8N. Even so, it’s a strong performer overall, with a very bright picture for the price. It's well worth considering if you want to pay less than $1,000 for a 65-inch TV, or bump up to a 75-inch model for just $1,200. If you can spend a bit more, however, the pricier U8N is worth it for the jump in picture quality and remains our Editors’ Choice.