Ground breakingly cheap for mini LED – but there’s a catch
TV | £1199 | whf.cm/65U8HQ
The Hisense 65U8HQ’s straightforward but potent star attraction is that for a distinctly mid-range price it gives you an ultra-bright 65-inch 4K picture powered by the sort of Mini LED lighting system usually only found on much more expensive TVs. It backs this up with impressively versatile HDR support, all the latest gaming features, and an unusually strong audio system that includes both a forward facing ‘sound bar’ attached to its bottom edge, and a large woofer facing out of its rear.
The Hisense 65U8HQ looks more like a mid-range TV than a truly premium one. It’s much more robustly built than Hisense’s more affordable sets, but sports both a fairly chubby profile and a rather ‘meh’ grey frame and desktop stand. This stand does at least sit in the middle of the TV’s bottom edge, though, so you can place it on a narrow bit of furniture, and the design is enhanced by a promising, cloth-covered speaker section attached to the TV’s bottom edge.
The 65U8HQ is the flagship 65in TV from Hisense’s 2022 LCD range. A status it earns, chiefly, thanks to its Mini LED light engine. This finds the screen illuminated by greater numbers of much smaller LEDs than you get in normal LED backlit TVs, raising the prospect of more localised light control and enhanced brightness. It builds on the contrast potential of Mini LED lighting with a local dimming system, too, where different areas of the LEDs can receive different amounts of light for any given image frame.
We should say right away, though, that the 65U8HQ also potentially undermines some of the Mini LED/local dimming picture quality promise by a) only supporting 160 separate dimming zones and b) using an IPS type of LCD panel. Some rival Mini LED TVs carry 500 local dimming zones and more (though many regular LED TVs carry far fewer dimming zones than 160), while IPS panels tend to struggle more with contrast than the alternative VA panel type.
The 65U8HQ’s connectivity is strong. In particular, two of its four HDMI ports are capable of handling the 4K at 120Hz video signals now supplied by the latest games consoles and premium PC gaming cards. This same HDMI duo can handle VRR (variable refresh rate) gaming and ALLM (auto low latency mode) too. Lag is an impressively low 16.5ms with 1080p/60Hz sources. The HDMIs also support eARC, meaning it can pass through lossless Dolby Atmos sound to compatible soundbars and AVRs.
Both the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ ‘premium’ HDR fo
