Hisense’s boxy beamer is a lot of fun, even if it isn’t super subtle
Projector | £1999| whf.cm/Hisense_C1
Hisense is makingserious strides in the home cinema scene. Fresh from a What Hi-Fi?Award win with the excellent PL1 ultra-short-throw projector, it is now trying something new with the C1. This boxy unit with its own built-in streaming platform is designed to sit on a coffee table and offer cinematic thrills paired with maximum convenience. But can it capture the same magic that the PL1 did?
Boxing clever
Hisense has nailed the look of the C1, and that is important when you consider it might be a frequent fixture in your living room. Four of the six sides of this unit are made of sturdy aluminium and feature a pleasing brushed metallic teal finish. The other two sides are made of plastic, and there is a grille running along the bottom front edge.
The unit is pleasingly quiet in operation, with fan noise kept to a minimum (Hisense claims 31dB). The controller, however, isn’t as high quality. It feels notably plasticky in the hand, although it is certainly functional in operation. It features backlighting (if you press a button) and useful shortcut buttons for Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime Video and YouTube – just some of the many streaming apps on offer (iPlayer, ITV X, Channel 4…).
The C1’s feature set is arguably its biggest selling point, and includes Hisense’s new TriChroma DLP laser light source, which the company claims results in an impossible-sounding 110 per cent coverage of the BT2020 colour space. It produces 8 million pixels with a maximum resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4K), albeit through the power of pixel shifting. Surprisingly, the C1 features an unusually low contrast ratio of 1600:1 – most likely because Hisense markets this projector to be used in environments with lots of ambient light, such as living rooms and gardens.
There is HDR support in all of the notable formats, including HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG – which warrants a major thumbs up from us. It also has Filmmaker mode, which is a rarity on projectors such as this but very much welcome. Projection size is adjustable between 65 and 300 inches.
Just below the lens, we find a speaker grille adorned with a ‘sound by JBL’ badge. This is a hint towards the dual 10W speakers squeezed into this unit, which JBL has had a hand in tuning. These speakers support Dolby Atmos for object-based 3D audio.
Around the back, th
