Of course, what’s really important is how the TV actually works. And in the end, it works very well. As mentioned, the UR8 features an “RGB MiniLED” panel. What does this actually mean? Well, in a traditional Mini-LED TV there are thousands of backlight LEDs which are usually white or blue and then filtered through color filters to produce the colors you see on the screen. In an RGB MiniLED TV, these thousands of dimming zones can be colored through the inclusion of red, green and blue LEDs. This means the TV can emit light closer to what it’s supposed to be before any filtering occurs. The TV still has color filters, but the idea is that by relying less on these filters, more light can pass through for a brighter, more vibrant picture.
Ultimately, this means that the TV’s brightness is one of its biggest selling points. And indeed, it becomes very bright. Hisense quotes a peak brightness of up to 3,500 nits at a 10% window, which is extremely bright. I haven’t tested these claims, but I found the TV to be more than adequate for my living room, which benefits from a decent amount of ambient light thanks to the large windows.
The high brightness is also complemented by fairly deep black levels. I found the TV to be very good at handling brightness without blooming or loss of light, at least not significantly so. Of course, you may notice a few which blooms in a very dark environment with a keen eye, but again, it is very well controlled, and I think most will be able to ignore it completely, if they see it in the first place.
In addition to the high brightness, I found colors to be vibrant as well, and while they could suffer a little off-axis, this TV fared better in off-axis viewing than most I’ve used, at least when it comes to LCD TVs like this. Wide viewing angles are an advantage that OLED TVs have had over LCD TVs for a while now – and it doesn’t disappear here, but at least it’s a little more manageable.
The Hisense UR8 supports Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, and HLG, and that’s about all you’ll need for most viewing. However, there is one format missing, namely Dolby Vision 2, which is not supported and is instead reserved for the more expensive Hisense U9. I would have liked to see Dolby Vision 2 support here, but I think it will come to the U8 series model next year. To be fair, there is very little Dolby Vision 2 content currently available, so supporting it would be more about future-proofing than anything else.
The image quality isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn close at this price point. I occasionally spotted progression artifacts during transitions, meaning you’ll see a gradient step rather than a smooth ramp. But it was rare, and again, it wasn’t distracting in any way.
The scaling was also pretty good. The TV did a very good job upscaling 1080p content to almost look like 4K, and even 720p video looked much sharper than one might expect. The TV also offers a range of gaming features. It has a 180Hz refresh rate and, combined with the four HDMI 2.1 ports, you should be able to get the most out of any modern gaming console.
Compared to the previous Hisense generation, the gains are obvious. RGB LEDs deliver higher color saturation, high-contrast bloom is significantly reduced, and the native refresh rate increases from 165Hz to 180Hz. As has been the case for some time now, when facing OLED TVs, you’ll get a brighter overall picture and no risk of burn-in.
