The "Are The Amazingly Cheap Hisense TVs any good?" thread

I've been to the factory in Guangdong (albeit only in the CRT years). It's a crappy company owned by the Chinese government, with sweatshop employees making threadbare equipment working under marginal conditions. I think you can do a lot better for only slightly more money in terms of performance and features. Calibrating sets is very, very hard.

There is always the danger of choice-supportive bias, where you desperately want to believe what you bought was the right choice. I don't give a damn what people buy -- they're gonna buy what they want and what they can afford, and I can't stop them. If you ask my opinion, I'm going to tell you what I honestly think. You can disagree with me all you want, but that doesn't make me wrong.

I agree 100% with all of what you say here. All of these kind of third-rate brands are cheap and crappy, and you kinda get what you pay for. In a world where a halfway decent name-brand set costs under $500 bucks, I'm not sure why people argue and argue and argue about saving $50 on something they might keep for 6 or 7 years.

It wasn't that long ago where a 36" Sony XBR Trinitron tube set cost something like $3000. Buying a 50" set for $500 is absolutely unbelievable to me; a decent performer might cost twice that, but the $500 sets are not horrible. Walmart sells Hisense products under various brand names (including Hisense) as kind of a loss-leader, but performance is not high on that list, especially when they're selling them for hundreds less than the name-brand competitors.

 

Post purchase rationalization is a pretty pervasive cognitive bias - the tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to a purchase. No one wants to feel that they've made a poor decision, which is psychologically very understandable. This often involves overlooking obvious flaws or not understanding (or wanting to understand) the intricacies of the product - what sets one product apart from another.

There is nothing wrong with getting as cheap a TV as you can if that is your choice, but one should not attempt to argue technical merits compared to more established/expensive brands based subjectively on how you feel about your purchase.

 

So I take it the answer to my question of whether you have spent any time watching an Hisense 4K that you've adjusted yourself is no, you haven't.
As far as choice-supportive bias, that would apply to any TV, stereo, car, etc. that someone might buy, and I would think would become more pronounced the more they spent on it, i.e. "this $5K HDMI cable blows away the competition."

 

What are actually the top brands for good quality TVs these days?

If Samsung (which is what I have) is getting worse and worse, what are the real alternatives for people that want to spend more on quality?

There seem to be fewer and fewer options these days.

 

What does that mean?

I would say the top brands are Samsung, LG, Sony (and Panasonic, though not in the US much anymore). Of course, within those brands, there is a range of different models with greater or lesser capabilities, but their top models are the best you can get.

 

We've got a Hisense at work and it does the job.

 

Interesting post. I bought a Samsung Smart Tv at Wal-Mart 2 Thanksgivings ag and it has not given me one ounce of trouble. I've good friends and relatives that have that brand with no issues either.

 

It means that other people in this thread were claiming that Samsung had gone massively downhill, which is a shame since I bought one...

 

Based on what I see in stores, no. I wouldn't waste my time with a set that can't handle the basics. It's kind of like an audiophile buying a Lloyd's stereo system:



Hisense is kind of in this territory: they function at a very low price-point, there's a market for them, and dealers make a decent profit with them. For me, there's a point below which I won't go.

 

At work we had an LG which someone damaged trying to remove a thumb drive, then a cheapo cheapo from Aldi (which was crap) and then the Hisense which I haven't heard anyone complain about yet.

 

There is absolutely no evidence of that. Samsungs are among the best TVs you can buy. Their new Quantum Dot based TVs are excellent. They're trying really hard to compete with OLEDs from LG, but since they don't have that particular technology (though they are working on a tech arguably even better than LG OLEDs), they're really pulling out all stops to improve LCD based technology, with much brighter displays, greatly expanded (3D) colorspaces (the 'quantum dot' part) and reduced black levels. They are most definitely NOT going downhill.

 

I wish I did more research before buying my Hisense smart tv on Boxing Day. Amazon Prime Video and CraveTv are not compatible with it, only Netflix is. It's for the bedroom so not the end of the world.

I just bought a 50" Samsung Smart TV from Cosco. From what I understand Samsung works with everything. My main TV, a old Toshiba, got fried a few days ago when my place got hit by lightning. My labtop also got fried. I used the laptop connected the the Tobisha to watch Prime, Crave, Netflix, streaming sports, etc. A few neighbors lost their TVs as well.

 

Surprised about Amazon Prime. I don't have Prime, but I did buy some episodes of The Americans from Amazon and watched them on my Hisense.

 

That's a show so good, it'll look OK on just about anything.

 

There's also no closed captioning for CraveTV on Samsung TVs.

 

I can speak directly to the quality of these sets vs. others in the marketplace, because I bought several and returned them all to land on the Samsung I currently own. The sets were all 55"ers. And all of these sets will fit in the trunk of a 2008 Impala, with a little overhang!

I started out buying the current set first (for a very good price), but had to return it because of a problem with HDCP handshake issues. I kept having to restart the set to get a picture. Couldn't find another of that one, so I moved on to the TCL with the Roku interface. Nice set, but ironically the Roku remote was so glitchy and nonresponsive I had to return it. Moved on to the LG lowest-end 4k set. Something about the picture wasn't right, and it turns out that set was not a true 4k set-it uses a process by inserting white subpixels, instead of only RGB pixels, to cut costs (so the actual amount of RGB pixels was less than the 4K standard). Back it went. Then I decided to shoot the works and go for the very highly rated Vizio M55-and besides the terrible interface that required you to use your phone as a remote, the picture was horribly oversaturated. So my next to last choice was the Hisense 55h8c. This is probably the best-reviewed "budget" 4k set, so I was all set to be wowed. Nuh-uh. Besides having a very limited picture tweaking section, the choices I had were really lacking. All of them had one notable feature-a very "soft" look. I understand the use of sharpening has to be judicious, but I couldn't get the gauze off the screen no matter what I did. This is why you get a 4K set, right? A nice sharp, bright picture with proper color saturation. The interface was pretty clunky as well. BTW all of these sets were bought from different stores, so I wasn't abusing return policies.

So I ended up getting the original set again luckily by calling every Best Buy in my area (a Samsung 6290-basically a Black Friday special most stores don't display anymore, but is usually stashed in the warehouse), for a lot more money, but I got this sucker locked in-awesome picture, and with a media player built in that streams from my JRiver server and will play any format. Plus, no HDCP nonsense. I'm sure the Hisense is a good brand, and this year they are rumored to have full HDR sets at a budget price point, but my experience with them was less than ideal.

 

Did you try to calibrate it, even by eye, or were you just going off the default, which is usually clown-color mode?

Did you try various sources for content? If so and nothing changed, you may be referring to what is known as DSE (dirty screen effect), which is weakness of some panels.

 

Here's the thing-when the original set was working, the picture was great with very little tweaking (actually used the "HDR" setting, even though it technically wasn't HDR, it just mimicked that look, to great effect). And yes, many sources were used-including Blu-rays, and my DVE calibration disc, along with some test patterns on YouTube. I just got lucky that another Samsung popped up at Best Buy.

 

We have a Vizio and it is pretty nice. However, the Christmas tree fell into it and it left a tiny mark. Still works and not very noticable unless you are looking for it. I like Vizio but they no longer come with remote controls. For me, that's a deal breaker. I am not using my phone as a remote, sorry. Have seen the Hisense and thought "it's too good to be true" so I haven't looked at them again. Our other is a Samsung 40 inch 720p, bought it when 720p was the newest. NO probs, had it probably 8 or 9 years now and it is in my daughter's room and perfect for her. Will keep it til it dies.

 

Good news. I just read the other day that Vizio is going back to remote controls and old fashioned smart TVs. So, hold out a bit and the newer ones should be more like the older ones.

 

My new Samsung smart is not good for Netflix, Amazon prime and crave tv. It has problems connecting and staying connected to those apps. My hisense tv only had Netflix but works much better.

 

Have bought a number of them for a video game system we make, the 40". No issues at all and none have failed out in the field.

 

Exactly the same here. Very pleased with both.

 

What do you mean? That looks like a super amazing system! Especially the 8 track. And that awesome BSR turntable. Had to be at least $20 back in the day! Fun times...

 

Recently bought the 65" Hisense HE65K5510 for a dedicated AV room in our new flat. AVForums gave it a 9/10 Best Buy award and I'm very happy so far. I upgraded from a 40" Sony and, whilst the new width seems perfectly natural in our new larger room, I wasn't quite prepared for the height of the thing! It really is spectacular in a somewhat comical and lumbering way. I've set the picture using the AVS HD 709 patterns (only watching 1080p material for now as none of the cult films I collect are available in UHD) and I think it's on par with the old Sony, but obviously the extra screen size means immersion and detail is much greater. Movie watching is now more of an "event" than before. Phones on silent, lights dimmed, drinks and snacks prepared beforehand to avoid having to pause the film! I definitely would recommend that film fans looking to upgrade their TV get the biggest size they can afford.