If you’re willing to spend a bit more for an even better piece of kit, the Samsung AU9000 review (50AU9000) was rated five stars in its T3 review. While it may not have Dolby Vision, it does have great picture performance from most sources. The Hisense U7QF is a very good midrange LED LCD that uses Quantum Dot technology and also has Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG and HDR10 capabilities along with Dolby Atmos sound onboard. The smart TV system is intuitive and fast with a decent selection of apps as well as Freeview Play and all the UK catch-up services. Gaming input lag is also decent at 17ms but it doesn’t have all the HDMI 2.1 goods for VRR or ALLM. Hisense’s recent strong run of form comes to a shuddering halt with the 55A7GQ. Any good work this TV musters is completely overwhelmed and undermined by a contrast performance so poor that dark or even mid-bright scenes never look remotely convincing. In fact, it’s sometimes hard to even make out what’s going on. When it comes to the picture presets, the HDR Day and Night presets actually look worse than the default Standard setting. This is because they reduce the intensity of bright image highlights, leaving you with fewer distractions from the grey mush elsewhere.

User Manual Hisense 50A7G 50″ UHD 4K TV Series A7G User Manual Hisense 50A7G 50″ UHD 4K TV Series A7G

Once you turn the lights down, more issues surrounding the FALD and LCD technology become apparent with more blooming noticeable around things like subtitles and bright objects like white spaceships against the darkness of space. It is possible to mitigate against some of these issues and making sure your viewing environment is suitable for this type of TV display will help. Use Alexa via the Remote NOW app to control your TV with your voice, search across the VIDAA U platform or use any Alexa skills. The Roku TV smart platform is pretty close to flawless. It covers all the major streaming services as well as thousands of seriously niche ones. You want a channel dedicated to crossbow hunting? It’s there. Fancy gaining more knowledge about the cigar industry? You’ll find that here too, along with plenty of other topics. Let’s cut to the chase: the 55A7GQ’s picture quality turns out to be hugely disappointing, especially as it arrives amid a generally upward trajectory for Hisense TVs.

What is the Hisense U7QF?

Continuing the gaming discussion, the 55A7GQ’s HDMIs support ALLM (Automatic Low Latency Mode) switching with compatible devices (such as the Xbox Series X), and when switched into its dedicated Game picture preset the TV delivers a very respectable 14.6ms of input lag. Rounding-up on the performance side of things is the gaming capabilities of the U7QF which are decent, with input lag coming in at 17ms in both SDR and HDR modes as measured by the Murideo Seven Generator. HDR gaming was also good, however, there are no HDMI 2.1 features available on the Hisense like VRR or ALLM. We didn’t have any issues at all with VIDAA which stands up against other providers such as Android. ARRAffinity cookie is set by Azure app service, and allows the service to choose the right instance established by a user to deliver subsequent requests made by that user.

HISENSE 50A6GTUK (50 Inch) 4K UHD Smart TV, with Dolby Vision HISENSE 50A6GTUK (50 Inch) 4K UHD Smart TV, with Dolby Vision

QLED panels are a Samsung property that replaces Liquid Crystals (found in LCD) with Quantum dots. Samsung believes these produce much more vibrant and bright colours and sharper images. Thankfully, some of the best QLED TVs are now quite affordable compared to even a year ago. Freeview Play This cookie is set by Bazaarvoice. This is a session cookie used for internal Bazaarvoice web analytics to be correlated to the same user browsing session for interactions within a particular client domain. when sat head on, the image performance is very good and on a par with some much more expensive peers. It depends on the TV brand and model, phone brand and model, and available screen-mirroring apps. Not to mention the availability of Bluetooth connections. However, as technology improves, more and more smart TVs are capable of being paired with a smartphone. Smart TVs of all sizes will transform your viewing experience, but what size is right for you will depend on your living space. A 50-inch TV ( wall-mounted or not) will look best from a distance of around 2.5 – 3.5 metres. Any closer and you risk the image looking pixelated, further away and you’ll miss the details. Don’t worry if this means you have to consider a more compact 32-inch TV or larger 65-inch screen option – we’ve rounded up the best of those for you elsewhere.

Scores

High Dynamic Range smart TVs have a wider colour palette - over a billion colours compared to a few hundred thousand available on non-HDR screens. More colours mean more accurate pictures, vivid colours and better contrast and shadow detail. Dolby Vision is Dolby’s version of HDR and HRD10+. OLED and QLED