Hisense U8Q

Further proof that Hisense is now a serious TV player

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Hisense's mission to prove that it is now a serious player at the top end of the TV market is really hitting its stride. This is very much in evidence with the aggressively eye-catching 65in U8Q.

As well as being built like a tank, the TV packs all kinds of serious features and specifications - and crucially gets effective all-round use out of those specs. This is a seriously heavy beast, and that weight hints at some premium innards as well as uncompromising build quality.

The U8Q features a VA type of LCD panel illuminated by Mini LEDs capable of pumping out, it is claimed, up to 5000 nits of brightness. To make sure all this light goes more or less where it's supposed to, Hisense has fitted the TV with a massive 2048 separate local dimming zones.

What a TV does with its dimming zones can actually be more important than the number of them, but having as many zones as the U8Q does is a promising start.

Control of all those local dimming zones is delivered by a new Hi-View AI Engine Pro processor that Hisense claims sports a 1.6x faster CPU, 2.2x faster GPU and 1.5x faster NPU than the processor sported on last year's equivalent U8N TVs. The Hi-View processor also powers the TV's audio, content recognition and power-saving features, as well as across all aspects of picture performance.

The U8Q's colours are delivered using Quantum Dot technology to support both finer tonal definition and a wider range of tones capable of retaining saturations at the sort of extremely high brightness levels the TV can support, while gaming refresh rates are supported up to 165Hz using Hisense's Game Mode Ultra tech.

The set's three 2.1-rated HDMIs support the full range of gaming features including VRR and ALLM, and in its Game mode it takes a respectably speedy 13.7ms to render incoming 60Hz graphics.