sometimes you just don't see a hit tv coming could this be one of those times welcome back
everyone i'm caleb denison and welcome to my review of the hisense u7g tv now if we look back
on high senses tvs from the past few years then there are a few things we can reasonably expect
going into the u7g we know it's the second best led lcd tv the company makes we know it doesn't
have many led backlights like some of the fancier tvs but probably has a lot of dimming zones
we know high senses processing has been decent if not anything to write home about and we know that
the tv will aim to get very bright we also have the hisense u8g which i reviewed not too long ago
and it was a pretty good value so it stands to reason the u7g will be two but does the
u7g have any surprises up at sleeve that's what we're gonna find out today i'll cover everything
from the setup to the picture quality and we'll even toss in some performance numbers on our
way to determining if this tv might be one you should buy and if i do this right we'll have a
little fun along the way before i dig in though i want to point out that the u7g is available in 55
65 and 75 inch options and currently selling for 850 1 000 and 1400 respectively at the
time i'm shooting this video to put a fine point on it that's a 65 inch tv for 1 000
now i'm hoping those prices hold firm but right now who knows a lot of you are frustrated with tv
prices going up and i get it the tcl 6 series is a great example so my question for you is what do
you think about that do you understand why tv prices are going up instead of down right now
leave me a comment about that below so we can talk about it and while you're down there please smash
the like and subscribe button if you like this video because we're growing but not as fast as
we could with your help i repeat i need your help so do it thanks as always all right let's do this
so just in case there's any confusion the hisense u7g replaces last year's h8g the numbers shifted
around but the u7g this year sits just below this year's u8g and i liked the uhg i think it was a
fine tv but i have much stronger feelings about the u7g and you'll want to stick around to the end
to find out why because the y is pretty important i think by the way not to add more confusion to
things but the u7g model number that's just for north america like the u7g in australia
completely different tv so keep that in mind okay we'll start with the user interface and i
mentioned this stuff in the unboxing video which is right here by the way in case you want to
watch but be sure to come right back here for the good stuff anyway hisense hasn't made the jump to
google tv yet so you get an android tv interface and it's fine i mean everything you need is here
except for maybe apple tv plus and it's easy enough to navigate what i really like about the
user interface though is the ease of setup once you choose a picture preset for sdr or hdr in one
app it will copy that to other apps and in fact it uses that picture preset for all the hdmi inputs
if you want it to as well so once you really figure out what picture settings you like the
best you don't have to go into a ton of apps or each hdmi input and customize everything it's all
copied over and i really think that's a big deal for everyone not just those of us who are super
picky about picture quality it makes it easier to get the best picture for everyone and that's a win
as for other tangibles i think the tv looks fine i'm not a huge fan of the big silver strip at the
bottom i'm also over logos i think it's better for someone to ask what tv is this and then you
can be all it's a high sense and then enjoy the surprise look on their face when they realize
you know one of the better kept secrets in the world of tvs but anyway the look of the tv is fine
the remote is also fine it's got a voice button on it but if you don't mind google listening
there's a built-in mic on the tv too which you can shut off but if you leave it on you can just yell
hey google assistant and the tv will do your bidding and that has me wondering how many of you
enjoy talking at your tv special comment requests let me know about that down below as for the sound
quality it's not great now it isn't terrible you can hear what people on the tv are saying
and that counts for a lot these days but the sound quality does not stand up to the picture quality
and i would recommend a sound bar even a simple one to get a bit more oomph out of the experience
now on to everybody's favorite part picture quality and before i get into my takeaway
i want to go ahead and throw in a section i'm going to call numbers for knit nerds
now you can skip this part if you aren't into knits and such but maybe stick around you
might learn something new so this tv has a theater night and a theater day setting turns out the real
difference between the two is that for theater night the backlight setting is at 35 by default
and for theater day it's set at 80 and that's really the only difference the color temp is the
same that would be low which is high sense speak for warm and the local dimming is set at medium so
i checked peak luminance for both settings and with theater night it came in at 283 nits in sdr
theater day bumped that up to 566 nits in sdr and i think that's great you get just a bit brighter
than traditional sdr peak for theater night and you get a juiced up image for theater day that
can take on some ambient light in the room and there's headroom you can turn up the backlight
even further if you want but i wouldn't do that for sdr because it will elevate the blacks a bit
for hdr i got between 930 and 950 nits depending on how long i had been testing peak brightness so
just under a thousand which i consider a good measurement for a tv in this price class that's
definitely enough to pull off hdr pretty well but it isn't going to blast you out of the room
and that's a good balance for me i did run into a few surprises though one was that the hdr standard
mode actually didn't peak as bright as hdr theater by about 100 nits it was 100 nits lower
i didn't see that coming the color temp was cooler but it wasn't brighter which is weird because
the standard mode is almost always brighter also surprising the two-point grayscale out of the box
was impeccable and i don't just mean on point for high sense i mean the grayscale was sony
a80j oled levels of accurate right out of the box in the theater night mode no adjustments made it
was a little heavier on the red in the theater day mode with the backlight juiced up a bit but still
totally acceptable so i thought to myself self i bet the color is going to be insanely
accurate and guess what it wasn't normally accurate grayscale means the colors are gonna
track well but technically speaking the tv has color errors into the visible spectrum are they
egregious are they gross no actually they aren't but they are more severe than i was expecting
now normally my knit nerds this is where i would say something like this tv would benefit from a
professional calibration but i just don't see the buyer of this tv doing that blah blah blah
i'm not going to say that this time some folks might want to have this tv professionally
calibrated but i'll get to that in a minute let's step back and have a broader look at this tv
so here's the takeaway up front i really like this tv i mean i haven't felt this way about a tv since
i reviewed the first tcl 6 series this just came out of nowhere for me and i'm really pleasantly
surprised i actually had to check myself and be like is it really that good in the grand scheme
of things or am i just abnormally excited right now and ultimately i answered myself and i said
self your gut is serving you well here this tv is awesome you just have to explain why so here's
why the backlight system is crushing actually no bad choice of words the backlight system
is slaying there is almost no crushing of blacks actually and the black levels themselves are
fantastic especially considering how bright the tv can get i have a new favorite piece of content
for checking black levels and shadow detail and blooming and halo all at once it's on netflix and
it's called a night on earth i watch it with the closed captions turned on and i will quickly learn
just about everything i need to know the great thing about this netflix nature docu-series is
that it's filmed almost entirely at night hence the title they use special cameras and technology
to capture stuff at night that's never been seen in nature before and so the show is extremely dark
except where it isn't which makes for one hell of a torture test on a backlight and let me tell you
the u7g passed the test with flying colors or sometimes flying monochrome but that's not a thing
so moving on virtually no perceivable blooming from the edges or halo around bright objects
on a black background the best test of which is around the closed captions which were almost on a
jet black background most of the time i mean i got through two episodes just watching tv like it was
my job because it is and i was never upset at the backlight so that's a huge win especially for a tv
of this price hdr highlights were exactly what i expected i think this tv tracks a little high
on the brightness curve in terms of accuracy but it's enjoyable reminds me of a samsung tv in that
regard but honestly with better blacks for the price hdr had pop and i liked it motion was good
i did see a little bit of stutter and flicker with vertically panned shots but it wasn't consistent
and it didn't happen often enough for me to get too upset about it i mean overall the motion
like i said it was good it's a 120 hertz native panel and it does have effective motion smoothing
if you need it for fast moving content but the motion never bothered me with that off which i
again count as a big win upscaling and processing in general was pretty good the tv does not clean
up noise as well as say a sony and you'll see a little bit of banding in low bit depth content
from streaming services it isn't going to make bob ross on pbs look like a 4k studio master but
it does fine i mean for the price i don't expect much better you'll have to pay
a lot more to get better processing so again i'll hand it to high sense for finding a good balance
now on to color and this goes back to what i said earlier i don't think the average viewer is going
to notice that the colors aren't perfectly true to spec they aren't perfectly accurate by the
measurements but that isn't going to bother most people however if you are someone who wants the
best performance but your wallet can't support your high-end tastes get the u7g and then pay
a little for a professional calibration because with a little work you can get the accuracy of
much more expensive tvs and still spend way less than you would on an uncalibrated sony samsung or
lg hell this tv is even less expensive than the equivalent tcl by a long shot right now last i
forget about gaming let's talk about that for a moment this tv does support 4k 120 hertz in fact
you pull up the xbox menu and you get all green check marks so you get those advanced features
and i didn't think you would get variable refresh rate but when i turned it on in the xbox menu i
didn't get any argument from the xbox so i'm not sure where we are there there was no indication
that it did support variable refresh rate but the xbox is not arguing so not sure on that one
i'll leave a comment down below once i get a full explanation from hisense so if you are a hardcore
gamer and you want everything your xbox series x or s or fancy gaming pc can offer then this
tv is going to do pretty much all of it for most people this tv is going to be great for gaming
regardless the input lag is super low and the hdr images are fantastic there's great
shadow detail and very little motion blur all the crucial elements are there for a great gaming tv
bring it all together and what we have here is the best tv you can buy under a thousand dollars hands
down i'm gonna stand behind that even if it does creep a little bit above 1 000 this tv just gets
so much right it's a tv for tv enthusiasts who don't have big budgets you can have exceptional
picture quality and not spend a small fortune i'll even go so far as to say i like this tv better
than the step up u8g and that's mostly because of the price to performance ratio the u8g has more
colors and it gets brighter but again when you consider the price i think the u7g is the better
smarter deal all that's left to consider is longevity how long will this tv last and will
you get good service if you need it and i can't answer that right now i think we still need a year
or two to see what the public has to say about the longevity of the high sense tvs they purchased
three years ago and besides i think hisense's manufacturing practices may have advanced since
then hisense doesn't have the long-standing track record in the us that some other brands have
but if i'm judging from the quality of what's sitting in this room right now i'd say go for
it the performance of this tv for the price is ridiculously good the gauntlet has been thrown
down and now i can't wait to see what happens in 2022 thanks as always for watching everyone
were you as surprised as i was or did you see this coming let me know about your thoughts on the u7g
down below don't forget to hit like and subscribe and here's two other videos i think you might like