Hisense 100″ Laser TV Review – A 4K UHD, Smart Projector with Screen – Picture Quality 1

Hisense 100" Laser TV Review – Picture Quality 1: An Introduction, Out-of-the-Box Picture Quality, Skin Tones

We look at the projectors (including “laser TVs” like this one), first as serious home theater – looking for superb, accurate color, deep black levels, excellent sharpness, etc.  And we prefer excellent, very dark rooms.  Call those serious home theater projectors, with the emphasis on Serious, and on Theater!

Not all projectors are built for that. And certainly the vast majority of TV buyers aren’t looking for that.  With that in mind, this Hisense is more of a home entertainment projector, or general family home TV viewing.  It’s geared for more family sharing. It’s smart, its color is good but not highly accurate. Its black levels are well short of deep blacks, but then, in rooms with ambient light, the differences between projectors in black level performance are far smaller than in fully darkened rooms.  And this projector pairs a laser engine projector with an ultra short throw design, and an ALR type screen to make it geared for traditional rooms, living rooms, family rooms, spare bedrooms, whatever you have, that isn’t a serious home theater/cave.

If it sounds like I’m defending a projector, (as it does in this review at times), then the projector in question typically isn't my idea of a purist/enthusiast choice for a dedicated home theater with highly accurate color and deep black levels, for fanatics like me!  So this projector may not be for me, but, I find, overall, that the Hisense Laser TV provides the type of picture quality that will satisfy most of the folks considering it for their homes.

None of the preset picture modes delivered anything that looked close to a calibrated picture. With default settings on most modes, the overall picture was normally anywhere from a bit cool to very cool (bluish whites).  That is, nothing came close to a well balanced 6500K (warm whites) that represents the color balance standard for movies.

Vivid is very cool and packs a lot of punch. The colors – without dialing them down at all, are a bit over the top – green on most football fields is a bit too intense, but then, open those window shades a bit, and that’s probably just what the doctor ordered to cut through a fair amount of ambient light that the ALR type screen that comes as part of the Hisense Laser TV.

You can compare the various modes in one of the Photo players to get a better idea.

It should be noted (and Eric discusses in more detail in the calibration pages), that the Hisense offers both grayscale balance (getting Red, Green, and Blue in proper balance (which determines the white), and also a full CMS for tuning the individual primary and secondary colors (hue, saturation, and brightness of each).

Unfortunately, some of the modes allow only one of those two necessary sets of controls for a full calibration. Again, read Eric’s comments.

Although the tendency is cool whites the calibration controls can warm them up nicely.  As usual, we have provided here our favorite HDTV image from Victoria Secret’s Swimsuit Special.  There’s a shot of each of the modes.  The mode we calibrated for 4K with HDR, however, will not look right, simply because, we’re working with 1080i resolution without HDR.  That is true for this image on any 4K projector’s best HDR mode.