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Hisense 100L10E 4K UST Smart Laser TV Review-Picture Quality 2

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Phil Jones

Hisense 100L10E 4K UST Smart Laser Projector Review– Picture Quality: 4K HDR, 1080P Material, HDTV, and Sports.

4K HDR

With the introduction of stream boxes like the Roku Ultra and Apple 4K TV, the amount of HDR streaming movie content has increased dramatically. 4K HDR content can deliver expanded color space with better highlight and shadow detail, but even the brightest HDR projectors can struggle to faithfully reproduce HDR.

The 100L10E has a Dual Laser Light engine that includes a red and blue laser to help achieve a measured 97.3% of the DCI-P3 color space which ensures that HDR colors appeared rich and vibrant. After calibration, skin tones were good but brighter reds were way oversaturated. This was probably due to the addition of the red laser.

In most situations, the 100L10E did a good job balancing the need to deliver respectable full screen brightness while still producing bright highlight detail when the content was mastered at 1000nits or less. It was only when I played content mastered above 1000nits that I felt the average frame brightness was too low. Increasing the Contrast raised the overall picture brightness, but it resulted in clipped highlights. This is a common issue with most projectors when playing HDR due to their limited brightness, so I did not expect anything different from the 100L10E. This is why I still prefer watching many movies in SDR instead of HDR on most projectors. Dynamic tone mapping would help but that feature is not available on this model.

Also, when viewing HDR content, brighter red tended to be over-exaggerated. When the projector was calibrated for natural looking skins tones and accurate mid-tones, reds at higher IREs became way oversaturated. The image from latest Ghostbusters shows the effect.

When calibrated for good skin tones in HDR, bright reds were oversaturated

Unfortunately, the 100L10E does not support HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) which is the HDR standard developed for live broadcast.

HDTV AND SPORTS

The fact is most TV shows and live broadcast will continue to be produced in HD for several more years so good 4K upscaling will continue to be important. The projector’s upscaling is excellent. Whether I was watching 720P sports from ESPN or 1080p Blu-ray content, it all looked very good. Most 4K movies do not have enough fine detail to make the difference between watching 4K SDR and HD noticeable.

The 100L10E utilizes a version of Hisense’s motion compensation system. There are four factory presets (SMOOTH, STANDARD, CLEAR and FILM) and you also have CUSTOM mode where you can make manual adjustments.

The FILM mode was design especially for a movie shot in 24P and it eliminates 3:2 Pulldown for more cinematic motion. When viewing 30P or 60P material, the 100L10E was set to Clear mode and I did not notice too many motion artifacts.

SOUND QUALITY

While on most Flat Panel TVs sound quality is an afterthought, Hisense worked hard to provide good sound performance. The Hisense Laser TV’s audio systems are designed by Harman Kardon. The front of the 100L10E cabinet holds a multi-driver array powered by a total of 40 watts plus there is a separate wireless 60-watt powered subwoofer. The subwoofer is paired to the projector via Bluetooth.

In addition to the Harmon Kardon audio system, the 100L10E also has dbx-tv® sound processing which includes three audio features: Total Sonics processing improves vocals, improves bass, and widens the soundstage; Total Surround does a good job simulating a surround-sound experience using the 100L10E integrated speakers: and Volume processing prevents unwanted loudness changes.

The Hisense 100L10E Laser TV is one of the best sounding video displays I have ever heard. The sound quality was comparable to a $200-300 soundbar. When playing big action films, the subwoofer delivered some serious bass (a little boomy but more than deep enough) providing the necessary shake and vibrate we expect from those movies. Yes, you can buy a better 3rd party sound system, but many customers would be more than satisfied with the 100L10E audio performance.

OVERALL PICTURE QUALITY

I would classify the overall picture quality of the Hisense Laser TV as very good Home Entertainment quality.

Bright HDR colors could have been better, as could the black levels, but the projector performed extremely well on my reference white screen in my office/demo room even during the day with my blackout shades partially open.

Whenever I evaluate the projector’s picture, I also try to consider the unit’s likely use case. Even though the projector’s black level could be better, the 100L10E will probably be used in a room with some ambient light so the ability to reproduce ultra-deep blacks is not critical.

SDR content looked very good on my 100” Screen. Overall, I was very pleased with the picture quality of the 100L10E. It produced a bright vivid picture which really made movies, TV shows, and live sports broadcast pop in my room.

Above are a few more images from movies and TV shows. As noted elsewhere, there is some color shifting in these images, so they do not fully represent how good the Hisense 100L10E Laser TV looks in person.

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