Hisense H9G vs. TCL 6-series | Which is the best budget 4K HDR TV? By Digital Trends

We have done quite a few really fun versus videos this year, but I don't think any of them are quite as important as the one we're about to do. Right now I mean look. I even got dressed up. Welcome back everyone, I'm Caleb, Dennison and yeah. We've had some fun this year. The lg OLED versus Sony OLED in particular, was a real blast to produce, but I think comparing the TCL 6 series or r635 against the hi sense h9g is an even more important comparison, because we're talking about two TVs that start under a thousand dollars at 65 inches, and that number is only going to go down over time.

Not only that, but both of these TVs perform extremely well and not just for the price I mean in general they're, both over achievers, so very approachable in price, very exciting in performance. I think everybody who's looking for a new TV should be looking at these two models in consideration. So, let's see if we can figure out which one's the best, so as always we're going to be getting to picture quality very soon, a very important consideration, of course, but before we get there, I want to start with how these TVs look from an aesthetic standpoint. Actually they both look very similar you're looking at about the same width of black bezel or border rather around the top and sides of the television both have this aluminum strip that goes across the bottom, with the TCL. You've got a little of a light there at the center, but you know what the big difference, aesthetically speaking, is actually the stand with TCL you get a more conventional two foot stand very wide stance: you're going to need a big entertainment center.

If you're going to stand mounted, whereas with the high sense, not only does it have a slightly narrower footprint, but its footprint itself looks well at first I'll, tell you it looks weird. I didn't think I was going to like it when I was just looking at the pieces out of the box. I thought what is this but as we got the TV set up, it kind of grew on me and at this point I actually kind of like it look. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder you can see them here and decide which you like, but I definitely wouldn't make a decision based on the stand. So, let's move on swinging around the back of the TV we can see that both have four HDMI ports.

The difference here is that the HDMI ports in the TCL are a little more advanced than those in the h9g. I'm going to talk a little about that later, but next I want to get into what else is happening inside the television. I found that the processing for these TVs is pretty similar where they differ, is in the back lighting technology. TCL has a mini, led, backlight system and, if you're not familiar with that, it just means that the LED backlights back there are much smaller and there's a lot more of them in the tens of thousands, as opposed to hundreds, which you would find in the h9g that could translate into superior performance, but as I've seen with the h9g. So far, it's doing a pretty great job.

So we're going to talk about that aspect in the picture quality section in just a moment now, let's talk real quick about the user interface with TCL, you get Roku TV with the hi sense. You get android TV now. This is actually a more important aspect than usual because of what I said about these TVs in their full reviews. Now, with the TCL 6 series that we reviewed you're talking about a 55-inch model, and I'm finding that the experience with the 65-inch model is quite a bit different, you might remember, I had to really toy around with the picture settings to get what I thought was a decent amount of HDR pop, while also getting the colors right. I didn't have to do that here at all.

In fact, I'll tell you what we arrived at in terms of the picture settings in a little, but what I found is that it's very easy to get the TCL set up in terms of the picture settings. At least it is now with this 65-inch version. I don't know if they made a change but far and away an easier process. The other thing I'll say about Roku TV is that you get almost all the apps you could ever want in a very easy to use interface. However, it does not support HBO Max right now, so, with the android platform, you're almost guaranteed some kind of support from any new or emerging apps, whereas with Roku uh.

It's not so certain these days, we'll have to see how that plays out, at any rate, with the android TV system, you're. Looking at the possibility of it getting upgraded to google TV down the road, you might be aware that the new Chromecast with Google TV launched, and that platform is expected to make its way to some android TVs in the future. It could take like a year, but you're going to own this TV for a little while. So there is a possibility. The android TV system here could get a little of an upgrade other than that.

Both of these operating systems are very snappy. You don't have to wait around for it to catch up to your clicking, they're very responsive, I think, with the Roku TV there's a little more setup involved at the jump, but ultimately, once everything is done very easy to use these TVs. Also, on the smart TV front, with the hi sense android TV you're, getting Chromecast built in as well as Google Assistant, which is very capable, as we all know, with the Roku, you can do some screen mirroring and a little of casting it's a closed voice ecosystem though it works very well, it's just not as robust as android TV and the integration of google. Now a quick word on sound quality, which normally we don't touch, but these TVs have gotten bigger. Since full array, local dimming became a thing, there's more room, so you can actually put some speakers in there with some size and some oomph.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get that here with either TV. Although I will say the high sense sounds significantly worse than the TCL. Neither one of them are especially exciting and given the fact that sound bars are so inexpensive and wildly better than anything, you're going to get out of either one of these TVs. I would definitely suggest doing it. It's you know, passable you're going to be able to watch the news you can hear stuff, but man, it's really underwhelming, think about a sound bar.

Now, the part you've all been waiting for the picture, quality comparison, and before I get into it, I want to explain how we set these TVs up so with the high sense, we're in the theater day mode for SDR and with the TCL we're in the movie mode for SDR those are actually already very close, except with the TCL you want to max out the backlight so that it matches up with what the sense is doing by default. So, in a way we're going without of box setting on the high sense kicking up the backlight a little for the movie mode on the TCL so that it's a closer match. Otherwise, color temperature is about the same. The gamma is the same at 2.2 and when we go into HDR we're going into similar HDR modes and for this testing we primarily used hdr10 didn't dive into Dolby Vision too much. But I will speak to that in a moment now for a picture quality evaluation I like to start at the foundation.

That would be black levels, and I have to say the h9g in this regard is extremely impressive, especially considering it doesn't have the surgical precision of the mini led tech that the TCL has. It does a remarkable job of producing deep, inky black levels, and it doesn't really sacrifice much shadow detail in the process. In fact, we see it outperforming the TCL in that regard. With that said, the TCL also does a great job with black levels and, more to the point, I think it actually does a really great job with minimizing the halo around bright objects. On a black background, the high sense stands right up to it, though, so in terms of blacks, I'm going to have to hand it to the high sense television now on the opposite side of the spectrum is brightness and again the high sense wins out in total brightness.

It is a much brighter TV. In fact, I think I started out the review video saying this TV is lit, and I stand by that. It gets very bright and significantly more so than the TCL. However, I'm not seeing that being as big of an advantage as I expected, and in fact, when it comes to preserving bright, highlight detail, the TCL is actually a bit better at that, it's a little more judicious and honestly, if you're talking about watching in a dark or even fairly dim room, the high sense is just it's bright, like it's unnecessarily bright, I love that it can really juice up highlight details. I love that it can combat with a very bright room scenario.

Honestly, though, I'm not seeing the extra brightness, the high sense is capable of playing out as a real advantage in real life. Viewing I get all the contrast I need out of the TCL, with the benefit of bright, highlight detail being preserved. So unless you just love getting blown out of the room, I honestly think that the TCL wins out overall. In the contrast argument, it does crush a little of the blacks, but not so much that I would call it for the high sense in the contrast department, which seems crazy, because better blacks, better brightness, isn't that better contrast well yeah, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing and that's kind of what I'm getting with the high sense here now we've got to talk about color, and this is going to get fascinating right now we have the advantage of having these two TVs right next to each other. That being the case, we can see that the high sense is clearly way off in the color department.

It's just wrong! Now you may be looking over my shoulder and thinking. Well, the blue on the high sense is more blue than the blue on the TCL. That's true! It's also the wrong blue. So in terms of accuracy out of the box, the TCL definitely has this in hand. But again you only see that difference when you put the TVs right next to each other.

So is that really a problem for most buyers? I'm going to go out on a limb and say not really, because when you're dazzled by a TV you're dazzled by a TV, unless you are a color scientist or a videographer or a photographer, who is really, really sensitive to color, then you're, probably not going to notice that hey sometimes the high sense, looks a little magenta in the whites, and it is definitely getting the hues of colors wrong. But color accuracy is not necessarily the same as color vibrancy or color effectiveness, so yeah. If I pull out the measurement tools, I will see that the hi sense does not perform as well as the TCL with my own naked eye, because I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing I can see. The sense is not right, the TCL is, but the high sense is still very exciting. All right.

Keep that in mind. Now. Let's talk about motion handling for a second, which is not an aspect of picture quality that I think a lot of people are super sensitive to, but it is one of those things where, if you get a TV that handles it poorly, that's when you notice it. The good news here is that neither one of these TVs are absolutely horrible at handling motion. I don't think you're going to get distracted very often by it.

I will say that the high sense is coming in a little under the TCL here, but really to get significantly better motion handling you're going to have to spend a lot more money, so I'm putting these two on fairly even ground, with the TCL having a slight advantage. So we've taken picture quality, and we've broken it down into its constituent parts. I've done the measurements. I've also just sat around and watched TV on these televisions, and I can say with confidence that either way you go, I think you're going to be pretty thrilled with the picture quality you get, especially for the price you're paying. But if I have to call a winner here, I'm going to call it for the TCL in terms of picture quality, because for one thing it gets color right, whereas the hi sense doesn't and for another.

The contrast for me is right. Where I want it with the high sense. I think it's aggressively bright. You can tone that down, but just in general, the approach that it takes is to really you know, force that contrast down your eyeballs, and it's not something. I'm really digging.

I'm impressed, it's definitely impressive, but for most viewing situations that I find myself in, I just prefer the TCL subjective. You might disagree and that's cool. Take a look at these TVs. If you can pick the one that you like best but from my TV reviewer super analytical super picky stance, I'm going to go with the TCL, but wait we're not done yet. We got to talk about gaming, so the next gen consoles are coming and, along with them a whole new kind of gaming experience.

We're also seeing some hot rod gaming cards coming out for PCs, and the fact is, the TCL is built to play off some of those features, whereas the hi sense h9g just isn't. The h9g does not support any kind of variable refresh rate. Yes, you can still game in 4k, HDR uh, and it looks very good, but the TCL just has a better looking gaming picture preset and that's thanks to thanks certified gaming mode. It can also do 120 frames per second at 1440p or 60 frames per second at 4k, so it's more versatile than the high sense. So when we talk about these new next-gen consoles coming out, the TCL is poised to take much better advantage of their advanced capabilities, so for factoring gaming in along with picture quality and other elements as one of the deciding factors about whether you want to buy a TV or not, I got to say if gaming is important to you, and you are excited about those next gen consoles.

The TCL is the better choice, so it doesn't really matter what I say here. Some of you are going to disagree with me. Some of you are going to agree with me. We could argue about this all day. The bottom line is that, for me, picture quality and gaming capability are what really distinguish these TVs from each other and when it comes right down to it, I prefer the TCL.

So I'm going to call the winner here, the TCL, the hi sense h9g, is a really impressive TV, the black levels, impressive, the brightness, very impressive, but when you add everything together, and you take the picture quality on the whole, I just prefer the TCL. Some of you would not. Some of you would prefer the high sets and that's fine. So if you've already purchased the h9g you've got it at home, and you love it, and you don't know why. I'm standing here telling you it's not the best.

It's because it's just not the best. For me, it might be the best thing for you and if you love it, that's really all that matters. It is an impressive television absolutely, but in the end, this is my call for my video, and I'm going to call it with confidence for the tcl6 series, thanks as always for watching everyone. I know you're already in the comments down there right now, I'll be right there with you soon, but if you were waiting for this comparison to make a decision, what do you think leave me that comment down below like subscribe, hit that notification bell and, as always, visit digitaltrends. com for the latest tech news and reviews.

Source : Digital Trends