Hisense, of late, has made its own name in the TV market, especially with its wide range of ULED and QLED panels that span an impressive price bracket. Its latest offering, the Hisense Q7N, is a QLED TV that comes in 55-inch, 65-inch, 85-inch and 100-inch variants.
The 55-inch offering is priced at Rs 51,000, and I have been using it for a couple of weeks now. Does it have enough to take on the likes of Sony, Xiaomi and TCL? Let's try and find out...
On the outside, the Q7N has a plastic body, but it doesn't feel very thin and cheap. It has a much sturdier build, unlike some other TVs that come with flimsy plastic, even in the back. The installation with table-mount legs is pretty straightforward.
The back panel houses 4 HDMI 2.1 ports, including one eARC with 144Hz refresh rate, a USB A port (1A) and a 3.5mm audio jack. A LAN port, digital audio out and another USB port (0.5A) are present on the side of the back panel.
The bezels around the display are impressively thin. A white LED and physical button cluster located at the bottom is used to switch the TV on or off and to navigate the menu.
The remote control is pretty standard and comes with several app shortcuts other than power, volume, mic for voice commands and so on.
The Q7N runs on Linux-based VIDAA OS, which doesn't feel unfamiliar even to a new user. It is smooth and responsive when opening apps, playing videos, and navigating through them. While it has most of the popular OTT apps, including Netflix, Sony LIV, Disney+ Hotstar, Apple TV and JioCinema, there's neither a good third-party media player nor any PTV player, unlike most Android TVs.
The issue I have with the TV's OS is that the picture quality was noticeably inferior to the output from another Android TV stick I connected it to.
ALSO READ
While sports and standard definition videos looked pretty good on the stock OS, Dolby Vision and HDR videos were much better through the Android TV stick.
The 55-inch 4K (3840x2160) panel is able to show details and can handle darker scenes in HDR quite well, something many mid-range TVs still struggle with. You have to turn on motion smoothening and extra sharpness to make live sports playback much nicer and more realistic visually—something a lot of OEMs still have enabled out of the box.
The OS has a remote app for your smartphone, and it works reliably well when navigating or typing e something to search within apps. You can get up to 144Hz refresh rates in gaming mode.
I found the TV can handle games like Black Myth Wukong consistently at 60FPS without major frame drops or stuttering issues.
You get a 49-watt speaker system (2 channel 12-watt speakers with 25-watt subwoofer) with Dolby Atmos and DTS support. The sound quality on the TV is generally good, offering enough depth. The speakers are loud and don't struggle with dialogue delivery when watching movies or TV series at medium volume levels. You get decent bass output, and the mids are decent enough.
The TV, in itself, is armed with Dolby Atmos and offers a better audio experience for the price tag. However, you should still get a dedicated set of speakers to go with, especially if you are setting it in a considerably larger room.
All in all, the Q7N comes across as a decently performing smart TV that does a lot of things well. While its performance, especially the overall picture quality, gets enhanced with another smart TV stick or box connected, it does a good job of handling multiple apps and delivering sound, making it a good option at the price point for your home entertainment.
