Hisense A6Q vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

Unfortunately, the Hisense A6Q is hard to recommend for watching HDR content. The main issue remains the low brightness and quite modest coverage of a wide colour gamut. A measured brightness of about 300 nits simply isn't enough for HDR materials to look impressive. In practice, the image often resembles standard SDR rather than true HDR with clear differences in brightness and dynamics. Additionally, colours in such content do not appear as they should. The TV does not utilise additional filters like QLED or PFS LED, and a DCI-P3 coverage of around 80% makes some colours look just too pale. As a result, some scenes in HDR materials lose intensity and spectacle, making it hard to talk about a proper HDR experience.

Sony Bravia 7 II handles HDR very well and, above all, is simply a bright television. In the correct viewing mode for watching, Professional, we measured about 2,000 nits of peak brightness, so the panel’s capabilities are truly large. Of course, in Mini-LED sets a test-pattern result is only part of the story, because much still depends on how the TV controls the backlight in real scenes. Here Sony’s algorithms perform really well. Depending on the scene, the brightness we measured in films ranged from about 1,100 to as much as 1,700 nits. That’s a level at which HDR has proper punch and bright highlights can be genuinely impressive. It’s not perfect in every situation. With small bright elements on a very dark background, the Bravia 7 II clearly prioritises maintaining good black levels, so their brightness can fall to around 500 nits. It still looks good, but it’s clear the TV doesn’t always manage this without compromise.

Colours

The second thing that has a huge impact on HDR is, of course, colour. And this is where True RGB was meant to deliver one of the biggest changes. Looking at the panel’s capabilities alone, the Bravia 7 II performs very well. We measured roughly 98% DCI-P3 coverage and 88% BT.2020, so the potential for showing highly saturated colours is substantial. In RGB TVs the matter is a bit more complex. When we repeated the same measurements with a film-like background applied, gamut coverage dropped to about 92% DCI-P3 and 78% BT.2020. Those are still good numbers, especially for an RGB Mini-LED TV, but they show that the final result largely depends on how the algorithms drive the three backlight colours. In most scenes the Bravia 7 II handles this well and colours retain strong saturation. The biggest differences are visible in blue shades, where samples start to deviate more noticeably from the reference values and coverage is weaker than for the other primaries. True RGB therefore offers genuinely greater potential, but, as with brightness, a lot depends on what’s actually happening on screen.

We conducted the tests in the best available mode, which is Filmmaker, however – as is often the case – this does not mean the image is perfect straight out of the box. In the case of Hisense A6Q, this mode clearly “swallowed” too much blue in everyday SDR content. In practice, this led to an image with yellowed whites, particularly noticeable on large, bright surfaces. This does not result from poor assumptions of the Filmmaker mode itself or from the vision of filmmakers, but from factory settings that require adjustment.
Additionally, looking at the saturation characteristics and gamma curve in SDR, as well as EOTF in HDR content, there is a slight tendency to brighten most scenes. As a result, the image often appears brighter than it should, losing a bit of its naturalness. For this reason, we decided to perform a professional calibration to restore the proper colour balance and a more accurate brightness characteristic.

To evaluate the factory colours we chose the Professional mode, because it performs best among the available presets. It's not perfect. In SDR the white balance is slightly biased toward magenta, so some scenes look a little warmer and less neutral than they should. A bigger issue is the gamma, which sits closer to 2.5 than 2.4. As a result the image is a bit too dark in places, especially in the mid-tones. In HDR the situation is better. As brightness increases there's a little too much red, but it isn't something that really jumps out while watching. Overall the Professional mode is a good starting point, though you can get a bit more out of it with calibration.

Colours after calibration on the Hisense A6Q need to be evaluated in two ways, as everything depends on the type of content. In the case of SDR materials, the effect is really quite good. In daily programs, series, and movies, it’s hard to find any serious issues with colours. The yellow tint has been effectively removed, and the television has also stopped washing out the entire image. As a result, the ColorChecker test showed errors below a Delta 2 value, which are already outstanding results, allowing for a discussion of very high picture quality in standard content. Unfortunately, the situation looks much worse for HDR materials. Yes, the white balance has been corrected and the EOTF curve has been improved, but the limitations of the panel itself remain insurmountable. The lack of support for a wide colour gamut means that the television still generates quite significant colour errors. Parts of the colours simply cannot be displayed by the screen, making them look less saturated than they should. It’s a pity because even a simple PFS or QLED filter would have resulted in a significantly better end effect. The conclusion is therefore simple – for SDR content, the A6Q after calibration works really very well, while viewing HDR content on it should still be approached with caution.

After calibration the Bravia 7 II can look significantly better. First and foremost, we managed to set the white balance very well in both SDR and HDR. Gamma can also be improved, and after correction it runs very close to the reference value. For most users those changes will have the biggest impact on the picture. There is, however, a limitation with the colours themselves. On the Bravia 7 II Sony does not provide access to a traditional CMS that would let us adjust individual hues separately. Much is left to the algorithms controlling the True RGB backlight. If the TV reproduces a specific colour inaccurately, we are not always able to do anything about it. In our measurements this is most apparent in parts of the reds and blues, where errors can still be quite large. That does not, however, undermine the value of calibration. Correctly setting the white point and gamma strongly affects the whole picture, so even without the ability to precisely correct every colour the difference from the factory settings is noticeable.

Upscaling on the Hisense A6Q works really well for a TV in this price range. Lower resolution materials are correctly “upscaled” to higher resolutions, and the image remains clear without any artificial edge sharpening or the typical "over-sharpening" found in cheap models. Unfortunately, the digital processing is significantly poorer. In practice, it’s hard to talk about any advanced artifact smoothing or masking of problematic tonal transitions. In heavily compressed films—especially those from YouTube—the TV struggles with reducing compression blocks and unwanted banding, making the material's imperfections clearly visible. The A6Q scales the image well, but when it comes to digital processing, it leaves the user alone with the source quality.

Scaling and digital processing are among the strongest points of the Bravia 7 II and one of Sony's biggest advantages over the competition. Sony has for years excelled at digital image processing, and it's clear here too. Above all, the 'Smooth Gradation' function works very well, smoothing weaker tonal transitions in poorer-quality content. The safest setting is low, but we'd comfortably recommend medium as well. The effect is stronger, and the TV still handles fine detail very delicately. Some minor details may be slightly smoothed, but Sony does it much more subtly than many other brands. Upscaling is also very good. Lower-resolution content is nicely upscaled to 4K; the image looks clean and retains a lot of detail. Of course the TV won't magically turn native HD into true 4K, but the Bravia 7 II does very well with what can be pulled from such a source.

The fluidity of motion on the Hisense A6Q is... well, quite average. It's a TV with a native refresh rate of 60 Hz in 4K, which means the movement of objects on the screen doesn't always look perfectly smooth. In dynamic scenes in films or sports, it's evident that this is not the strongest point of this model. The situation looks much better with 1080p content when connecting a console or computer, as the A6Q can then operate at up to 120 Hz. That's a big plus, especially for gamers. However, the sharpness of motion still leaves a lot to be desired, with noticeable ghosting, and the response time of the panel shows that it isn't one of the TV's strong suits.

The Bravia 7 II uses a 120 Hz panel, so in terms of motion handling it delivers everything you'd expect from a TV of this class. With sport or games at 120 fps the picture is suitably smooth, and for films Sony provides an advanced motion interpolation system. You can therefore adjust the level of interpolation separately and choose whether to retain a more cinematic motion or achieve noticeably greater smoothness. Motion blur itself is a bit worse. The VA panel used isn't among the fastest, and moving objects can show a slight trailing, especially against darker backgrounds. It's not at a level that will seriously disturb normal viewing, but last year's Bravia 7 was better in this regard and had a noticeably faster panel.

For such an inexpensive television, the Hisense A6Q really can surprise with what it offers gamers. It operates in 4K only at 60 Hz, but when the game switches to performance mode and drops to 1080p, the panel can work at even 120 Hz. In this price range, that's a big plus, as most titles on consoles don’t deliver a stable 4K at 120 frames. In practice, we are realistically gaming in 1080p, and here the A6Q provides a very enjoyable gaming experience. Additionally, it has a few features that are usually found in more expensive models: ALLM, VRR, and Dolby Vision Gaming for Xbox Series X/S. Everything is gathered in one place, in a simple and convenient Game Bar, so you don't need to dig through the entire menu. For such an affordable piece of equipment, it's really a solid setup for gamers — maybe not for the most demanding, but definitely spot on for occasional gaming.

Bravia 7 II has pretty much everything you'd want from a good console TV today. It supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR from 48 to 120 Hz and ALLM, so when you start a game the TV automatically switches to low-latency mode. HGiG works correctly, so once you configure HDR on the console the TV won't try to brighten the image on its own. Just remember to turn off tone mapping in the TV's menu. Another plus is Dolby Vision in game mode, which will be especially useful for Xbox owners. Sony also includes its own Game Menu, where you can quickly view key signal info, check VRR or change gaming settings without digging through the full TV menu. The only thing missing from the feature list is support for 1440p at 120 Hz. Our biggest complaint is not really about the features but the connectors. The Bravia 7 II has four HDMI ports, but only two of them support full HDMI 2.1 with 48 Gbps bandwidth. One of those is also the eARC port. So if you connect a soundbar or AV receiver via HDMI, in practice you only have one full HDMI 2.1 left for a console or PC. With a single console that's fine, but with a PS5, an Xbox and an audio setup it starts to feel cramped. That's hard to justify from Sony. In cheaper TVs two HDMI 2.1 ports can still be accepted, but in a model of this class, especially in 2026, we'd expect all four ports to be HDMI 2.1.