Hisense E8Q vs Panasonic W85

Since the E8Q is a twin of the U7Q, it’s no surprise that the HDR effect quality is almost identical. On paper, it looks promising – a peak brightness of 800 nits can impress in many scenes. Moments like light flashes in “The Meg” or shots of the sun in “Life of Pi” can indeed create a “wow” effect. But the longer we watch, the more we notice the limitations. The problem arises when small, bright details need to be shown against a dark background. In such situations, the dimming algorithms try to protect the contrast, but in the process, they also dim what should shine the brightest. Instead of dazzling details, we get almost invisible points of light. This is typical for Mini-LED in this price segment and is not surprising – but it’s worth knowing that the HDR effect will not always be fully preserved. Fortunately, the colour reproduction provides reasons to be pleased. A coverage of the DCI-P3 palette of about 94% is a very good result, and the quantum dot layer used (more precisely, PFS) does its job – colours are saturated and vibrant, especially with 4K content.

Unfortunately, we don't have good news here. The Panasonic W85B is quite a dark television – its peak brightness doesn't exceed 300 nits, making it hard to talk about any real HDR effect. In practice, this means that scenes which can 'shine' and impress on other screens simply look like regular SDR with a slight colour boost here. Our measurements and film tests confirmed this – regardless of the content, the W85B won't draw anything more from HDR. So if someone is looking for a television specifically for HDR, it's better to look at other models. On a positive note, the W85B does quite well in terms of colours. It's a QLED television, so its colour gamut coverage is wide, and most films and series look natural, without a noticeable 'faded' effect. The colours are saturated, so in everyday viewing, there's no feeling that something is seriously off.

Testing the Hisense E8Q in Filmmaker mode, we were hoping for a potentially neutral picture resembling the director's vision. Unfortunately – although it doesn't look too bad on paper (the colour reproduction errors aren't significant), in practice the image feels somewhat unnatural. The reason? The blue colour is boosted too strongly and there is a deficiency of red in the white balance. The effect? Scenes appear cool, and the white seems slightly bluish. Alongside the U7Q model, we also noticed a specific approach to brightness management here. The brightness reproduction curve for HDR content (EOTF) shows that the TV can significantly dim small, bright elements on the screen to maintain contrast – but sometimes it goes too far. On the other hand, it can excessively brighten larger, very bright areas, which disrupts tonal balance. It's a compromise that may not suit everyone – especially if you want a potentially faithful picture straight out of the box.

Testing the Panasonic W85B, we obviously started with the Filmmaker mode, as it's the gold standard for watching content "the way the director intended." The problem is that this TV is quite far from those intentions. The biggest issue turned out to be an excess of red – both in SDR and HDR. The image often looked too warm because of this, and in some scenes, it was almost "on fire." Added to this is the issue of brightness management. When we looked at the gamma and EOTF charts, it was clear as day that in most scenes, the TV brightens the image more than it should. The effect was easy to predict. Details can get lost, leading to flattening and clipping across the entire screen. We obviously know how to fix this, but to be fair, it does require a lot of calibration work. Out of the box, the W85B doesn't produce an image close to reference quality – it's more of a TV that, without professional adjustments, will always interpret colours and brightness a bit "in its own way." Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of the viewer.

Calibration of the Movie mode yielded really good results, especially regarding SDR content. The white balance was successfully adjusted, giving the image a natural look – it appeared almost reference-level. The colours were well-saturated, and the overall experience of the content improved significantly. Unfortunately, when we switched to HDR materials, the familiar issues from the U7Q model returned. The TV still likes to "do its own thing," as seen from the analysis of the EOTF brightness characteristics – despite calibration, the E8Q still darkened small details in the shadows, while brighter parts of the screen were sometimes excessively boosted. In practice, this means that in darker scenes, some of the smallest details could simply disappear. Although it's worth noting that the entire calibration process brought a lot of good, not everything can be bypassed – even with the use of professional tools. The E8Q can impress with its picture, but in HDR content, its construction limitations become apparent, and it's worth keeping this in mind.

Fortunately, calibration made a significant difference for the Panasonic W85B, especially for SDR content. Here, the improvement was quite evident – we managed to even out the white balance and reasonably tame the TV's tendency to overly brighten the entire image. The picture became more coherent and the colours gained the naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. Admittedly, the results from the Color Checker are not perfect, as the W85B has noticeable issues with green saturation, but overall, we rate the post-calibration effect in SDR quite positively. The situation with HDR is a bit different. Here too, we managed to reduce the tendency to warm up the entire scene, so the image performed definitely better than in the factory settings. However, there is still the same problem we mentioned earlier – the TV interprets the image too strongly "in its own way" and brightens the whole screen. And the lack of local dimming only exacerbates this effect. In summary, briefly, in SDR content, the W85B performs really well after calibration and is perfectly suitable for everyday viewing. However, in HDR, even after adjustments, it is still difficult to unambiguously recommend it for more serious viewing.

In the case of older materials of lower quality, gentle smoothing of tonal transitions often comes in handy. The Hisense E8Q, like the U7Q, has a "Smooth and Gradient Picture" feature, but unfortunately, its effectiveness leaves much to be desired. The "Low" setting is nearly invisible in operation, while higher settings blur details instead of improving transitions. The good news is that the feature does not compromise film grain, which means it does not degrade the structure of the image. On the positive side, scaling is commendable. The TV can reasonably convert older content to a higher resolution – without artificially accentuating contours or excessive sharpening. Although it doesn't match the best models in this category, it performs quite well for its class.

With native SDR content, the Panasonic W85B performs very well – tonal transitions are smooth and natural, without artificial bands or clear outlines. However, the situation is worse with lower resolution materials. This is where the TV has the biggest problem with "beautifying" the image. The lack of any menu option to improve gradation means that with older films or materials from YouTube, one can sometimes notice slight issues with colour blending.

Fortunately, upscaling, or enhancing the quality of lower resolution content, performs much better. This is definitely a strong point of this model – the image is scaled cleanly and in detail, and the TV handles this better than one might expect from such an inexpensive setup. This is thanks to the HCX processor, which Panasonic has been developing for years, and it shows that even in the lower series, it can do a good job.

Similar to the U7Q, the E8Q model is a fast television designed with dynamic content in mind. It supports a 144 Hz refresh rate at 4K resolution, and if for some reason someone is still gaming in Full HD – it can even reach 240 Hz. This is a significant advantage, especially for PC users looking for maximum smoothness. In everyday use, the television performs very well. The “Ultra Motion Smoothness” mode gives us two sliders, allowing you to set the picture to your preference – whether it's more cinematic with the film frame preserved or highly smoothed, almost “TV show-like.” It's good that the manufacturer provides a choice here, instead of imposing one style. On sports material, live broadcasts, or in games – motion looks clean and stable. Sure, it’s not at the OLED level, but for this price range, the E8Q does a really good job.

At first glance, everything looks good – the Panasonic W85B has a 120 Hz panel and even a 144 Hz mode, so it seems like it should handle smooth motion really well. The problem starts when we delve into the settings. The options for improving fluidity are supposedly present in the menu, but in practice… they don't change anything. No matter what we choose, the image looks the same. On top of that, there’s a lack of BFI, or black frame insertion, which in many TVs helps sharpen motion. And suddenly, it turns out that despite the strong panel, the W85B doesn’t give us any real tools to adjust that motion to our needs. It’s only good when the source itself operates at a higher frequency – for example, games at 120 Hz. But when it comes to movies or sports, we just have to accept what the TV shows us because there’s nothing more that can be done about it.

Hisense E8Q does not hide its gaming pedigree. Just the specifications reveal that we are dealing with a television that will perform excellently as a gaming screen. Variable Refresh Rate (VRR)? It's there. Automatic Game Mode switching (ALLM)? That's there too. Additionally, there's impressive refreshment – 120 Hz in 4K or even 240 Hz in Full HD. Such a set is rare in this price segment. Everything runs smoothly and without major surprises. The only missing element – similar to the U7Q – remains support for HGiG. It's a shame because this feature facilitates adjusting the brightness curve to the capabilities of the specific television, enhancing visual fidelity with the intentions of HDR game developers. Without it, manual tweaking of the settings is necessary, which does not always yield a satisfying result.

On paper, the Panasonic W85B looks really solid. It has two full HDMI 2.1 ports, support for ALLM, variable refresh rates, Dolby Vision in games, and of course, a high refresh rate for the panel itself. Additionally, there's the characteristic Panasonic game bar, which allows you to view key parameters with a single click and quickly change them if needed. It sounds great, but the problem arises when we enable HDR. Here, the W85B really struggles because the implementation of HGiG is practically nonexistent – the TV poorly manages brightness, and instead of faithful images, we get scenes that are too bright, sometimes even blown out. The solution? The simplest one – turn off HDR in the console settings and keep everything in SDR. And here it gets really interesting, because in this scenario, the W85B shows its better side. Low input lag, high smoothness thanks to 120 Hz – all of this makes gaming look phenomenal. Yes, HDR can be skipped, but if responsiveness and smooth gameplay are the priorities, the W85B provides plenty of fun.