Hisense UR9S vs TCL X11L

Hisense UR9S is without doubt a show of force from the Chinese manufacturer when it comes to luminance. On a synthetic test pattern the panel hit as much as 2600 nits, which is an impressive result. But it’s important to clearly separate laboratory results from filmic realities. In real-world content the UR9S behaves much more restrained. Peak brightness in balanced scenes hovers around 1500 nits. In demanding, dark shots, where algorithms must both preserve deep blacks and precisely light small details, brightness can fall drastically, even to around 400 nits. The discrepancy between the chart and reality is therefore huge. This is a direct consequence of conservative local dimming behaviour. When a bright object occupies a large part of the frame, the system can easily maintain a high brightness level. However, in night scenes the priority becomes protecting blacks and fighting halo artefacts (unsightly glows around bright edges). To avoid contrast degradation the TV drastically limits light output. Even so, the UR9S can still produce a very powerful, engaging HDR effect that impresses in bright, spectacular sequences.

Colour gamut coverage

On test patterns the Hisense UR9S performs excellently in terms of colour. DCI-P3 coverage is almost 100%, and the wide BT.2020 as much as 93%. Those are figures even the best QD-OLED TVs don't reach. But again, synthetic measurements are one thing, films and series are another. In real-world scenes the figures dropped to 93% for DCI-P3 and 81% for BT.2020. That’s still a great result, but the advantage of RGB Mini LED is no longer as dramatic as manufacturers promise in marketing materials. One could even say their capability is now close to that of quantum-dot-equipped TVs, the so-called QLEDs. So why is that? To a large extent, colour reproduction here depends on the way the backlight zones operate. When a strongly saturated colour appears next to white or another, more complex element, a single zone must handle both parts of the image at once. Under such conditions the backlight can't maintain extreme saturation of a given colour on the screen, because the emitted light takes on a character closer to white. In the UR9S this has been refined quite well, but still not enough for the TV to maintain such high colour saturation in every situation.

Such a large number of zones translated not only into deep, inky blacks but also into the panel’s brightness. The X11L is an extremely bright TV. Peak brightness can easily exceed 4000 nits, and with the special "Boost" mode enabled, under specific conditions that brightness can even hover around the marketing figures of 9000–10,000 nits. This is undoubtedly one of the brightest, if not the brightest, screens on the market. But how do those numbers translate to real-world movie measurements? The results are very good, though of course far from the marketing promises. Our measured brightness in actual movie scenes hovered around 2000–3000 nits. That’s an outstanding result, considering that the vast majority of content is produced to those brightness levels, including the rarer material mastered to 4000 nits. But it also shows that the numbers the manufacturer brags about don’t always translate directly to the video content available at home. The only "quirk" (if you can call it that) is that when very small, bright elements appear on the screen, their brightness drops below 2000 nits. The dimming algorithm does this deliberately to preserve deep blacks and minimize halo. This is entirely understandable and the effect remains very strong, but it also demonstrates that even with such powerful hardware, Mini-LED technology has its limits and does not always work without compromise. In HDR, brightness isn’t the only thing that matters; color saturation and color accuracy do as well. On the X11L these are very good thanks to the new Super QLED quantum dots (SQD). The addition of a newly applied filter delivered excellent coverage of the P3 color gamut and the ultra-wide BT.2020. Although it doesn’t reach the advertised 100% of BT.2020, values around 89–90% can be called excellent. Colors are not far off those of RGB Mini-LED panels. We can even say they’re more stable because they use a less demanding algorithm than the one RGB screens often have to deal with.

We tested the Hisense UR9S in Filmmaker Mode, which out of the box provides the best image reproduction. In HDR content the TV performed quite well in that regard. The white balance didn't show major errors, and the brightness response, while following Hisense's typical curve, was kept at a reasonable level. The picture therefore wasn't overly brightened or noticeably colour-distorted. The same mode fared much worse with SDR content, the kind we watch most often, like broadcast TV or YouTube. The white balance was strongly shifted toward red and blue, giving the image a slightly pink tint. This also affected the gamma curve. Instead of approaching the reference value of 2.4, it was closer to 2.0, which made the image look too bright, especially in midtones and darker areas. Filmmaker Mode therefore remains the best out-of-the-box choice, but it's not without flaws.

When you switch on what should theoretically be the best Filmmaker Mode, you expect a one-to-one image of what the director saw. On the X11L it's quite good, but the mode has obvious flaws that our measurements immediately exposed. Let's start with SDR. Both the white balance and the gamma are simply miscalibrated. The white point has too much blue and red, so there's a faint pink cast on the screen. That also affects the gamma, which instead of holding the cinematic 2.4 runs closer to 2.2. What does that mean? The whole picture ends up pushed and artificially brighter. The worst, though, is saved for last: the HDR measurements. Besides the slight white balance shift, the X11L fails on the luminance management curve, the so‑called EOTF. What we saw in the measurements immediately explains what we saw earlier in films. The image is unnaturally bright because the curve massively overshoots the reference. The TV just unapologetically lifts the dark parts of the picture to create a "wow" effect, completely ignoring the director's intent.

After calibration, the biggest improvement was in SDR, although we also refined the HDR picture. Hisense offers plenty of calibration controls in the menu, so we were able to precisely correct the white balance and other picture errors. The most important change was removing the pink cast that had been clearly visible in SDR material. After calibration the image looks much more natural, especially in everyday content like TV and YouTube. Colour reproduction errors on the ColorChecker chart are very small after calibration. The vast majority of colours fall below values of 2–3, which is at a level very hard for the human eye to detect. The only thing we couldn't completely eliminate is the way Hisense TVs map tones in HDR. It affects how brightness is distributed in films and can subtly 'beautify' the image, rather than strictly following the creators' intent. For less experienced viewers this can create a stronger 'wow' effect, but it won't always fully match how the material should look.

After professional calibration we chiefly managed to fully master the SDR signal. The X11L responded perfectly to our adjustments. We completely straightened the white balance, removed that pink tint and set gamma to a stable 2.4. After that treatment the picture finally became consistent with the director's vision, natural and free of artificial boosts. We were also able to make minimal tweaks for HDR, but the TV's biggest flaw remained unchanged. I'm talking, of course, about how the X11L handles its brightness and how much it overshoots the EOTF curve. Unfortunately, TCL provides practically no controls to adjust this parameter. Even during professional calibration the software does not allow you to rein in that curve, so the TV in HDR will always tend to brighten the image on its own.

Digital image processing has been one of Hisense's strengths for the past two years, and the UR9S is no different. The manufacturer uses the Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, which in practice is based on the well-known MediaTek Pentonic 800 platform, previously used in models such as the U8Q. The TV handles upscaling lower-resolution material to 4K very well, and copes with low-bitrate content, where various compression artefacts can easily appear. Thanks to a function called "Smooth and gradient image", the picture stays detailed without looking overly sharpened or artificially smoothed. When watching regular broadcast TV or older, lower-quality material, the UR9S can get a surprising amount out of it. In terms of digital image processing, this is one of the most finely tuned LCD TVs we've had the chance to test.

As with the C8L we tested earlier, TCL has delivered a substantial upgrade in its flagship X series in this area. It's all down to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in this model. Thanks to it, features like smoothing tonal transitions and even upscaling content to higher resolutions finally look the way they should. The biggest Achilles' heel of previous TCL models has finally been overcome. The processor handles digital processing superbly, and in this respect the TV no longer falls short of flagship models from Korea or even the most polished ones from Japan.

The Hisense UR9S is one of the first TVs on the market with a 4K panel and a 170 Hz refresh rate. In the larger sizes, 75 and 85 inches, that goes up to 180 Hz. Such a high refresh rate will mainly benefit owners of very powerful computers. Films and TV series are still most often watched at 24 fps, and sports broadcasts at 50 fps, so in everyday use the panel's response time and the behaviour of the motion smoothing are more important. In that respect the UR9S performs very well. Panel motion blur is low, as our UFO test also confirmed. Moving objects do not leave a pronounced smear, so the picture remains clear even in fast scenes.

Spec-wise the X11L can impress, supporting refresh rates up to 144 Hz at 4K, and in Full HD it can be pushed as high as 288 Hz. From a real-world perspective, though, we were most interested in how the screen handles 120 Hz — that's the limit of today's hardware, led by current-generation consoles. How does it perform in practice? Even though it's a VA panel, the screen doesn't exhibit heavy ghosting. With very fast-moving objects you can notice a slight trail, but it's subtle enough that you hardly notice it while gaming or watching sport. Also very helpful is the motion smoothing feature called "Wyrazistość ruchów", where you can adjust motion fluidity to your liking. You'll find the recommended settings in the photo.

The Hisense UR9S is very well set up for gaming. All three HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1 and offer the full 48 Gb/s bandwidth. The TV supports 4K at 170 Hz, and on larger screen sizes even 180 Hz. You also get VRR, ALLM, NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, so it's hard to fault the basics. PC gamers can additionally enable DLG mode. After switching the resolution to Full HD the refresh rate can rise up to 330 Hz. That's more of an option for a narrow group of users, but it shows how much headroom the panel has. Hisense also added a Game Bar, where you can quickly change the main settings, check the refresh rate, or enable a crosshair and minimap zoom.

The biggest drawback remains the lack of a properly working HGiG implementation. The TV still uses its own tone mapping, which makes setting up HDR on consoles a bit awkward. In our case values around 1500–2000 nits worked best, but it's worth checking which setting keeps all the detail in the brightest parts of the image.

For gamers the X11L is simply a superb screen. TCL has already trained us to expect that it packs practically every feature available on the market into its products, and it’s exactly the same with the flagship X series. Thanks to the new processor, the X11L gets four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Naturally, HDMI 2.1 brings a set of very useful options, such as automatic low-latency mode (ALLM) and variable refresh rate (VRR) synchronisation, working across the full refresh range up to 288 Hz. All of these features can be conveniently controlled from the dedicated Game Bar. Interestingly, you can customise its appearance to your taste, with three ready-made themes directly referencing the Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles. And speaking of Xbox, Dolby Vision Gaming also runs without issue on the X11L.

When playing in the standard HDR10 format you should be aware of the screen’s specific brightness-curve tuning, which can cause problems during initial setup. Even though the TV supports HGiG, getting everything set correctly in the PlayStation or Xbox system menus can be tricky. The screen’s algorithms tend to artificially brighten the test checkerboard, so nailing the correct white-clip point by eye is genuinely difficult. For HDR10 to look correct, we suggest manually setting the console brightness in the console menu to around 2500–3000 nits.