Philips PUS8079 vs Hisense UR8S

The maximum brightness in content with a wide tonal range at 202 nits is extremely low and practically prevents watching movies and series on streaming platforms in the highest quality. It's worth mentioning that in this case, using the HDR format equipped with dynamic metadata won't help either. Why won't it help? Because the only such format implemented in the television is HDR10+, which is extremely unpopular, and films recorded in this format are scarce. It’s also worth noting that PUS8079 uses WLED backlighting, which unfortunately is not the best solution, resulting in coverage of only 80% of the wide DCI-P3 colour gamut. The effect of this reality is significantly less intense colours in HDR content.

UR8S is a higher-end Mini-LED, so you could expect plenty of brightness. Indeed, on a synthetic test pattern peak brightness reached about 2200 nits. That’s a very good result, but as always what the TV does in normal film scenes matters much more. Here the results are a bit more mixed. In bright scenes with lots of light on screen, the UR8S can deliver very strong HDR. Brightness then gets up to around 1500 nits, so the image is very intense and has a lot of punch. It’s worse with small bright elements on a dark background. The TV noticeably dims them to preserve deep blacks and avoid excessive blooming. As a result, things like single stars or small specular highlights can be only around 200 nits. And here HDR is no longer as impressive. So the local dimming algorithm works effectively, but it comes at a cost — sometimes it sacrifices the brightness of small details too much in favour of contrast.

Colours

For RGB Mini-LED TVs, colours should be evaluated a little differently than usual. If we look only at the panel’s capabilities, the UR8S performs excellently. We measured about 94% coverage of BT.2020 and virtually full DCI-P3. Those are among the highest figures currently seen in LCD TVs, and this is where the potential of the RGB backlight is most apparent. The problem is that this potential isn’t always used in real scenes. When we ran the same measurements on patterns overlaid with a film-like background, saturation of some colours started to fall noticeably. Individual zones can’t always control the three RGB components with the same precision when the scene becomes more complex. It’s most noticeable with blue and magenta. On simple test patches they can look very strong, but in tougher scenes samples of those colours clearly shrink. In other words, the UR8S has huge potential, but the TV can’t always take full advantage of it in every scene.

The best factory mode in terms of colour reproduction and fidelity to the director's vision was "Film". While it was the best of the predefined modes, it still had significant discrepancies between what the filmmaker wanted to convey and what the tested television displayed. In both SDR and HDR materials (though to a lesser extent in the latter), the white balance, which is the most fundamental element responsible for image purity, turned out to be somewhat of a repeat of the vibrant mode, with a blue tint reminiscent of what you see in retail displays. Moving directly to the SDR materials and what affects contrast, namely gamma, we see it being severely reduced. This leads to cutting off already minimal contrast resources and brightening the entire image. In the EOTF curve, responsible for the increase in brightness pace in HDR materials, we instead see a strong drop below the reference line, which, given the limited light output of the television, significantly impacted the perception of those contents, which were even more dimmed. We won’t separate the quality assessments of the colours themselves since, in both cases, they achieved astronomical deltaE values, being simply completely different from what they should be.

For evaluating the factory colours we used Filmmaker mode, which is supposed to show the image as close as possible to how the content was prepared. And if you look at the white balance alone, the UR8S performs quite well. There’s no strong tint that immediately jumps out, although as brightness increases a bit too much blue and red start to appear, with a corresponding lack of green. Colour errors are therefore visible in measurements, but the image itself doesn’t look bad.

We have much bigger reservations about how the UR8S manages image brightness. In SDR the gamma stays around 1.9–2.0 for most of the range instead of the target 2.4. In practice this simply means the image is too bright, especially in the midtones. Shadows are lifted too much, so the picture loses some depth. A similar tendency is visible in HDR. The EOTF curve sits above the reference value for a large part of the range, so the UR8S again brightens the image more than it should. This isn’t a case of the TV lacking brightness, because it has plenty, but of how it manages that brightness. As a result, HDR material can look very striking, but not always exactly as it should.

Luckily, Philips implements advanced image correction tools in all of its TVs. SDR content has benefited the most here, and the huge deltaE errors have been significantly corrected, with both white balance and gamma being substantially reworked. While we can't say it's reference-quality image, it's definitely better, and you can watch a movie or series without causing a headache, especially for your eyes. Naturally, HDR materials, due to the very low luminance of the TV, could not be corrected to the same high degree as those with a standard colour palette, but we managed to roughly straighten out the EOTF curve and the white balance. Unfortunately, that was all we could squeeze out of our unit, although it's worth noting that each unit is different and has entirely different errors, whether minor or major.

Hisense offers quite a lot of calibration options, and in SDR you can achieve a really good result with them. After adjustment the white balance is practically even across the whole range, and colour errors fall to very low values. The UR8S can be set very precisely here. HDR looks a little different. The white balance can also be noticeably improved, although at the highest brightness levels larger deviations start to appear. Most interesting, however, is the behaviour of the EOTF curve. Even after correctly setting it on test patterns, the UR8S can still interpret brightness in its own way when watching films. Depending on the scene, parts of the picture are slightly brightened and others darkened compared with how they should look. This shows that the algorithms controlling the backlight have quite a large influence on the final image. Calibration therefore allows colours to be improved very well, but we are not able to completely 'turn off' the way the UR8S manages brightness in HDR.

We will return once again to the issue of tonal transitions, but in the context of overall image quality improvement. As we can observe in the photo on the left, the gradation enhancement feature works brilliantly. Furthermore, it offers several settings, and each of them, even the lowest, provides a beneficial effect, and, what’s more, does not soften the film grain effect. We will repeat once again that this feature is the biggest advantage of the tested television.

Secondly, we will look at image scaling. Here, the tested television performed worse. We can notice, above all, the strongly jagged fine details and the characteristic white glow around figures. We must not forget about the significant artificial sharpening of the image.

The big plus of the UR8S is its use of the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor, and digital image processing is one of this model’s stronger points. The TV handles smoothing tonal transitions very well, especially with poorer-quality material. The feature responsible for this effect works effectively without overprocessing the picture. Even on a medium setting it can noticeably reduce visible banding and artefacts without heavily blurring details. Upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution content is displayed cleanly, edges look natural, and the image isn’t over-sharpened. The UR8S simply copes very well with weaker signals, and in that respect it’s one of its clear strengths.

This paragraph, unlike the others, will be extremely short. The reason for this situation is the lack of implementation of even the most basic motion smoothing function, which was to be expected given the price of the device. We also note that we are dealing with a VA panel, whose sharpness will not be the best under the sun. This type of panel is mainly associated with high contrast, which goes hand in hand with a relatively slow response time, as we can clearly read from the panel analysis results. As you can see, from the images captured in quick motion, the picture is blurred, typical for this type of panel. Although it may not be the ideal option, it can conditionally be used for watching sports, although one must keep in mind the less than optimal sharpness in motion. It's worth mentioning that movies will exhibit stuttering, as the television does not have any, not even the simplest, motion smoother.

The UR8S is equipped with a panel that has a native 180 Hz refresh rate, so right away it offers very strong potential for smooth motion. The panel itself performs really well, although some limitations typical of VA panels are still visible. Smearing is relatively low for this type of screen, but during faster motion, especially on darker backgrounds, it can still be noticed, particularly if you compare the same image to OLED TVs.

Philips PUS8079 offers only the most basic support for gaming in the form of ALLM, VRR, and Game Bar. The most important information is that thanks to the implementation of the feature responsible for dynamic refresh rate adjustment, the image is actually quite smooth for this price range and does not 'tear' the image.

A slightly greater nod towards gamers is the introduction of the Game Bar, allowing for settings adjustments 'on the fly'. This means we won’t have to exit the game to make any changes to the image. Importantly, it hasn’t been stripped of options known from higher models. We can find features such as shadow enhancement for better visibility in shadows and a colour filter for players with visual impairments.

In terms of gamer features the UR8S stacks up really well. The TV supports virtually everything you'd expect from a modern console or PC display. It has ALLM, VRR, and 4K at 120 Hz. There's also Dolby Vision in game mode, so when using, for example, an Xbox Series X you don't have to give up that HDR format. PC gamers get even more options. The panel can run at 4K and 180 Hz, and dropping to Full HD can push the refresh rate as high as 330 Hz. There's also a Game Bar that lets you quickly view key info and change gaming-related settings. The only real shortcoming is a proper implementation of HGiG. When enabled, the TV still interferes with HDR brightness mapping, so we don't get the effect intended by that standard. Apart from that, the UR8S is very well equipped for both consoles and a powerful PC.