Hisense U7S Pro vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

Let's start with the fact that the U7S Pro is an impressively bright television. In calibrated mode our measurement equipment indicated a staggering 2,200 nits of peak brightness. This is an outstanding result, especially given that this model is positioned more as a mid-range set. However, as we know, peak brightness on test patterns is one thing and real film scenes another. Unfortunately, in actual video material the backlight output drops noticeably. Admittedly, in the most demanding moments the TV can still exceed 1,000 nits, which is still a great result and fits the mastering standards of most HDR films, but aggressively tuned local dimming algorithms turn out to be the real challenge. Because of them, small bright details, such as stars or the moon in a night sky, are noticeably dimmed. The TV tries to maintain deep blacks at all costs, which is understandable, but unfortunately this comes at the expense of the dynamic impact and the brightness of the HDR effect. The colour reproduction is worth praising. The new U7S Pro is a QLED design that provides very wide colour gamut coverage. Unlike last year’s model (U7Q Pro), this year’s variant is a 'true' QLED rather than a solution based on a PFS filter. As a result, colour saturation has increased noticeably and coverage of the most demanding BT.2020 colour space has exceeded 81%.

Bravia 3 II is certainly not a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached about 450 nits, so it falls well short of the brightest models on the market. That does not mean HDR is just a paper feature. Compared with ordinary SDR material, the brightest elements of the image can already come through noticeably, and reflections, highlights and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. This is most obvious in simpler shots where the screen displays many bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a hint of a higher dynamic-range picture. The problem only begins with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is required. There the TV quickly shows its limitations and instead of powerful, striking HDR we get only a competently rendered picture.

Colours

Bravia 3 II uses a QLED-type panel, although technically it does not use a classic quantum dot layer. Instead Sony has used a solution based on PFS phosphor, which performs a very similar role: it allows more saturated reds and greens and thus enables a much wider colour gamut. In measurements DCI-P3 coverage was around 94%, and the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. These are good results for this class of hardware, which mean the Bravia 3 II has no problem reproducing sufficiently saturated colours in HDR content. Colours do not look washed out, and more intense hues can look genuinely attractive.

We tested the U7S Pro, as we always do, in the best factory-calibrated picture mode, namely Filmmaker Mode. The colours on display can be judged in two ways. The most disappointing was the preset intended for viewing SDR content, that is conventional television, YouTube and other less demanding material. The image there was noticeably yellowish, which turned out to be a direct consequence of an incorrectly set white balance. As our graphs show, this was due to a large deficiency of the blue component, which drastically affected the overall colour temperature. You can see this clearly on the ColorChecker charts and on the colour gamut plots themselves, where most samples shifted towards yellow. Fortunately the factory HDR mode performed much better; there the colour errors hovered around a Delta E of 3, which is already a very solid result.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II already delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. White balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases the blue and red components become slightly lacking, so whites can at times take on a marginally warmer, faintly greenish tint. These are not faults that immediately catch the eye when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setting can be regarded as quite good. The situation is similar in HDR. Here too there is a slight lack of the blue component, so the image is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference is not large enough to significantly interfere with normal viewing.

We know, however, that the company Hisense is capable of much more – as previous generations have demonstrated – which is why we couldn't simply overlook the factory shortcomings of the U7S Pro model in everyday content. As is often the case, the television underwent professional calibration. The conclusions? This process brought about a colossal change. After manually adjusting the white balance and supplementing the deficiencies in the blue component, the annoying yellow tint disappeared as if by magic. White became naturally pure, and skin tones gained the appropriate, healthy hue. Importantly, calibration not only tamed the capricious SDR mode but also allowed us to extract the maximum potential from the panel, reducing average colour reproduction errors to levels nearly imperceptible to the human eye. The only thing we must criticise after the whole process is the very nature of the Mini-LED backlight and its specific interaction with the HDR signal. The aggressively tuned local dimming algorithms significantly interfere with the EOTF brightness curve. As a result, the backlight does not always work perfectly with the creator's intention – depending on the scene being viewed, the curve can noticeably deviate either above or below the reference, which at times disrupts the ideal dynamics of HDR imagery.

After calibration, there is particularly a lot to be gained from SDR content. The white balance was set almost perfectly, the gamma practically matches the reference value, and the average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That is already a level at which differences from the reference image are, in practice, very difficult to detect. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that, despite its position in Sony’s lineup, it has quite a lot of potential for precise picture calibration. Improvements are also visible in HDR, although here it is no longer possible to avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. After evening out the colours, it is easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film content runs slightly below the reference value in places, so the Bravia 3 II gently darkens part of the image. This is not an ideal solution from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has its benefits. With no local dimming and average black levels, this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps maintain a stronger impression of contrast. So you could say Sony partly masks the limitations of the panel this way, instead of trying at all costs to stick to the reference luminance.

The digital processing of lower-quality signals is of a very high standard here, all thanks to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in the U7S Pro. Upscaling itself also performs very well, meaning the TV's ability to lift lower-resolution sources to 4K is strong. We didn't notice any unnatural, sharp contours on the screen, and our test image featuring a model simply looked attractive.

The Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, and there are a few changes in image processing. Starting with the basics. The upscaling itself is adequate. The TV can sensibly pull up lower-resolution material and does not have a strong tendency to over-emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or weaker streaming material the picture therefore remains quite pleasing. We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its role is essentially very similar: it is supposed to smooth unpleasant tonal transitions and artefacts resulting from heavy signal compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "High" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many elements of the image at once, causing film grain to disappear and the texture of objects or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When a scene contains more motion, the function's effect clearly weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the picture altogether. For everyday viewing we therefore would not recommend using it at a high level. It can help on a static shot, but the price is often an excessive loss of detail.

Hisense U7S Pro uses a panel with a maximum refresh rate of 165 Hz at 4K, and in game mode it can even reach 330 Hz at Full HD. However, it's worth remembering that these top figures matter little in everyday use, because most content is limited to a maximum of 120 Hz (for example when playing on a console). Even so, the TV handles motion quite well and performs very respectably for an LCD design.

It's hard to fault the smoothness itself. In the menu you'll find a motion smoothing feature called "Motion Enhancement", which hides two sliders: blur reduction and judder reduction. These allow manual configuration of the smoother, which works well for both films and sport, effectively improving the raw TV signal.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120Hz VA panel, a solution that, by nature, despite the high refresh rate, does not always cope well with motion blur. Here, however, Sony has managed to keep that problem very well under control. Fast-moving objects remain crisp, and the characteristic trails and blurring are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It is one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we have tested. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive True RGB flagship series, the Bravia 9 II.

If you plan to connect a console or PC to the U7S Pro, you'll be more than satisfied. This TV is excellent for gamers. Hisense didn't spare any expense and fitted it with four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth, so you don't need to juggle cables, as each port supports the full feature set. It offers automatic low-latency mode (ALLM) and VRR, which operates across a wide range from 48 Hz up to a whopping 330 Hz. Of course, that 330 Hz is for now a bit of a gimmick for owners of powerful PCs, since consoles will still be limited to 120 Hz, but it's good to have that headroom for the future. The Game Bar is also very useful while gaming. It's a handy on-screen menu for players where, without leaving the main TV settings, you can quickly change picture mode, enable a crosshair in the centre of the screen, or even switch to an ultra-wide display aspect, which PC simulator fans will appreciate. The only drawback to be aware of is an incorrect implementation of the HGiG standard in games. The TV ignores the console's HDR10 instructions and keeps forcefully altering the image in an attempt to "improve" it, which makes proper HDR setup in the console menu (where you set brightness using the symbols/checkerboard pattern) somewhat more awkward.

Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been implemented exactly as we would like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get as many as four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the issues that has plagued this manufacturer’s TVs for years. We can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, for example VRR or ALLM. There is also a simple Game Bar that lets you view key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game. However, there are two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That will not be a problem for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC, for example to get higher frame rates in certain games, will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony does not allow you to disable the TV’s tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the screen is always processing HDR content even when you would prefer to leave that task to the console. This is most obvious during HDR setup — the checkerboard pattern does not disappear at the point that corresponds to the TV’s actual capabilities. That does not mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to approach the setup a little differently and, instead of relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to around 450 nits. The issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start setting up the console.