Hisense UR9S vs Samsung S90H (WOLED)

Hisense UR9S is undoubtedly a show of strength from the Chinese manufacturer when it comes to luminance. On a synthetic test pattern the panel reached as much as 2600 nits, which is an impressive result. However, it is important to clearly separate laboratory results from filmic realities. In real material the UR9S behaves much more... restrained. Maximum brightness peaks in balanced scenes hover around 1500 nits. In demanding, dark shots, where algorithms must at once maintain deep black 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 the conservative behaviour of the local dimming system. When a bright object occupies a large part of the frame, the system can easily sustain a high brightness. But in night scenes the priority becomes protecting black and combating the halo effect (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, immersive HDR effect that impresses in bright, spectacular sequences.

Colour gamut coverage

On test patterns the Hisense UR9S performs excellently in terms of colour. Its coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut is almost 100%, and the wide BT.2020 as much as 93%. Those are results even the best QD-OLED TVs do not achieve. But again, synthetic measurements are one thing, films and series another. In real-world scenes the figures fell 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 claim in their marketing materials. One could even say that currently their capability is similar to TVs equipped with quantum dots, the so-called QLED. So why does this happen? To a large extent colour reproduction here depends on the specifics of how the backlight zones operate. When a strongly saturated colour sits next to white or another, more complex element, a single zone has to handle both parts of the picture at once. Under those conditions the backlight cannot maintain extreme saturation of a given colour on screen, because the emitted light takes on a more white-like character. 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.

Samsung S90H in the WOLED variant is still an exceptionally bright TV for its price bracket, although compared with the QD-OLED version it is slightly dimmer. The difference is not as significant as in last year’s F series, where the gap could reach as much as 500 nits. Here the parameters of both panels are very similar, and differences in peak brightness are only in the order of 100–150 nits. In small-area measurements the S90H on the WOLED panel easily reaches levels close to 1500 nits. Such a reserve of power allows HDR dynamics to be reproduced phenomenally; all highlights, light reflections and explosions have the necessary punch, exactly as the creators intended in the editing studio. As with most OLED displays, when a very bright scene fills the whole screen protection systems activate and brightness naturally falls to around 700 nits. It is worth emphasising that this is still an excellent result on the market. Often noticeably better than many Mini LED screens in the same segment.

Colour gamut coverage

The biggest difference between the two S90H variants lies in colour reproduction and saturation. This results directly from the different construction of the WOLED panel, which uses an additional white subpixel. As a consequence, colours at very high brightness do not reach the same intense saturation, and the volume of the wide gamut is somewhat more limited than in QD-OLED. That does not change the fact that in everyday use these differences will be hard for most viewers to spot. The DCI-P3 space we measured reaches nearly 99% on the WOLED panel, which means that in the vast majority of real film scenes both variants will present an almost identical picture. The true distance only reveals itself in rarer, exceptionally demanding productions that use the ultra-wide BT.2020 gamut. Due to the specifics of the WOLED panel’s construction, coverage of that standard is about 15% lower compared with the S90HAT with a QD-OLED panel, so the brightest, heavily lit colours in HDR may appear slightly less vivid.

We tested the Hisense UR9S in Filmmaker Mode, which out of the box provides the best image reproduction. With HDR material the TV performed quite well in this regard. The white balance showed no major errors, and the luminance response, although it had the characteristic Hisense profile, was maintained at a reasonable level. The picture was therefore neither excessively brightened nor noticeably colour-distorted. The same mode performed much worse with SDR material, the kind of content we watch most often, such as broadcast television or YouTube. The white balance was strongly shifted towards red and blue, giving the picture a slight pink tint. This also affected the gamma curve. Instead of approaching the reference value of 2.4, it was closer to 2.0, making the image look too bright, particularly in midtones and darker areas. Filmmaker Mode therefore remains the best out-of-the-box choice, but it is not a mode without faults.

In Filmmaker mode, which we strongly recommend switching on straight out of the box, the S90H offers very good factory colour tuning. Colours are natural and faithful to the creators' intent, without the irritating oversaturation found in more aggressive presets. However, as is often the case without full calibration, no two units are identical. In our test the white balance was slightly lacking in blue, causing the image to lean a little towards warmer, yellowish tones. This was most noticeable in bright scenes, such as the snowy sequences from Star Wars. Additionally, the gamma curve was slightly low at 2.2, which produced a minor lift in shadow detail. In HDR mode the tuning was somewhat better, showing only a slight undersaturation in the red region.

After calibration the biggest improvement was in SDR mode, although we also refined the HDR picture. Hisense offers a lot of calibration settings in the menu, so we were able to precisely correct the white balance and the remaining image errors. The most important change was removing the pink tint that had previously been clearly visible in SDR material. After calibration the picture looks much more natural, especially in everyday content such as TV or YouTube.

Colour reproduction errors on the ColorChecker chart are very small after calibration. The vast majority of colours fall below values of 2 to 3, which is at a level very difficult to discern with the human eye. The only thing we could not completely eliminate is the tone-mapping approach characteristic of Hisense TVs in HDR. It affects how brightness is distributed in films and can subtly 'enhance' the image, rather than sticking exactly to the creators' intent. For less experienced viewers this can produce a stronger 'wow' effect, but it will not always fully match how the material should look.

After a full calibration it’s fair to say the S90H in WOLED guise looks almost perfect. In SDR mode colour inaccuracies drop to ultra-low levels and Delta E values very rarely exceed 2. That’s a phenomenal result, so if you care about perfectly faithful colour reproduction it’s definitely worth considering calibration. The calibrated HDR mode also performs very well, with the white balance stabilised and earlier deviations eliminated. After professional fine-tuning it’s really hard to find anything to criticise, because the TV delivers an image with almost reference-level naturalness and three-dimensionality. The slightly lower score in this category compared with the QD-OLED variant is solely due to the aforementioned limitation in saturation in extremely bright scenes; the tuning options and colour fidelity themselves are at the highest level.

For the past two years digital picture processing has been one of Hisense's strengths, and the UR9S is no exception. The manufacturer uses the Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, which in practice is built on the well-known MediaTek Pentonic 800 platform, previously used, among others, in the U8Q model. The TV handles upscaling lower-resolution material to 4K very well, and copes with low-bitrate content where compression artefacts are common. Thanks to a feature called "Smooth and Gradient Picture", the image remains detailed without appearing over-sharpened or artificially smoothed. When watching regular broadcast TV or older, lower-quality material, the UR9S can get a surprising amount out of them. In terms of digital picture processing, this is one of the most refined LCD TVs we've had the chance to test.

In terms of posterisation reduction itself, Samsung has kept the solutions known from last year’s models. The dedicated gradient-smoothing function performs quite well and can effectively mask unwanted tonal banding, which is useful on a WOLED panel that is slightly more prone to banding. However, you should be aware of its aggressive behaviour. This mechanism, alongside the artefacts themselves, can clean up fine film grain and gently soften detail. Ultimately it is a matter of compromise, but if you want an absolutely faithful reproduction, it is safer to leave this option off.

Similarly, in the area of scaling it is difficult to call this a breakthrough. The S90H uses the same NQ4 Gen3 processor as its predecessor, so the upscaling quality was almost identical. The chip sharpens lower-resolution material very well, extracting a satisfying level of detail. Samsung still has not dealt with the longstanding overscan issue, though. With some older recordings or archive footage the edges of the image can be slightly cropped. It’s a minor flaw, but it’s a pity the manufacturer still hasn’t eliminated it.

The Hisense UR9S is one of the first televisions on the market with a 4K panel and a 170 Hz refresh rate. In the larger sizes, 75 and 85 inches, this goes up to 180 Hz. However, such a high refresh rate will be useful mainly to owners of very high-performance PCs. Most films and TV series are still watched at 24 fps, and sports broadcasts at 50 fps, so for everyday use panel response time and the operation of the motion smoothing are more important. In that respect the UR9S performs very well. Panel smearing is minimal, as confirmed by our UFO test. Moving objects do not leave a pronounced trail, so the picture remains clear even in fast scenes.

In terms of motion handling, the S90H is simply excellent. This year's panel offers a boosted refresh rate of up to 165 Hz, though in practice the benefit will mainly be for gamers connecting a high-end PC. For films, series or sports broadcasts such a high refresh rate makes no difference and the picture looks exactly the same as at the standard 120 Hz. Regardless of the source, however, the OLED panel's lightning-fast response time does its job, so motion is clean and the ghosting or smearing familiar from LCD screens simply does not occur here.

Hisense UR9S is very well prepared 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. It also includes VRR, ALLM, NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, so in terms of basic features there is little to criticise. PC gamers can additionally enable DLG mode. After switching the resolution to Full HD the refresh rate can increase to as much as 330 Hz. That's probably an option for a relatively small group of users, but it shows how much headroom the panel has. Hisense has also added a Game Bar that lets you quickly change key settings, check the refresh rate or enable an on-screen crosshair and minimap zoom.

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

Players should feel at home with the S90H, because Samsung has left few reasons to complain in that respect. The TV has four HDMI 2.1 ports, each of which supports VRR, ALLM and high refresh rates. There’s also the Game Bar, a handy menu that lets you quickly check key parameters and change settings without leaving the game. Importantly, Samsung has also improved HGiG mode. In last year’s models it could cause problems when used with a console, but on the S90H it now works as it should. What really stands out against the competition is the Game Motion Plus feature. It’s a special motion smoothing mode for games that works best with titles running at 30 or 60 fps. Motion becomes noticeably smoother, while latency remains at a reasonable level. In our measurements it was under 50 ms, so gaming is still comfortable. That’s important, because on many TVs enabling a similar smoothing feature causes such a large increase in input lag that controls become noticeably sluggish. Samsung has managed to find a good compromise here. There’s still no Dolby Vision Gaming, but in practice Game Motion Plus may prove to be a much more useful feature.