LG UA75006LA (VA) vs Hisense U7S Pro

The LG UA7500 with a VA panel holds brightness at around 350 nits, which does not make a significant impression by today's standards. It is hard to speak of a true HDR experience here – most content looks more like classic SDR with a slight attempt at boosting the highlights. The advantage is that regardless of the tested scene, the effect remained relatively stable. However, we noticed that in very extreme scenes with a lot of fine details, the television can gently dim the image to achieve better black levels, but this comes at the expense of visibility of bright effects. It is also worth noting that the UA7500 is not equipped with any additional technologies for expanding colours. It is neither a QLED panel nor PFS LED, which is why the coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut is only 80%, making many HDR films appear flat and not conveying the full diversity of colours.

Let's start with the fact that the U7S Pro is an impressively bright television – in calibrated mode, our measuring equipment indicated a staggering 2200 nits of peak brightness! This is an absolutely remarkable result, considering that this model is positioned rather as a mid-range option.

However, as we know, peak brightness on test patterns is one thing, and actual film scenes are another. Unfortunately, in real video materials, the backlight power clearly drops. Although in the most demanding moments, the television can still exceed the 1000-nit barrier – which is still an excellent result, perfectly aligned with the mastering standards of most HDR films – the real challenge comes from the aggressively tuned local dimming algorithms. Because of this, small, bright details such as stars or the moon in the night sky are noticeably dimmed. The television tries at all costs to maintain deep blacks, which is of course understandable, but unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the dynamics and brilliance of the HDR effect itself.

One must commend the colour reproduction. The new U7S Pro is a QLED design that provides very wide coverage of the colour palette. 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, the colour saturation has clearly increased, and coverage of the most demanding BT.2020 colour space has surpassed the 81% barrier.

The Filmmaker mode on the LG UA7500 performs better than one might expect from such a budget television, but let’s not get carried away with praise. The image is put together quite sensibly and does not irritate at first glance, however, its weaknesses quickly become apparent. This is most evident in scenes with bright points – background lamps or reflections of light on the skin are distinctly exaggerated. The faces of the characters often look unnatural, as if they have been 'overexposed'. Added to this is the default gamma characteristic, which brightens the smallest details and causes the image to lose subtlety in darker areas. Nevertheless, it is a fact that for its price range, the UA7500 in factory mode provides a fairly decent starting point. However, it is clear that without additional adjustment, it will not be possible to avoid these problems, which is why – as with other televisions – we decided to see what could be achieved after calibration.

We tested the U7S Pro model – as we always do – in the best factory-calibrated picture mode, namely Filmmaker Mode. We can evaluate the displayed colours in two ways. The most disappointing was the profile designed for viewing SDR content, that is, traditional television, YouTube, and other less demanding materials. The picture was clearly yellowed, which turned out to be a direct consequence of a poorly set white balance. As our graphs show, there is a significant deficiency of the blue component, which drastically affected the overall colour temperature. This is clearly visible on the ColorChecker charts as well as on the graphs of the colour palette itself, where most samples leaned towards yellow. Fortunately, the factory HDR mode fared much better – there, the colour errors were around a Delta E value of 3, which is already a really solid result.

The biggest improvement we noticed was when calibrating the mode intended for everyday SDR content. We managed to smooth out the white balance in an acceptable way and tackle the problem of excessive brightening of fine details due to the gamma curve. As a result, the image gained the consistency and naturalness that was missing in the factory settings. After such adjustments, we can confidently state that for everyday television content, programmes, or materials from YouTube, the LG UA7500 performs very well – especially after professional calibration. The situation is somewhat different for HDR content. Here, calibration allowed us to tame the white balance and slightly improve the brightness management; however, the limitations of the construction are immediately apparent. The lack of additional filters to widen the colour palette results in the most vivid colours appearing flat, and the image does not display the intensity we would expect from good HDR. So in SDR, the UA7500 performs quite well, but in HDR – despite corrections – it remains far behind, and this is a characteristic that one must accept when choosing this television.

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.

LG UA7500 with a VA panel performed really well in this category. Image scaling from Full HD or even SD materials was surprisingly smooth. The picture looked smooth, edges were not overly jagged, and the television retained a considerable amount of detail, meaning that even older films did not lose their character. It particularly excelled with faces – there were no artificial contours or 'mask' effects, which often occur in cheaper models. The way the television handled tonal transitions in lower quality materials is also noteworthy. Thanks to digital processing, colours did not bleed into each other, and gradients appeared natural and smooth. There was no excessive smoothing of the image or loss of cinematic grain. This makes the UA7500 great for everyday content – from terrestrial television, through sports, to YouTube, where we often watch materials in various resolutions.

The digital processing of lower quality signals is at a very high level here, thanks to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in the U7S Pro. The upscaling performance is equally impressive, meaning the television’s ability to enhance lower resolution signals to 4K. We did not notice any unnatural, sharp contours on the screen, and our test image featuring the model simply looked attractive.

The LG UA7500 is a television with a 60 Hz panel, so it's difficult to expect much admiration in this category. It's more of a screen intended for everyday content or an evening film viewing rather than for following dynamic sporting events or playing action games. It's clear that the manufacturer targeted this model specifically at that group of consumers – and it performs correctly in that regard. We have the TruMotion feature available, which is a motion smoother. It's simple, with only one slider, but it can introduce a noticeable difference. At the lower settings, the image appears more raw and cinematic, whereas at higher values, the motion becomes smoother and more pleasing to the eye.

The Hisense U7S Pro uses a panel with a maximum refresh rate of 165 Hz in 4K, and in game mode, it can reach up to 330 Hz at Full HD resolution. However, it is important to remember that these highest figures do not significantly matter in everyday use, as most content is still limited to a maximum of 120 Hz (for example, when gaming on a console). Nevertheless, the television handles motion quite well and performs really decently for an LCD construction.

There is little to criticise about the fluidity itself. In the menu, we find a motion smoother called "Motion Enhancement", which hides two sliders: blur reduction and judder reduction. These allow for manual configuration of the smoother, which works well in both films and sports, effectively enhancing the raw television signal.

The LG UA7500 is a television that can be confidently recommended to "casual" gamers. It lacks a 120 Hz panel and HDMI 2.1 ports, so it cannot fully utilise the potential of modern consoles. However, the manufacturer has included several features that can enhance the gaming experience. Notably, the Game Bar stands out – a very well-designed panel where you can quickly preview and change the most important settings. From this interface, we have access to features like ALLM mode (automatic switching to game mode) and frame synchronization, which is VRR. The VRR range is limited – it works from 48 to 60 Hz – but the mere presence of this feature in such an affordable television makes a positive impression.

Additionally, it supports HGiG, which is the HDR calibration mode for gaming. It sounds good, but based on our testing experiences, we already know that for the UA7500, this option doesn't make much sense. The television doesn't handle HDR very well, so paradoxically, we achieved better results with this mode disabled. This is another indication that the UA7500 is more of a screen for occasional gamers who value simplicity and convenience rather than for those seeking the full experience from the latest consoles.

If you plan to connect a console or PC to the U7S Pro, you will be more than satisfied – this television is excellent equipment for a gamer. Hisense has not spared any expense and has included as many as 4 HDMI 2.1 ports with full bandwidth of 48 Gbps. You won’t need to juggle cables as each port will handle the full set of features. We have an automatic game mode (ALLM) and VRR, which operates in a wide range from 48 Hz to an impressive 330 Hz. Of course, that 330 Hz is currently a gimmick for owners of powerful PCs, as consoles will be limited to 120 Hz, but it’s good to have that buffer for the future. The Game Bar also works very well during gaming. It’s a handy menu bar for gamers, where you can quickly change the picture mode, enable a crosshair in the centre of the screen, and even change the display aspect ratio to ultra-wide without having to exit to the main television settings, which will be appreciated by fans of PC simulators. The only downside worth mentioning is the improper implementation of the HGiG format in games. The issue is that the television ignores instructions from the console regarding the image generated in HDR10 and continues to forcefully interfere with the image it produces, trying to "enhance" it in its own way. This makes proper HDR configuration in the console menu (where you set brightness on symbols/checkerboard) somewhat difficult.