Hisense U7S Pro vs Samsung QN80H

Let’s start with the fact that the U7S Pro is an impressively bright TV — in calibrated mode our measurement equipment showed a staggering 2200 nits of peak brightness!

As we know, peak brightness on test patterns is one thing, and actual film scenes are another. Unfortunately, in real video material the backlight output drops noticeably. The TV can still exceed the 1000-nit mark in the most demanding moments — which is still a great result and fits the mastering standards of most HDR films — but the real challenge lies in the aggressively tuned local dimming algorithms. Because of them, small, bright details like stars or the moon in a night sky are noticeably dimmed. The TV tries at all costs to maintain deep black, which is understandable, but unfortunately this comes at the expense of HDR’s dynamic range and brilliance.

The color reproduction is worth praising. The new U7S Pro is a QLED design that provides very wide color gamut coverage. Unlike last year’s model (U7Q Pro), this year’s variant is a true QLED, not a solution based on a PFS filter. As a result, color saturation has increased noticeably, and coverage of the most demanding BT.2020 color space has topped 81%.

Samsung QN80H is without a doubt a bright TV. In synthetic tests it breaks the 1000-nit barrier, which on paper already promises a solid HDR effect. In practice the screen really shows its claws, though it can't fully spread its wings (or its backlight 🤔) in every situation. The best impression comes from bright, expansive shots. Sunlit exteriors or heavily lit scenes look really good on it. Brightness then stays around 700 nits, which gives a noticeable step up in quality over standard SDR. Problems start in dark scenes with small, pinpoint highlights. The QN80H tends to heavily dim them, doing everything it can to protect black levels. On one hand we gain better contrast, on the other... we lose some of the dynamics and the sparkle of fine HDR details. The TV therefore has considerable potential, but the dimming algorithm can be too restrictive.

Color gamut coverage

Colors are good too. The QN80H uses quantum dot technology, and in our measurements it covered 93% of the DCI-P3 space and about 70% of BT.2020. Today those results won't exactly blow anyone away, but in real-world use they're more than enough to deliver vivid, natural-looking images in most movies and TV series. Colors are properly saturated and, after proper tuning, don't look artificial or overly aggressive.

We tested the U7S Pro, as we always do, in the best factory-tuned picture mode, Filmmaker Mode. The colors can be judged in two ways. The most disappointing was the profile intended for watching SDR content, i.e. traditional broadcast TV, YouTube, and other less demanding material. The image there was clearly yellowish, which turned out to be a direct consequence of a poorly set white balance. As our charts show, there's a large deficiency in the blue component, which drastically affected the overall color temperature. You can see this clearly on the ColorChecker charts and on the color gamut graphs themselves, where most samples shifted toward yellow. Fortunately, the factory HDR mode performed much better. There, color errors hovered around a Delta E of 3, which is a solid result.

The QN80H's factory settings were really good, especially compared with most TVs that come into our tests. Of course, we performed measurements in Filmmaker Mode, and that's the mode we recommend turning on right after the initial setup. In SDR material our unit was set up surprisingly well. The white balance was very even, colors looked natural, and the errors were so small they were hard to spot without measurement equipment. The only weak point was the gamma. In brighter parts of the image the TV brightened them a bit too much, so the picture sometimes lost a little depth. Even so, we'd like most TVs to look this good straight out of the box.

It was a bit worse in HDR. The white balance itself was still set correctly, so the problem wasn't with the colors but with how the QN80H managed image brightness. You could see that immediately on the EOTF chart. The TV brightened large parts of scenes too much, causing the brightest elements to blow out. Interestingly, at the same time very small points were often dimmed too much. As a result some fine detail simply disappeared. So the factory Filmmaker Mode in HDR isn't bad, but it's definitely not as well calibrated as in SDR.

We know, however, that Hisense is capable of much more, as previous generations have shown, so we simply couldn't leave the U7S Pro's factory flaws in everyday content as they were. As always in such cases, we had the TV professionally calibrated. The result? The process brought a massive change. After manually correcting the white balance and filling in the missing blue component, the annoying yellow cast vanished as if it had been wiped away. Whites became naturally clean, and skin tones gained a proper, healthy hue. Importantly, the calibration not only tamed the finicky SDR mode but also squeezed the maximum potential out of the panel, reducing average color reproduction errors to levels almost imperceptible to the human eye. The only thing we still have to fault after the whole process is the nature of Mini-LED backlighting and its specific interaction with the HDR signal. Aggressively tuned local dimming algorithms quite strongly interfere with the EOTF luminance curve. As a result, the backlight doesn't always align with the creator's intent — depending on the scene, the curve can run noticeably above or below the reference, which in places disrupts the ideal dynamics of the HDR picture.

The biggest difference after calibration was in HDR Filmmaker mode. SDR was already very good out of the box, so we didn't have much work to do there. In HDR, however, we managed to tame the way the QN80H handled brightness, as it had been over-brightening most scenes. After calibration the picture is calmer, more natural, and much closer to how a faithful picture should look.

The digital processing of lower-quality signals is top-notch here, thanks to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in the U7S Pro. Upscaling, the TV's ability to pull lower-resolution content up to 4K, also performs well. We didn't notice any unnatural, sharp contours on screen, and our test image with the model simply looked attractive.

Digital image processing in the Samsung QN80H is handled by the second-generation NQ4 AI processor. It's a chip we already know from earlier models and it still performs very well, especially with lower-resolution material. The image is effectively upscaled to 4K, but without excessive sharpening and without the feeling that the TV is forcing improvements on the source material.

The "Noise Reduction" feature also proves useful. It can noticeably reduce posterization and visible banding in poorer-quality material, particularly in low-bitrate streaming. However, it's important to remember that it doesn't work without side effects. It can remove some film grain and slightly smooth the image. So with a good-quality source we'd leave this feature off. If, however, banding and uneven tonal transitions bother you more than losing some grain, "Noise Reduction" can be a really useful addition.

The Hisense U7S Pro uses a panel with a maximum 165 Hz refresh rate at 4K, and in game mode it can even reach 330 Hz at Full HD. However, it's worth remembering that those highest numbers don't matter much in everyday use, because most content still supports at most 120 Hz (for example when playing on a console). Even so, the TV handles motion quite well and performs well for an LCD design.

There's little to fault about 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. They allow manual adjustment of the smoother, which works well for both movies and sports, effectively improving the raw TV signal.

Motion blur and motion handling on the QN80H are really good, mainly thanks to the fast panel. In 4K the screen refreshes at up to 144 Hz, and when switched to Full HD and connected to a PC it can reach as high as 240 Hz. That's new for Samsung TVs and a nice bonus for people who want to use the TV for PC gaming as well. We were more interested, however, in how the QN80H performs at 120 Hz, since consoles use that refresh rate. Here it's really good. The panel doesn't have a big problem with the smearing typical of VA panels, and slight trails behind moving objects are mostly visible on dark backgrounds. This is nothing that would interfere with normal sports viewing or gaming. The TV also includes a motion smoothing system that Samsung calls "Image Clarity." You can adjust judder reduction and blur reduction separately, so it's easy to tailor its operation to movies, sports, or your own preferences.

If you plan to connect a console or PC to the U7S Pro, you'll be more than happy – this TV is great for gamers. Hisense spared no expense and put in four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. So you won't have to juggle cables, since every port supports the full feature set. There's automatic low-latency mode (ALLM) and VRR, which works across a wide range from 48 Hz up to a cosmic 330 Hz. Of course that 330 Hz is for now a gimmick for owners of powerful PCs, because consoles are capped at 120 Hz anyway, but it's good to have that headroom for the future. The Game Bar is also really useful while gaming. It's a handy in-game menu where, without leaving the TV's main settings, you can quickly change the picture mode, enable a crosshair in the center of the screen, or even switch to an ultra-wide aspect ratio, which PC sim fans will appreciate. The only downside worth knowing about is the incorrect implementation of HGiG in games. The TV ignores the console's instructions for HDR10 output and keeps forcefully altering the image, trying to "improve" it its own way. Because of that, properly configuring HDR in the console menu (where you set brightness using the logo/checkerboard pattern) is a bit more difficult.

Samsung QN80H is a TV that scores very well on gamer-oriented features. The biggest new addition for 2026 is DLG mode, which allows refresh rates up to 240 Hz when the image is switched to Full HD resolution. This option is aimed mainly at PC users, but it also shows that Samsung is still heavily developing the gaming side of its TVs. That’s not the end of the list of advantages. The QN80H has four full-featured HDMI 2.1 ports, which in this price range still isn’t standard. You can therefore connect multiple consoles, a PC, or a soundbar at the same time without worrying which input supports the full picture capabilities. The TV also supports VRR, ALLM, and HGiG, so it’s hard to fault its basic feature set. One downside remains the lack of Dolby Vision, which may matter especially to Xbox Series X owners. That said, it’s not a flaw that rules out the QN80H as a gaming TV. Samsung includes a feature still missing from most manufacturers: its proprietary motion interpolator, Game Motion Plus. It’s a motion interpolator that also works in game mode, allowing you to improve the smoothness of titles running at 30 or 60 frames per second without a drastic increase in input lag. In practice, Game Motion Plus can make a much bigger difference than Dolby’s processing, especially in more demanding games that don’t offer a 60 FPS mode. The image becomes noticeably smoother while controls remain responsive enough. So despite the lack of Dolby Vision, the QN80H is still one of the best-equipped TVs for gamers in its class.