Hisense U7S Pro vs Samsung S85H

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%.

Interestingly, the new WOLED SE panel has brought a slight improvement in brightness to the S85 series. In the same movie scenes the previous year's model stayed closer to about 700 nits, while the S85H can reach around 800 nits. Of course this isn't a change that completely transforms the HDR experience, but that extra headroom is noticeable especially with small highlights, reflections, and stronger special effects. Around 800 nits is already a very good result for an entry-level OLED and in most films it's enough for HDR to have the right impact. Bright elements can clearly stand out from perfect black, and that contrast still does most of the heavy lifting here. You should remember the typical limitation of organic technology, though. When a very bright scene covers a large part of the screen, brightness can drop by almost half. This is the result of the panel's protection mechanisms, which limit its power with large bright areas.

Colors

The S85H can produce very pleasant, saturated colors and in most HDR films it looks really good in that respect. We measured roughly 95% DCI-P3 coverage, so the palette most often used in movies is reproduced to a very large degree. Skin tones, greens, and stronger reds still have appropriate intensity, and during normal viewing it's hard to fault them. Only when you look more broadly at BT.2020 do the limitations of the new WOLED SE panel become apparent. Coverage was around 70%, a bit less than in previous-generation WOLEDs and noticeably less than in QD-OLED panels. In films this isn't a major loss, because most productions rarely use such highly saturated colors. You notice it more often in games, where developers are much more likely to employ more intense colors.

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.

To evaluate color we, of course, selected Filmmaker mode, and in SDR our S85H unit was very well calibrated out of the box. The biggest deviation appears in the white balance, where a bit of blue drops out as brightness increases. In practice this means whites and grays have a slightly warmer tint than they should. It's not a major error and during normal viewing it generally isn't very noticeable. Gamma also stays close to the reference value, so the image is neither overly bright nor unnecessarily dim. The S85H's SDR picture quality is therefore very good straight out of the box. A few more imperfections show up in HDR. Here the white balance shifts more as brightness increases, with blue becoming dominant and the red component noticeably lacking. That also leads to larger errors in some colors. These aren't yet distortions that completely change the character of the image, but compared directly with the reference the difference is easier to spot. Overall, Filmmaker mode is a very good starting point before professional calibration.

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.

Calibration yields very good results on the S85H. First, the white balance can be set almost perfectly, which removes the slightly too-warm image cast that was visible earlier in SDR. Color reproduction itself also improves significantly; most errors drop to a very low level, and in everyday viewing it's hard to notice any visible inaccuracies. You can also improve a lot in HDR, although some issues remain due to the TV's inherent characteristics. The S85H doesn't always perfectly follow the brightness curve. The darkest areas are slightly boosted, and as you approach the panel's limits you can see small deviations in the brightest highlights. On top of that there's limited coverage of the wider BT.2020 gamut, which no calibration can of course overcome. Despite this, the end result is very good, and after calibration the S85H can deliver a well-tuned, natural image.

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.

For the S85H, Samsung used the same proprietary NQ4 Gen2 AI processor as in last year’s S85F, and in terms of digital image processing it performs quite well. Upscaling is one of this model’s strengths. Lower-resolution content is well sharpened, edges look natural, and the image doesn’t feel overly artificial. Just bear in mind a common Samsung quirk: at very low resolutions you can’t completely disable overscan, so the TV may slightly crop the left edge of the image. The "noise reduction" function, which smooths weaker tonal transitions, also works very well. The processor can effectively remove posterization and other imperfections visible in lower-quality material. However, you need to be careful with the strength of this feature, because Samsung can be fairly aggressive here. When it’s enabled, along with unwanted artifacts, fine image details such as the texture of skin or clothing can start to disappear.

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.

The S85H uses an OLED panel, so it performs excellently when it comes to motion blur. Pixels respond virtually instantly, so moving objects don’t leave the characteristic ghosting seen on some LCD TVs. This is especially noticeable with sports or fast-paced games, where the image stays very clean even during rapid motion. The panel runs at 120 Hz. That’s more than enough for movies, TV series, sports, or console gaming. It’s a bit of a shame Samsung didn’t include a higher refresh rate aimed at PC gamers, since more and more TVs now offer 144 or even 165 Hz at 4K. However, that doesn’t affect motion perception in films or sports. There’s also the classic motion smoothing feature with two settings, blur reduction and judder reduction. So you can choose whether films should keep their cinematic 24 frames per second or if you prefer to smooth them a bit. The S85H gives you plenty of flexibility here, and the interpolation works well and, with reasonable settings, doesn’t produce too many artifacts.

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.

The Samsung S85H is very well set up for gaming, whether you connect a console or a PC. The manufacturer didn’t skimp on ports and all four HDMI inputs support full HDMI 2.1. That means you can use 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, and ALLM without worrying which input to plug your console into. With several devices that matters, because you don’t have to choose between a console, a PC, or a soundbar connected via eARC. The feature set itself is very comprehensive. The S85H supports VRR, FreeSync, and automatic switching to game mode, and Samsung offers its comprehensive Game Bar, which lets you quickly view key signal parameters and change settings without leaving the game. The only real omission is Dolby Vision, which will matter mainly to Xbox owners. That’s a typical trait of Samsung TVs. Game Motion Plus performs very well and is one of the features that have set Samsung TVs apart for years. It smooths motion in games running at 30 or 60 fps, but does so without as large an increase in input lag as traditional motion smoothing. In practice, with more relaxed games, racing titles, or action games this can really improve perceived motion, especially if you’re sensitive to low framerates.