Hisense UR9S vs TCL P7L / P79L

The Hisense UR9S is without a doubt 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. But you have to clearly separate lab results from film realities. In real material the UR9S behaves much more restrained. Peak brightness in balanced scenes hovers around 1500 nits. In demanding, dark shots—where the algorithms must at the same time preserve deep blacks and precisely light small details—brightness can drop drastically, even down to around 400 nits. The gap between the chart and reality is therefore huge. This is a direct consequence of conservative local-dimming behavior. When a bright object occupies a large portion of the frame, the system can easily maintain a high luminance. But in night scenes the priority becomes protecting black levels and fighting the halo effect (unsightly glows around bright edges). To avoid degrading contrast, the TV drastically limits its light output. Even so, the UR9S can still produce a very powerful, engaging HDR effect that impresses in bright, spectacular sequences.

Color gamut coverage

On test patterns the Hisense UR9S performs excellently in terms of color. DCI-P3 coverage is nearly 100%, and BT.2020 coverage reaches 93%. Those are figures even the best QD-OLED TVs don't achieve. But again, synthetic measurements are one thing and movies and series are another. In real-world scenes the numbers fell to 93% for DCI-P3 and 81% for BT.2020. That's still great, but the advantage of RGB Mini LED is no longer as dramatic as manufacturers promise in marketing materials. You could even say their capability is now close to TVs equipped with quantum dots, the so-called QLEDs. Why does this happen? Largely, color reproduction depends on how the local dimming zones operate. When a highly saturated color appears next to white or another, more complex element, a single zone must handle both parts of the image at once. Under those conditions the backlight cannot maintain extreme saturation of a given color on the screen, because the emitted light takes on a character closer to white. Hisense refined this quite well in the UR9S, but still not enough for the TV to sustain such high color saturation in every situation.

The biggest limitation of the TCL P7L in HDR is simply brightness. The TV doesn't have a large luminance headroom, so strong highlights, sunlight, or small light sources can't clearly "pop" out of the image. As a result, even well-produced HDR material looks fairly restrained and in terms of dynamic range is closer to good SDR than to what brighter models show. That doesn't mean the P7L can't handle HDR at all — the issue is mainly a lack of sufficient backlight power.

Looking at color, the situation is a bit better. The TV covers about 91% of the DCI-P3 gamut and about 68% of the wider BT.2020 color space, so for its price class the color range is quite decent. TCL markets this model as QLED, though the nature of the solution used is closer to a PFS phosphor-based backlight than a classic quantum-dot layer. What matters most to viewers, however, is the result: more saturated colors are available.

We tested the Hisense UR9S in Filmmaker Mode, which, by default, provides the most accurate image reproduction. In HDR content the TV performed quite well in that regard. White balance did not show large errors, and the luminance curve, though typical for Hisense, was at a reasonable level. So the image was neither overly bright nor noticeably color-shifted. The same mode fared much worse with SDR content, meaning the content we watch most often, such as broadcast TV or YouTube. White balance was strongly shifted toward red and blue, giving the image a slightly pink tint. This also affected the gamma curve. Instead of approaching the reference value of 2.4, it was closer to 2.0, which made the image look too bright, especially in midtones and darker areas. Filmmaker Mode therefore remains the best out-of-the-box choice, but it's not without flaws.

In Film mode the TCL P7L performs fairly well without major adjustments, especially with typical SDR material. The white balance is relatively even, although as brightness increases there is a slight rise in red and blue and a bit of a shortage of green. This does not produce a strongly noticeable tint and most colors remain close to their reference points. The ColorChecker confirms this, with a large portion of errors falling below a level that would notably bother viewers during normal watching. We have more concerns about the gamma response. In the darkest parts of the image the TV runs it noticeably above the reference, so some shadow detail can be a little too dimmed. The curve then settles and for much of the range it is close to the intended target. As a result SDR generally looks natural, but in dark scenes the P7L can lose some subtlety. In HDR the factory setting is less precise. As brightness increases an excess of blue becomes more pronounced, making the image look cooler than it should. The number of larger color deviations also grows, particularly in brighter hues. The EOTF curve itself is handled fairly conservatively, with the TV showing the image darker than the reference over a large portion of the range. For a budget model, however, the factory Film mode settings are not bad.

After calibration we saw the biggest improvement in SDR mode, though we also refined the HDR picture. Hisense offers a lot of calibration settings in the TV's menu, so we could precisely correct the white balance and other image errors. The most important change was removing the pink cast that had previously been clearly visible in SDR content. After calibration the picture looks much more natural, especially in everyday content such as TV or YouTube.

Color reproduction errors on the ColorChecker chart are very small after calibration. The vast majority of colors fall below a Delta E of 2–3, meaning at a level very hard for the human eye to detect. The only thing we couldn't completely eliminate is the characteristic HDR tone mapping typical of Hisense TVs. It affects how brightness is distributed in movies and can subtly "beautify" the image, rather than strictly following the creators' intent. For a less experienced viewer this can produce a stronger "wow" effect, but it won't always fully match how the content should look.

After calibration, the TCL P7L can deliver a really pleasant picture, especially with classic SDR material. We managed to very effectively even out the white balance, and the gamma curve now tracks close to the target value of 2.4. You can also see this in the color measurements, as most errors dropped noticeably, and in everyday viewing it's hard to find any strongly visible inaccuracies. Movies, series, YouTube, or regular TV therefore look more natural, without unnecessary warming or a cool cast. For a model in this price range, the result in SDR is really very good.

With HDR the situation gets more complicated. Calibration helped improve the white balance and tidy up some deviations, but here the panel's limitations become increasingly apparent. The P7L has relatively low brightness and can't maintain appropriate luminance for more saturated colors, so some errors remain even after careful tuning. In other words, settings can improve how the TV interprets the signal, but they can't overcome its physical capabilities. That's why calibration makes the most sense for this model primarily with SDR.

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

In this regard the TCL P7L performs surprisingly well, especially for such an inexpensive TV. The tonal transition smoothing feature, which in many budget models does little or almost nothing, actually manages to improve the picture here. It doesn't remove all banding completely, but it can noticeably reduce posterization and make trickier gradients look more natural. At this price point that's a genuinely pleasant surprise.

Upscaling itself also performs well. Lower-resolution material is scaled correctly, without excessive sharpening or adding artificial outlines around objects. Of course the P7L won't turn a very poor source into 4K-quality footage, but for regular TV the result is simply solid. For a model in this class there is little to criticize.

The Hisense UR9S is one of the first TVs on the market with a 4K panel and a 170 Hz refresh rate. In the larger sizes, 75 and 85 inches, that goes up to 180 Hz. Such a high refresh rate will mainly be useful to owners of very powerful PCs. We still watch movies and series mostly at 24 fps, and sports broadcasts at 50 fps, so in everyday use panel response time and the performance of motion smoothing are more important. In that respect the UR9S performs very well. Motion blur is minimal, as our UFO test also confirmed. Moving objects do not leave a pronounced trail, so the picture remains clear even in fast scenes.

The TCL P7L uses a panel with a native 60 Hz refresh rate at 4K resolution, and that's how it should be treated in everyday use. For movies the TV mainly offers frame interpolation, so it can smooth motion and reduce the typical judder, but it does not deliver the smoothness of true 120 Hz panels.

The 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. On top of that there are VRR, ALLM, NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, so in terms of core features there’s little to complain about. PC gamers can also 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 narrow group of users, but it shows how much headroom the panel has. Hisense also added a Game Bar that lets you quickly change key settings, check the refresh rate, or enable a reticle and minimap zoom. The biggest downside remains the lack of a properly working HGiG. The TV keeps using its own tone mapping, which makes setting HDR on a console a bit more difficult. In our case values between 1500 and 2000 nits worked best, but it’s worth checking which setting still preserves all the details in the brightest parts of the image.

For such an inexpensive TV, the P7L has quite a lot to offer gamers. It has ALLM, VRR, Dolby Vision for gaming, and TCL adds its Game Bar, which lets you quickly view key information or change some settings without leaving the game. Not everything is perfect, though, because HGiG doesn't work here as it should, but at this price point it's hard to complain much about the feature set. The most interesting thing starts when you give up on 4K. At that resolution the TV runs at a maximum of 60 Hz, but at 1440p and 1080p it can already display at 120 Hz. And that's not just a spec-sheet curiosity. In fast-paced games that support that frame rate you can really notice the difference in smoothness, so if you care more about smoother motion than maximum image sharpness, that mode can make a lot of sense. Of course that doesn't make the P7L a true 120 Hz TV. Even so, it's precisely those extra modes that make the P7L perform really well for gaming.