Pros & Cons
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- Affordable
- Bright, colorful picture
- 144Hz with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro
- Apple AirPlay
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- Some light bloom
- No hands-free voice control
Hisense 55U65QF Specs
| AMD FreeSync | FreeSync Premium Pro |
| HDMI Ports | 4 |
| HDR | Dolby Vision |
| HDR | HDR-10 |
| Input Lag (1080p120) | 4.6 |
| Input Lag (4K60) | 13.1 |
| Nvidia G-Sync | None |
| Panel Type | LED |
| Refresh Rate | 144 |
| Resolution | 3,840 by 2,160 |
| Screen Brightness | 1024 |
| Screen Size | 55 |
| Streaming Services | Yes |
| Video Inputs | Composite |
| Video Inputs | HDMI |
| Video Inputs | RF |
| Video Inputs | USB |
| VRR |
The Hisense U6N was our top pick for affordable TVs last year for its excellent picture quality and fully loaded feature set. This year's model, the Hisense U65QF, gets far brighter and shows much better color performance than the U6N, and ups the refresh rate from 60Hz to 144Hz with VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. The downside is that it drops Google TV in favor of Amazon’s Fire TV platform, and in the process loses hands-free voice control and Google Cast streaming. Those trade-offs are worth it, because at $649 for the 65-inch model I tested (with 85-inch and 100-inch models available for $1,199 and $2,399, respectively), it’s by far the most affordable TV I’ve tested to cross 1,000 nits of brightness. Based on picture quality alone, the Hisense U65QF easily earns our Editors’ Choice award for budget-friendly TVs.
Design: A Simple Style
The U65QF looks unassuming but not clunky. Its near-bezel-free design consists of a thin black plastic band running along the sides and top of the TV and a slightly wider strip textured to look like brushed black metal on the bottom edge. A small bump sits below the center of the strip and holds the infrared remote sensor, status LED, and multifunction control button. The TV sits on two thin, flat black plastic feet positioned near the sides of the screen.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Located in a recessed area on the left side of the back of the TV (facing left), you'll find four HDMI ports (two 4K144, one eARC), a USB port, 3.5mm composite video input and headphone output jacks, and an RF antenna/cable connector. A few inches further inward, a second USB port, an optical audio output, and an Ethernet port face back.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The included remote is typical for Amazon Fire TV models and nearly identical to the ones included with the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini-LED and the Panasonic W70B. It’s thin and rectangular, with a large circular navigation pad near the top, and power and Alexa buttons and a pinhole microphone above it. Playback controls sit in the center of the remote, and volume and channel rockers can be found further down. Near the bottom are dedicated service buttons for Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix.
Software: Fire TV, But Not Hands-Free
In a departure from the Google TV smart TV platform used by Hisense's higher-end U7QG and U8QG TVs, the U65QF uses Amazon Fire TV. It's the same interface as the one found on Amazon’s own Fire TV Omni Mini-LED and Panasonic’s W70B, a well-equipped system that supports all major streaming services, including (of course) Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube. You can also stream video locally from your PC over Miracast/WiDi and from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac over Apple AirPlay, but it doesn’t have Google Cast for streaming from Android devices or Chrome tabs. My biggest complaint with Fire TV is that it’s pretty heavy on ads, and will often promote products completely unrelated to any sort of movies or TV shows.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Fire TV includes Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, which lets you search for content, control compatible smart home devices, check your schedule, get weather reports and sports scores, and perform other tasks with voice commands. The U65QF doesn’t have a far-field microphone for hands-free voice control like the Fire TV Omni Mini-LED does, however, so to use it, you need to press the microphone button on the remote and speak into it.
Picture: Pushing Past 1,000 Nits
The U65QF is a QLED TV with a mini-LED backlight system and a 144Hz native refresh rate. It supports high dynamic range (HDR) in Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It features Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and has an ATSC 1.0 tuner for 1080p over-the-air broadcasts, though it does not support ATSC 3.0.
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To test TVs, I use three main tools: a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For a budget-friendly model, the U65QF delivers impressive picture quality. In Movie mode with an SDR signal, the TV shows a peak brightness of 438 nits with a full-screen white field and 822 nits with an 18% white field. With an HDR signal, those numbers increase to 542 nits with a full-screen white field and 1,024 nits with an 18% field. It’s very rare for TVs in this price range to reach 1,000 nits; the TCL QM6K and last year’s Hisense U6N only reach around 700 nits, so this is quite an accomplishment. You can get much brighter with a higher-end TV like the Hisense U8QG (3,200 nits) or the Roku Pro Series (1,941 nits), but they’re significantly more expensive. As with most mini-LED TVs, the screen can get perfectly dark, though light bloom around high-contrast edges is still apparent.
(Credit: PCMag)The U65QF's color performance is excellent, as the above charts show. They depict the TV's measured color levels compared against Rec. 709 broadcast color standards using an SDR signal in Movie mode, and compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards with HDR10 and Dolby Vision signals in Movie and Dolby Vision IQ mode, respectively. SDR colors are very accurate, though greens and cyans are slightly oversaturated, and magentas run just a touch red. HDR10 colors are nearly spot-on, though, and cover almost the entire digital cinema color space. Dolby Vision colors also look very good, though magentas are a little warm.
Off-angle viewing on the U65QF is very good, especially for a budget TV. Colors fade and contrast narrows slightly when watched from the sides, but not by much, and the picture is still very watchable from extreme angles.
The “Island” episode of the BBC’s Planet Earth II looks vibrant and balanced. The greens and blues of plants, water, and sky show excellent range and variety. Fine details like bark and fur come through clearly, both when brightly lit and in shade.
The party scenes in The Great Gatsby show strong contrast. The whites of lights and shirts look bright and stand out nicely against the appropriately dark black suits. The cuts and contours of the dark clothes can usually be seen very well, though they look a touch muddy in a few shots. Skin tones look saturated and natural against the stark blacks and whites.
Demonstration footage on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc pushes the U8QG to its limits, but the inexpensive TV manages to perform admirably in most cases. Time-lapse shots of landscapes transitioning from dawn to midday shift naturally from dark to quite bright, and the shadow details of dark cliffs and treelines generally come through clearly. Very bright highlights can clip, though, resulting in some white clouds and snow losing their texture and contours. In shots of bright, colorful objects against black backgrounds, light bloom can easily be seen as wide, subtle hazes that fade smoothly further from the objects. It’s less jarring than the more abrupt halo effect light bloom can sometimes manifest as, but it’s still obviously there. Colors are bright and vivid across the board.
Gaming: 144Hz VRR With FreeSync Premium Pro
The U65QF has a native 144Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, and it’s very responsive for video games. Using a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Lag Tester, I measured Game Mode input lags of 13.1 milliseconds with a 4K60 signal and 4.6 milliseconds with a 1080p120 signal. Both come in under a single frame, so the TV qualifies as good for gaming.