The Hisense UR9 RGB MiniLED is the brand's newest sub-100-inch flagship TV, replacing last year’s excellent QLED-based U8QG, which earned our Editors' Choice award. It covers the widest color range I’ve measured in a TV, but it looks less impressive when showing actual video content and not test patterns, indicating that RGB LED technology still has some obstacles to overcome. Hisense seems to recognize this, because the company has already slashed prices across all available screen sizes; the 65-inch UR9 I tested is now $1,999.99, down from its original price of $3,499.99. It’s still hardly cheap, but at its new price, it’s no longer directly butting heads with premium OLED TVs like the LG Evo G6 ($3,399.99 for 65 inches) and Samsung S95H ($3,399.99 for 65 inches), which look fantastic and don’t have any of the drawbacks of RGB LED. The UR9 looks very good and has tons of features, including a 4.1.2-channel speaker system, but if you can still find a Hisense U8QG, pick that up instead. It might not have nearly as wide a color range on paper, but it still looks fantastic for about half the price. 

Design: Big, Bold, and Nearly Bezel-Free

The UR9 is big and a bit chunky at 1.8 inches deep, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at it from the front. The screen is nearly bezel-less, with a thin black band running along the sides and top, and a single metallic strip along the bottom edge. On the left and right sides, the band gives way to angled furrows running the height of the screen, featuring grilles that cover the TV’s side-firing drivers. The top of the TV is flat and holds two more long speaker grilles for the upward-firing drivers.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

On the back, the remaining elements of the UR9’s sound system, a pair of rear-firing woofers, sit high in the center. Most of the TV’s connections can be found in a rectangular recess on the left side of the back, and include three HDMI ports (one eARC), two USB ports (one USB 2.0, one USB 3.0), an Ethernet port, an optical audio output, and an RF antenna/cable connector. That’s only three HDMI ports, because the UR9 retains the U8QG's biggest love-it-or-hate-it trade-off: a DisplayPort-over-USB-C input in lieu of a fourth HDMI port. This port is located on the left side of the TV, at the bottom of the speaker furrow, and is handy if you plan to regularly connect and disconnect devices like phones, laptops, and gaming handhelds. If you want multiple devices semi-permanently plugged into the TV, like three game systems and a set-top box, you might miss the fourth HDMI. It’s a pretty straight trade-off.

The TV sits on a flat, hexagonal metal table stand in dark gray. The stand attaches to the TV with a wide, angled black plastic leg that can be mounted at one of two vertical positions, holding the screen 1.3 or 2.5 inches above the surface. This higher option is useful if you want to position anything in front of or under the screen.

Remote: Streaming-Heavy With a Custom Shortcut

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

The remote is almost identical to the U8QG’s, a flat, plastic wand textured to look like brushed gray metal. A pinhole microphone sits at the top, along with input, power, settings, user profile, and voice buttons, plus dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Kidoodle.tv, Netflix, YouTube, and a sixth customizable shortcut. A metallic silver navigation pad sits below them, with back, home, and live TV buttons below it. Further down, volume and channel rockers flank a Google TV Freeplay button. The bottom row includes menu, number input, and mute buttons. Oddly, the mute button is below the channel rocker, not the volume rocker.

Features: Google TV With All the Trimmings

Like most other Hisense TVs, the UR9 runs the Google TV smart TV platform. It’s a full-featured interface that covers all major streaming services and has Google Cast built in for streaming locally from Android phones and tablets, as well as Chrome tabs. Hisense also added Apple AirPlay to the system, so you can stream from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

A far-field microphone array lets you access Google’s Gemini AI assistant hands-free. Just say, “Hey Google,” and give it a command. It can provide general information like weather or trivia, search for media to watch or listen to, and control both the TV itself and any compatible smart home devices on your network.

The Hisense UR9 is a 4K RGB LED TV, which means it uses an LED backlight system consisting of clusters of red, green, and blue LEDs that can individually brighten and dim based on the picture. This type of backlight means the UR9 does not have a quantum dot layer like a QLED TV. The TV has a 180Hz refresh rate with VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, supports high dynamic range (HDR) content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, and hybrid log gamma (HLG), and has an ATSC 3.0 tuner for 1080p and 4K broadcasts. It also features a 4.1.2-channel spatial audio system with side- and upward-firing drivers, delivering a peak output of 80 watts.

Picture: Strong Lab Results, Less Convincing in Real Life

The UR9’s RGB LED backlight system lights up the screen impressively. Testing it with a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software, I measured a peak brightness of 1,119 nits in Dolby Vision IQ mode with a full-screen white field. This is only the second TV I’ve ever tested that can put out more than 1,000 nits when lighting up the entire screen, and the first was Hisense’s debut RGB LED TV, the $30,000 116UX last year. Dropping the white field to 18%, brightness shoots up to 3,206 nits, which is still very high but doesn’t reach the 116UX’s record-breaking 4,012 nits. It’s almost identical to the Hisense QM8QG’s 3,200 nits and just a bit less than the TCL QM9K and X11L’s respective 3,330 and 3,421 nits. As a local-dimming mini-LED TV, the UR9 shows now-standard perfect black levels when measured, though like all TVs of its kind, it shows some light bloom along its high-contrasting edges.

Color: Exceeds DCI-P3, But Falls Short of Expectations in Practice

(Credit: PCMag)

The above charts show the UR9’s measured color levels out of the box compared against Rec.709 broadcast standards with an SDR signal in Filmmaker mode, and compared against DCI-P3 digital cinema standards with HDR10 and Dolby Vision signals in Filmmaker and Dolby Vision IQ modes, respectively. SDR colors are slightly more saturated than Rec.709 but generally well-balanced, though whites lean a little magenta and yellows are a bit warm. The HDR10 signal uses static color values and shows the full range the TV is capable of. It goes well beyond DCI-P3, again with largely balanced, accurate colors. The Dolby Vision signal uses dynamic metadata to send color levels based on the TV’s capabilities with DCI-P3 as a target, and it almost perfectly nails it. Blues, magentas, and reds still go a bit further past the color gamut, but it’s still excellent performance.

Color Gamut: Wide Coverage, Not Quite Full BT.2020

(Credit: PCMag)

Hisense claims the UR9 and its other RGB LED TVs can cover the full BT.2020 color space, the theoretical full range of color HDR content is capable of carrying. I’ve yet to test a TV of any kind that actually fulfills this promise, and the UR9 is no different. The above chart shows how much of the color space the UR9 can cover in Filmmaker mode with an HDR10 signal using the same full-screen color fields as my other tests, according to both the CIE1931 and CIE1978 charts. Both charts use the same data, but the former displays color ranges as absolute values, while the latter adjusts the calculation to reflect how the human eye perceives color differences. It hits 89.1% and 92% of BT.2020, which obviously isn’t 100%, but it’s still quite impressive. That result edges out the preproduction Samsung R95H RGB LED I tested (87.1% and 91.4%), and solidly beats LG’s premium Evo G6 OLED TV (78.8% and 85.2%).

Color Behavior: Prioritizes Control Over Maximum Vibrancy

This is a very wide color range, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. As an RGB LED TV, the UR9 enhances color saturation by adjusting the brightness of the red, green, and blue LEDs in each dimming zone. However, to prevent color bloom, a light bloom-like effect that can cause a tinted haze between zones of different RGB LEDs, the TV seems to err on the side of keeping the LEDs balanced to show white light more often than not. This means that it won’t show the most vivid colors it’s capable of displaying if there are many different hues across the frame. This became clear to me when I watched test footage on the UR9. I saw similar behavior on the preproduction Samsung R95H, and while at the time I chalked it up to a light sensor issue, I now think the backlight prioritizing caution over vibrance is just as likely an explanation. And since neither panel uses quantum dots or blue light to expand the color range like conventional QLED mini-LED TVs such as the Hisense U8QG and the TCL QM9K and X11L, effective saturation appears lower than my tests indicate.

This doesn’t mean the nature footage looks dull; it’s a very well-balanced picture with strong contrast. It just doesn’t look as lifelike as OLED TVs such as the LG G6 and Samsung S95H. They still look quite good on the UR9, but in shots with various shades of green mixing with yellow on leaves and blue mixing with green in water, the colors aren’t as rich or varied as on those OLEDs. 

Viewing Angles: Noticeable Blooming and Desaturation Off-Axis

Skin tones in The Great Gatsby look accurate and well-saturated, and splashes of oranges and blues across the seas of black suits and white lights in the party scenes stand out nicely. The UR9 shows off its strong contrast in these scenes as well; shadow details like the cuts, contours, and textures of suit jackets are easily discerned, as are highlight details on shirts, feathers, and chandeliers.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Demonstration footage on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc also shows strong contrast and accurate colors. White-on-white highlights, like snowflakes and clouds against white skies, are usually preserved very well, though I noticed a slight hint of clipping obscuring some of the brightest highlights in a few shots. Sunny nature footage looks bright and colorful, and dark treelines and cliffs in dawn and dusk shots show good shadow detail. Light bloom torture test shots of brightly lit objects against completely black backgrounds show some haze along their edges, but it’s kept under control, at least when viewing the TV head-on. 

Off-angle viewing is a weak spot for the UR9, and it seems to be an issue across RGB LED TVs. Watching the torture test shots from slightly to the side of the TV’s sweet spot in the middle of the screen makes the light bloom expand and become much more noticeable, while noticeably desaturating the otherwise vibrant objects. The colors don’t skew, but they definitely lose some of their vividness.

Sound: Big, Loud, and Immersive—But Not Precisely Tuned

Thanks to its 4.1.2-channel speaker setup, the UR9 can deliver much more sound than most TVs with conventional speakers. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sounds clear and full, though it doesn’t provide any subwoofer-like rumble. While the TV produces a large-feeling sound field thanks to its many drivers, it doesn’t offer the most precise spatial imaging. The sound of Miles’ voice as he’s sneaking or the chaos of combat coming in from different directions gives the broad impression of directionality, but can’t really be pinpointed. A high-end soundbar, especially with a subwoofer and rear satellites like the Samsung Q990F, will give a much more immersive aural experience.

Gaming: Extremely Fast, With Inconsistent Behavior at Lower Resolutions

For gaming, the UR9 features an incredibly fast 180Hz refresh rate and supports VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro. It seems very responsive, but I encountered some strange results during testing with a Leo Bodnar 4K Video Signal Input Lag Tester. With a 4K60 signal in Game mode, the UR9 shows a latency of just 11.6 milliseconds, well under the 16.6ms a single frame at 60Hz takes. With a 1080p120 signal, however, latency jumps to 24.9ms, whereas it would ordinarily be cut in half. Stranger still, 1080p144 and 1080p240 signals lagged just 5ms and 3.7ms, respectively, but the test pattern looked gray rather than black on the screen. This is from a dedicated device that outputs a plain video signal to the TV, with no real consideration for VRR or synchronization. It’s likely that PCs and game consoles that can synchronize with VRR will show better results than I saw in those higher refresh rates.

I haven’t experienced this issue before, but this is the first 180Hz RGB LED TV I've tested. I reached out to Hisense about this, and it said a software update planned for mid-May will improve the 120Hz lag. Its engineers confirmed that the gray test pattern at higher refresh rates is a unique quirk of the specific test device.