Hisense A6H [A6, A65H] TV Review

The TV has a surprisingly premium design for a budget TV, with very thin bezels on three sides and a matte grey finish.

Unfortunately, the backlight on our Hisense A6H completely failed just before the Month 22 data collection cycle. It's been removed from the test.

The V-shaped feet are nearly identical to the Hisense A6G. The feet are wide-set, but the 65 and 75-inch models have an alternate position for the feet that takes up less space. The 43, 50, and 55-inch models can only be set up as seen in the picture above, with the feet in the wide position.

Footprint of the 65-inch model as shown: 50.1" x 12".

The alternate position, as shown here, has a footprint of 25.5" x 12". Regardless of which configuration you choose, the TV sits 3.1 inches above the table, so most soundbars fit in front of it without blocking the screen.

The inputs are housed in a central electronics box, so they're difficult to access if you wall-mount the TV. Sadly, there isn't much in the way of cable management.

Overall, the TV has decent build quality. There's a lot of flex on the plastic electronics box that is on the back of the TV, but it doesn't cause any issues. The plastic piece that makes up the front bottom border is a bit flimsy, but again, it's not worrying.

The Hisense A65H has a mediocre contrast ratio, so blacks look gray in a dark room. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature, so it can't produce deep blacks in brighter scenes. Note that the 50-inch model has much better contrast, so it has deeper and inkier blacks in a dark room. If you prefer something that has a high contrast on all its models, consider the Vizio M6 Series Quantum 2022 or the newer equivalent to this model, the Hisense A6N.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. But as the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, dark scenes look washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so it can't adjust the backlight of individual zones to brighten up highlights without impacting the rest of the image. But this means that there's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance.

Unfortunately, the TV has bad peak brightness in HDR. It doesn't get bright enough to deliver a true cinematic HDR experience, as bright highlights don't stand out nor look very realistic.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: HDR Theater
• Backlight: Max
• Color Temperature: Low

The 'HDR Standard' Picture Mode with the 'Medium' Color Temperature is a bit brighter, reaching a peak of 311 cd/m² with a 50% window, but it's not a noticeable difference.

Switching to Game Mode does not impact the TV's HDR peak brightness: it's still bad overall.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: HDR Game
• Backlight: Max
• Color Temperature: Low

The TV has decent PQ EOTF Tracking. Dark scenes are over-brightened, and everything above about 30 cd/m² is way too dark, as the TV rolls the peak brightness off to try and preserve details. Unfortunately, 'FILMMAKER MODE' has the same issues and doesn't track the EOTF well, either.

Unfortunately, the TV has poor peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to handle a moderate amount of natural light, but it's a bad choice for a bright room, as it can't get bright enough to overcome glare. There's no variation in brightness with different scenes, though, which is great. If you'd prefer a brighter TV, check out the Toshiba C350 Series 2023.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode:: Theater Night
• Backlight: Max

Changing the Picture Mode to 'Standard' and setting the Color Temperature to 'Medium' results in a much brighter image, reaching a peak of 315 cd/m² with a 25% window, but it's not as accurate.

The TV has an okay HDR color gamut but can't display a wide color gamut for HDR content. It has very good coverage of the more commonly used DCI-P3 color space but can't display the full range of reds or greens. It's significantly worse than this TV's successor, the Hisense A6/A65K, which uses a PFS phosphor coating to achieve a much wider color gamut.

The Hisense A65H Series has disappointing color volume. It's limited by the narrow color gamut, and due to the low contrast ratio, it can't display dark saturated colors.

The Hisense A6H TV has excellent SDR accuracy out of the box. There are a few minor issues with the white balance and color accuracy, especially in saturated greens and reds, but it's not noticeable. The color temperature is very close to the 6500K target. Gamma is close to the 2.2 target we use for a moderately lit room, but dark scenes are over-brightened a bit.

Unfortunately, the Hisense A65H TV is very difficult to calibrate, and there's little benefit to it as the TV's accuracy is excellent pre-calibration, and calibration barely improves on it. The oversaturated greens and reds are toned down a bit, but other than that, not much has improved.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The TV has good gray uniformity. The four sections of the screen near the corners are noticeably darker than the center, which is distracting when watching sports or anything displaying large areas of a uniform color. Near-dark scenes are significantly better, but there's still some slight cloudiness and backlight bleed.

The TV has sub-par black uniformity. The screen is cloudy throughout due to the low contrast ratio, and there's noticeable backlight bleed in multiple spots. Sadly, there's no local dimming feature to improve it. The 50-inch model has much better black uniformity thanks to its VA-type panel and higher native contrast.

The Hisense A65H has a great viewing angle, which is great if you have a wide seating arrangement or like to move around with the TV on. The image fades if you're at a moderate angle, but there's very little shift in color accuracy, and it looks better at an angle than the LG NANO75 2022.

The TV has decent reflection handling. The semi-gloss coating reduces the intensity of direct reflections a bit. Sadly, since this TV can't get very bright after calibration, it's not recommended for a bright room, as it can't get bright enough to overcome glare despite the decent anti-reflective coating.

The TV has decent gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in areas of similar color, and it's especially noticeable in dark greens, grays, reds, and blues. Unfortunately, there's no Smooth Gradation feature to smooth out banding, and the two noise reduction features don't help to improve this.

Unfortunately, this TV's processing with low-quality content is limited. It doesn't smooth out macro-blocking and pixelization well at all.

The TV has good sharpness processing. Fine details in upscaled content are preserved well, and fine lines are straight and detailed without oversharpening. These results are with Sharpness set to '10'.

Most sizes of the Hisense A65H use a standard RGB subpixel layout. The 50-inch model has a BGR subpixel layout. It's only important if you're planning on using the TV as a PC monitor, as the more common BGR subpixel layout reduces text clarity. You can read more about this here.

The TV has an okay response time. Most transitions are slow, resulting in more noticeable motion blur, but there's almost no overshoot, which is great. Unfortunately, the low-frequency backlight flicker causes a noticeable image duplication.

Unfortunately, the backlight flickers at a low frequency with anything below the max backlight setting. This flicker causes a noticeable image duplication, and it can cause headaches and eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker. Luckily, as this TV is dim, you can run it at its max backlight setting to avoid this.

There's no backlight-strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion, on the Hisense A6. It always flickers at a fixed frequency unless you have the backlight at max. This low-frequency flicker acts similarly to a BFI feature and helps reduce persistence blur, but it also causes a noticeable image duplication.

The Hisense 65A65H has an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the appearance of motion. It has limited processing capabilities, as expected for a budget model. It smooths out motion a bit in relatively slow action scenes, but in fast scenes, there are noticeable artifacts. In really busy scenes, it'll stop trying to interpolate, which is distracting due to the sudden change in frame rate.

Thanks to this TV's relatively slow response time, there's relatively little stutter when watching movies or other low frame rate content. It's still noticeable a bit in slow panning shots, but it's good overall.

The TV automatically removes judder from 24p sources like a Blu-ray player or streaming device with a Match Frame Rate feature, like an Apple TV, as well as from the native apps. It does so automatically, so you don't have to enable the motion interpolation feature to enjoy a judder-free movie experience. Sadly, like most TVs with 60Hz panels, it can't remove judder from 60Hz sources like most cable boxes.

The Hisense A65H supports a variable refresh rate feature, which is great for gaming. However, it's only compatible with the HDMI Forum VRR implementation. The refresh rate range is narrow, so its usefulness is limited. It doesn't support low framerate compensation, so you'll see tearing if your game's frame rate drops below 48Hz.

The TV has superbly low input lag, resulting in a very responsive gaming or desktop experience if you're using it as a PC monitor.

The TV supports most common resolutions, but only at 60Hz. 1440p is supported, but you have to force it either through a custom resolution on a PC or by manually setting the resolution on some game consoles. Chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly with all supported formats, which is essential for clear text if you're using it as a PC monitor.

Unfortunately, the TV can't take full advantage of the PS5 due to its limited 60Hz refresh rate and lack of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. As such, it's best suited for gamers who prefer the 'Graphics' preset in their games and not competitive gamers who prefer 'Performance' presets with higher frame rates. VRR works well with the PS5 as the TV supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The TV can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series S|X consoles due to its limited 60Hz refresh rate and lack of HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. This makes it a better choice for more casual gamers who prefer immersive graphics over higher frame rates. VRR works well as the TV supports HDMI Forum VRR.

Unlike the higher-end Hisense ULED TVs, like the Hisense U7H or Hisense U8/U8H, this TV has no HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports. Unfortunately, it doesn't support ATSC 3.0, so you can't stream 4k channels over the air with an antenna.

The 43, 50, and 55-inch models only have three HDMI inputs, but they gain a full composite input, while the 65 and 75-inch models require an adapter for composite inputs (sold separately).

The Hisense A6H supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver through an HDMI cable.

Unfortunately, the TV has a disappointing frequency response. The low-frequency extension (LFE) is very high, and there's almost no low bass response. The frequency response isn't well balanced above the LFE, either, so dialogue is a bit muddy, and there's no room correction feature. On the plus side, it gets loud, and there's just a bit of compression at max volume.

The Hisense A6H has very little distortion; even at max volume, it's not noticeable.

The TV is one of the first TVs on the market to run the updated Google TV 11 smart interface. It's very similar to previous Google TV versions, with a slightly refined interface and a few new accessibility features. It's fast and fairly easy to use.

Unfortunately, like most TVs, there are ads throughout the interface. You can opt out of suggested content, which is great, and you can limit ad-tracking, but this just limits the type of ads you'll see, not the number of ads.

The Google Play Store has a great selection of streaming apps, and all major streaming services are available.

The TV's remote is pretty simple, with no number buttons and six sponsored buttons that vary between regions. It has a built-in mic for voice control, and you can use voice commands to change inputs or launch apps, but you can't use it to change settings on the TV.

A button below the TV's branding is used to turn the TV on/off or change inputs.

• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• User manual