Hisense U6GR  TV Review

The Hisense U6GR looks nearly exactly like the Hisense U6G, with a few minor differences. There's Roku branding on the bottom right, and the cable management is a bit different. Still, it's a nice-looking TV and should look good in any setup.

The stand consists of two plastic feet that hold the TV well, but there's some wobble front to back. It raises the screen enough off the table that most soundbars won't block your view.

Footprint of the 65" TV: 42.4: x 11.5" x 2.4" (3" to the bottom of the screen).

The back of the Hisense U6GR is nearly exactly like the Hisense U6G, except cable management is done through clips instead of a track on the back. The back panel is mainly metal with the portion housing the inputs as plastic.

The measurement above is with the cable management clips included, which stick out a bit, so the TV doesn't sit flush against the wall if you keep the clips on. However, it's flat without the clips (pictured above), and the thickness is 3.11" (7.9 cm).

The Hisense U6GR has decent build quality. It's fine for a budget-level TV, and even though there's nothing premium about it, there's nothing wrong with it either. It's mainly plastic, including around the borders, and the back panel flexes a bit, both on the metal and plastic portions. If you're just going to leave it one spot, you won't have any issues with it.

The Hisense U6GR has a fantastic native contrast ratio, and the full-array local dimming feature helps it display deeper blacks. This is higher than the Hisense U6G, but keep in mind that contrast can vary between units.

The Hisense U6GR has okay HDR peak brightness. It gets brighter than in SDR, but it's not enough to deliver a truly impactful HDR experience, and it suffers from the same frame dimming and aggressive ABL as in SDR. Small highlights don't pop the way the creator intended. The EOTF follows the target PQ curve fairly well until the slow roll-off at the peak brightness, but most scenes are slightly over-brightened.

We measured the HDR peak brightness in the 'Dark HDR' Picture Mode with the TV Brightness set to 'Brighter', Local Dimming on 'High', the Color Temperature set to 'Warm', and the Contrast and Backlight each at '100'. These settings also resulted in the brightness image we tested, as seen in the 25% window, and we didn't measure a brighter EOTF with these settings either.

The HDR brightness in Game Mode is nearly identical to outside of Game Mode. Any differences are down to margin of error, and we measured it with the same settings as above, but just with the Game Mode setting enabled.

The SDR peak brightness is great. It's enough to fight glare in most rooms, but it's not as good as the Hisense U6G. It's not very consistent between different scenes because the frame dimming causes small highlights to be more dim, and the Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) dims large areas of bright colors. This won't be noticeable with most content, though, unless you're watching sports that have large playing surfaces, like hockey or basketball.

We measured the SDR peak brightness after calibration in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the TV Brightness set to 'Brighter', Local Dimming on 'High', the Color Temperature set to 'Warm', the Backlight set to '100', and the Contrast at '90'. We measured the brightest image possible using these settings, as nothing else got brighter.

The color gamut is impressive. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI P3 color space used in most content, but its Rec. 2020 coverage is more limited, and tone mapping is a bit off.

The color volume is very good. Thanks to its wide color gamut, high peak brightness, and fantastic contrast ratio, it displays colors well at a wide range of luminance levels.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is disappointing. Most colors are inaccurate, especially less saturated colors, and the white balance is terrible, so the shades of gray don't appear how they should. However, the color temperature is excellent as it's close to our 6500 K target, and the gamma follows the 2.2 target well, but some bright scenes are too bright. If you care about of-the-box accuracy, then look into the Hisense U6/U6H.

The Hisense U6GR has fantastic accuracy after calibration. Calibrating it fixed nearly all inaccuracies to the white balance and color accuracy. Gamma improved, but still isn't perfect, and the color temperature is spot-on with our target. All color calibration is done through the app, but you can still adjust some settings like the motion and brightness settings on the TV.

You can see our recommended settings here.

Update 01/05/2022: We performed a factory reset on the TV, which helped improved the gray uniformity. Before the reset, there were vertical bands that you can see in the 50% gray and the 5% gray photos. The vertical lines are still there after the reset, but they're faint and not noticeable during real content. If you get this TV and notice these issues, try performing a factory reset to see if it fixes it. We made sure we performed the retest after calibrating the TV.

The Hisense U6GR has good gray uniformity, but we got these results after performing a factory reset. Uniformity can vary between units, so it's possible your unit is different from ours, and you don't need to perform the reset. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, which could be distracting during sports, and the uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes.

Update 01/05/2022: We performed a factory reset on the TV, which helped improved the black uniformity. Before the reset, there was more cloudiness and backlight bleed, especially without local dimming enabled. You can see the previous photos without local dimming here and with local dimming here. The factory reset helps improve the black uniformity, and we made sure we performed the retest after calibrating the TV.

The black uniformity is excellent. Without local dimming, there's a bit of clouding throughout, but it's not that distracting. Uniformity is better in near-dark scenes, but there's still a bit of blooming. Keep in mind that uniformity can vary between units, and as mentioned above, we had to perform a factory reset to achieve these results.

The Hisense U6GR has narrow viewing angles, which is normal for a VA panel. The image looks inaccurate when viewing from the sides, so it's not suggested for a wide seating arrangement.

The Hisense U6GR has good reflection handling. It looks similar to the Hisense U6G and, combined with its great peak brightness, visibility won't be an issue in most rooms.

The Hisense U6GR uses a BGR subpixel layout, which doesn't affect picture quality, but can affect text clarity, which you can read about here. Also, in the photo above, you can see the blue pixels dimming, but it's hard to notice with real content.

The Hisense U6GR has a decent response time, but it has worse motion handling than the Hisense U6G. This biggest difference is with the 0-20% transition, which is much slower on this TV, resulting in black smearing. The other transitions are slower too, so there's noticeable blur trail behind fast-moving objects.

The Hisense U6GR uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at all brightness levels and in all picture modes. Luckily, it flickers at such a high frequency that you likely won't notice it.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as BFI. It flickers at 60Hz, but the timing is off, resulting in image duplication. Keep in mind that the BFI scoring is based on the flicker frequency and not the actual performance of the BFI.

Like the Hisense U6G, the Hisense U6GR doesn't have a motion interpolation feature.

As the response time is decent, there's some stutter with 24 fps content because each frame is held on longer.

The Hisense U6GR automatically removes judder from native 24p sources like Blu-ray players and apps without needing any extra settings.

Update 01/20/2022: We changed 1440p VRR from 'No VRR Support' to 'Unknown'. It constantly tears with our AMD RX 6600 graphics card in 1440p, but our Xbox Series X shows that it supports VRR in 1440p. We're leaving it as 'Unknown' because of the tearing with our regular pendulum demo; we experienced the same issue with the Hisense U800GR 8k. We also changed the VRR Supported Connectors to 'HDMI'.

The Hisense U6GR supports VRR technology to reduce screen tearing. We confirmed it supports FreeSync because it works with our AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card without any screen tearing, and it also works with the Xbox Series X without issue. However, 1440p doesn't work with the RX 6600 as the screen would flicker black with VRR enabled and drop the signal, but our Xbox Series X shows that it supports VRR in 1440p. However, because the Xbox supports both FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR, we can't tell which one is actively working.

As for G-SYNC, it says it's supported in the NVIDIA Control Panel, but we noticed strange behavior with the pendulum test demo, and we couldn't get a proper reading. The image vibrates outside of the 48-60Hz range, and even though there's less vibrating in it, it still doesn't remove it completely. Also, there's tearing in Destiny 2, even in the 48-60Hz range, so G-SYNC isn't properly supported. There's also no clear way to tell if it supports HDMI Forum VRR because the Xbox Series X supports both FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR, and it's unknown which one is actively working.

The Hisense U6GR has fantastic low input lag for a responsive gaming experience. It remains low with most resolutions but increases a bit in PC Mode, as seen with 4k @ 60Hz with chroma 4:4:4, but it shouldn't be an issue for most people. We had issues testing the VRR input lag, which is something we experienced with the TCL R745 QLED and the TCL 6 Series/R648 2021 8k QLED. We're looking into it, and we'll update the review once we fix it.

The Hisense U6GR supports most common resolutions up to 4k @ 60Hz, including 1440p, but you need to create a custom resolution on your PC for it to work. It displays proper chroma 4:4:4 with any of its supported resolutions too, so it displays clear text when in PC Mode; it automatically switches into PC Mode when you connect a PC.

As the Hisense U6GR has a 60Hz panel and can't display any 120Hz signal, it doesn't display any high-frame-rate signals from the PS5 or Xbox Series X. However, it doesn't have any issue with 60Hz signals, and it has an Auto Low Latency Mode that switches the TV into Game Mode when you launch a game from a compatible device.

Update 01/27/2022: As of firmware 10.5.2 build 4096-CH, this TV now supports HDR10+.

Unlike the Hisense U6G, the Hisense U6GR doesn't support Bluetooth, and even though it's advertised to support HDMI 2.1, it doesn't have HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It has eARC support, which is a feature of HDMI 2.1 but doesn't require any additional bandwidth.

The Hisense U6GR isn't advertised to support ATSC 3.0, and there's no way for us to currently test this.

The Hisense U6GR has eARC support, an additional feature over the Hisense U6G. This allows you to pass high-quality audio to a compatible receiver through a single HDMI cable; it supports Dolby Atmos signals, and even though it supports DTS over ARC and optical, it doesn't support DTS:X over eARC.

The Hisense U6GR has a disappointing frequency response. It doesn't get loud, and it doesn't produce much bass, if at all. Its sound profile isn't the most well-balanced either; it's fine for listening to dialogue, but you'll want a soundbar or receiver for the best sound experience possible.

The distortion handling is decent. There isn't too much at moderate listening levels, but it's more noticeable at its max volume. However, it depends on the content, and not everyone may hear it.

The Hisense U6GR comes with Roku TV as its smart platform. It's easy-to-use, and navigating through the menu feels smooth. We didn't experience any unexpected bugs during testing either.

As with other smart platforms, there are ads on the home page, and there's no way to disable them.

The Roku app store has a ton of apps you can download, and if you can't find an app, you can still cast content from your phone.

The Hisense U6GR comes with the Roku remote, which is small and has quick access buttons to popular streaming devices. We purchased ours in Canada, so the quick access buttons are different in the United States. It has a mic for voice control, and you can ask it to change inputs, search for content, and open apps, but it can't change certain settings like the brightness.

There's a single button underneath the center of the TV to power it On and Off, and to change inputs.

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Composite In adapter
• Power cable
• User guides

The Hisense U6GR requires a lot more power than the Hisense U6G at its max consumption. We believe the U6G is too low, and we're looking into it; we'll update the reviews once we retest it.