Hisense U9DG  TV Review

The Hisense 75U9DG has a premium design, with very thin bezels on three sides and a nice metallic finish. The feet look very similar to previous high-end Hisense models, including the Hisense U8G, but they're set further apart.

The stand is nearly the full width of the TV, but it supports it well, with just a bit of wobble. It lifts the TV high enough that almost any soundbar can be placed in front of it without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 75" stand: 55.6" x 15.8" x 5.4" (to the first row of pixels).

The back is simple, but nice. It's a single large plastic panel, but it feels good. The inputs face to the sides and are easy to access, and there are tracks and clips on the legs for cable management, as well as a cover for the inputs.

The borders are very thin on three sides.

The TV has fairly uniform thickness, and it's thin, so it won't stick out when wall-mounted.

The Hisense U9DG has great build quality overall. The metal feet are solid and support the TV well, but there's a bit of wobble, which is normal for a TV of this size. The back panel is plastic, and we noticed a bit of flex to it, but nothing serious. Our unit has an audible click when we turn the TV off, but this isn't an issue.

We found that the TV gets quite warm during use, so we took a few thermal images:

• Front
• Back

We don't take thermal measurements of TVs anymore, but this is warmer than most TVs we've tested in 2021. The front of the screen peaks at about 43°C, and the vents on the back of the TV are close to 48°C. While this doesn't cause any issues during use, it could reduce the lifespan of the TV, and it'll heat your room a bit.

Thanks to its unique dual-layer technology, the Hisense U9DG delivers incredible contrast, resulting in extremely deep blacks if you're in a dark room. It has the highest native contrast ratio we've ever measured on an LED LCD TV, and it looks much better than any other IPS-type TV on the market. Enabling local dimming improves contrast even further, but the difference isn't very noticeable. It's not quite as inky as an OLED display, like the LG C1 OLED, but it's close. Note that contrast can vary between individual units.

The Hisense U9DG has good peak brightness in SDR, but there are some strange results. Smaller window sizes are much brighter than our real scene test clip. We double-checked this with real content and measured very similar results. 10% windows are also dimmer than 2% and 25% windows, which is also odd. We're not sure what's causing this strange variation in brightness with different scenes, but it's noticeable.

We measured the brightness after calibration in the 'Theater Night' Picture Mode with the Backlight set to 'Max' and Local Dimming to 'High'. Unusually, these settings also deliver the brightest picture overall.

The Hisense U9DG has an outstanding local dimming feature, the best we've seen on any LED LCD TV. It's thanks to its unique dual-layer panel. Unlike most TVs, the U9DG has a 1080p grayscale panel sandwiched under the main ADS (IPS-family) panel, which acts as a local dimming layer. The grayscale layer controls the amount of light that passes through it before hitting the color filters. It's as if the TV has slightly over 2 million local dimming zones.

This high zone count allows for extremely precise control of the light levels of each pixel. Bright highlights are incredibly bright, with almost no blooming at all. It achieves this without crushing blacks, and there's no loss of fine details in dark scenes. Star fields look incredible, with no noticeable loss of details. If you look closely at the TV, it's possible to see the zone transitions, but it's not noticeable with real content. The videos here were filmed with the Local Dimming on 'High'.

Even with Local Dimming disabled, this TV still looks better than most LED LCD TVs on the market. Visually, there's very little difference in black levels between 'Off' and 'High'. Setting it to 'High' boosts bright highlights significantly and results in a more impactful image.

There's no difference in the local dimming performance in 'Game' Mode on the Hisense U9DG.

The Hisense U9DG has just okay peak brightness in HDR. Like with the peak brightness in SDR, there are some strange results. Most highlights are very bright, but large bright scenes, including our real scene test, are significantly dimmer. Specular highlights stand out well in dark scenes, but bright scenes aren't bright enough for a true cinematic HDR experience. This change in brightness can be very noticeable with some content. Unfortunately, like the Hisense U8G, the EOTF doesn't track properly, as most scenes are a bit too bright.

We measured the HDR brightness in the 'HDR Theater' Picture Mode with Brightness at max, Color Temperature set to 'Low', and Local Dimming set to 'High'. If you want a brighter image, and accuracy isn't important to you, set Active Contrast to 'High'. This results in a brighter image, with a peak brightness of 1189 cd/m² with a 25% window, and a significantly brighter image in most scenes, as shown in EOTF.

The Hisense 75U9DG is slightly less bright in 'Game' Mode, but it's not a noticeable difference.

The Hisense U9DG has decent gradient handling, but it's a bit worse than most high-end TVs on the market. It's likely because Hisense USA advertises that it uses 8-bit + FRC to approximate a 10-bit panel. There's banding in every color, but it's more noticeable in the grays and greens. There are a few settings designed to reduce banding and noise. However, when we tested it with real content, no combination of settings could reduce the banding.

The Hisense U9DG has good gray uniformity overall, but there are some issues. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but it's not that noticeable. There's just a bit of dirty screen effect. Near-dark scenes look even better, with almost no noticeable issues. Gray uniformity can vary between individual units.

Unfortunately, there are noticeable discolored bands across the screen that seem to shift as you move off-angle. They're especially noticeable with lighter scenes, so we took a photo with a white uniform slide.

The Hisense 75U9DG has exceptional black uniformity, with no noticeable issues with or without local dimming. There's no noticeable backlight bleed and just a bit of blooming around the test cross. Black uniformity can vary between individual units, but we don't expect it to change much from this due to the nature of dual-layer technology.

The Hisense U9DG has an impressive viewing angle, better even than most IPS-type TVs we've tested. Although colors appear a bit washed out at a moderate angle, everything else remains accurate even at a wide viewing angle. It's great if you have a wide seating arrangement or like to move around with the TV on.

The Hisense 75U9DG has amazing reflection handling. Direct reflections are significantly reduced in intensity, without the rainbow smearing typically seen on anti-reflective coatings. Note that our pictures look a bit different than the reflections photos on our other TV reviews. This is due to the size of the screen, as we had to change its position in the room a bit.

The Hisense U9DG we bought has great accuracy out of the box, but this can vary between individual units. Colors are excellent, with very few noticeable issues. The white balance is very good, but brighter shades of gray are a bit off. Gamma is very close to the 2.2 target we use for a dark room, as bright scenes are a bit too bright. Finally, the color temperature is a bit on the cool side, giving everything a slightly bluish tint.

After calibration, the Hisense U9DG has fantastic accuracy. We weren't able to correct the gamma, but the color temperature, white balance, and color accuracy are much better overall.

You can see our recommended settings here.

480p content is upscaled well and looks great overall on the Hisense U9DG.

720p content is upscaled well, with no noticeable issues.

1080p content, like Blu-rays, looks fantastic, almost as good as native 4k.

4k content is displayed perfectly, with no dithering or other subpixel issues.

This is a 4k TV; it can't accept or display an 8k signal.

The Hisense U9DG uses an ADS panel, which is very similar to IPS, but with a different subpixel structure. It uses an RGB subpixel layout, which is good for clear text when used as a PC monitor. The pixels are a bit hazy, likely due to the anti-reflective coating on the panel. It isn't noticeable when displaying text.

The Hisense U9DG has an excellent color gamut. It uses quantum dot technology, and it can display an incredibly wide color gamut, important for the latest HDR content. It has nearly full coverage of the DCI P3 color space, but tone mapping is a bit off, so colors aren't displayed accurately. It has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The Hisense 75U9DG has decent color volume. It can display dark saturated colors well, but bright colors aren't as bright as pure white.

There are no signs of temporary image retention on our Hisense U9DG, but this can vary between individual units.

While some IPS panels like this have some temporary image retention, this doesn't seem to be permanent as the IPS panel in our long-term test appears to be immune.

Unfortunately, the Hisense U9DG has a mediocre response time. There's terrible ghosting behind fast-moving objects, and it's noticeable even when navigating menus in streaming apps. Unlike the Hisense U8G, it's not just behind red objects. In 'Game' Mode and with the variable refresh rate feature enabled, it's just as bad, and it doesn't look good when gaming or watching sports.

Unfortunately, the Hisense 75U9DG flickers at all brightness levels in all picture modes. The flicker frequency is low enough that it causes noticeable duplications in motion, and it can bother some people.

The Hisense U9DG has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI), which can improve the appearance of motion. Unfortunately, it can only flicker at 60Hz, even when playing 120Hz content. It results in distracting duplications when watching 120Hz content. Note that our scoring is only based on the refresh rates supported by the BFI feature and doesn't represent how well the feature works.

If you like the soap opera effect, the Hisense U9DG has an optional motion interpolation feature. It's okay overall, but it can't handle fast-paced action at all, and there are artifacts throughout the screen.

Thanks to the Hisense U9DG's relatively slow response time, there's very little stutter when watching movies.

The Hisense U9DG can remove judder from any source automatically, no additional settings are required.

The Hisense U9DG has an optional variable refresh rate feature that helps reduce tearing when gaming. It's effective across a very wide range of refresh rates.

Unfortunately, the Hisense U9DG has fairly high input lag, even in 'Game' mode. While it's not bad for casual console gamers, it's much higher than most TVs we've tested in 2021. Unfortunately, we couldn't measure the input lag at 120Hz, as the TV skips frames when sent a 120Hz signal with the variable refresh rate feature disabled. Input lag outside of 'Game' Mode is also higher than usual.

Update 08/05/2022: As of firmware update M0422, the resolution halving issue with 4k @ 120Hz signals has been fixed, as long as you have the HDMI Input Optimization setting set to 'Text Clarity Optimization'.

The Hisense U9DG supports most common formats, and it can display chroma 4:4:4 properly with most common formats. Unfortunately, text is blurry with 1440p @ 120Hz signals, and it skips frames when sent a 4k @ 120Hz signal unless you're using FreeSync. The 4k @ 120Hz resolution halving issue has been fixed as of firmware update M0422, and 4k @ 120Hz with chroma 4:4:4 is displayed properly.

The Hisense U9DG technically supports all features of the new consoles, but it's not great for gaming on them. Gradients are also noticeably worse when gaming at 4k @ 120Hz, on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X. 120Hz gaming isn't working properly on the PS5 at the moment, as this TV skips frames when sent a 120Hz signal, unless you're using FreeSync, which the PS5 doesn't support.

The Hisense U9DG works well with the Xbox Series S|X. Since the Xbox supports FreeSync, as long as you have that enabled 4k @ 120Hz signals are displayed correctly, with no dropped frames.

The Hisense U9DG has two HDMI 2.1 ports, and one of them is also the eARC port, which is disappointing if you have two of the new consoles or a recent PC graphics card, as you'll either need to get a receiver that supports HDMI 2.1 passthrough or limit some of your sources to HDMI 2.0. Unfortunately, the TV's EDID doesn't appear to include the correct HDMI 2.1 information, and our tools can't read the bandwidth of the ports.

The Hisense U9DG supports eARC, and can passthrough all of the common formats, including high definition audio, through to a supported receiver or soundbar.

The Hisense U9DG has an okay frequency response. Like most TVs, it has a high low-frequency extension, so there's almost no thump or rumble in its bass response. Above the LFE, the frequency response is well balanced, resulting in clear dialogue, but it dips in the higher treble ranges. It gets very loud, but there's a bit of compression at max volume.

The Hisense 75U9DG has okay distortion performance. There's some distortion at higher volume levels, but this depends on the content, and most people won't even notice it.

Hisense has chosen not to upgrade their user interface to the new Google TV interface used on many Sony models. Instead, the Hisense U9DG runs a recent version of Android TV. The interface is easy to use, and it has a great selection of additional streaming apps. We didn't notice any bugs with the user interface, but the ghosting from the slow response time is apparent, even when browsing the menus.

Unfortunately, like most TVs on the market, the Hisense U9DG has ads on the main home page and in the app store. They aren't always present, though, and we couldn't get a picture of them.

Android TV has built-in casting capabilities, and the app store has a great selection of streaming apps to choose from.

The remote is identical to the one included with the Hisense U8G. It's simple but easy to use. It has a built-in microphone for voice controls, which you can use to change inputs, launch apps, search for content, or search the web. There's also a hands-free microphone on the TV that offers the same voice controls.

There's a five-way joystick on the back of the TV that you can use to control the basic functions of the TV. There's also a switch on the bottom bezel that allows you to disable the built-in microphone.

• Power cable
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• A/V composite adapter