{"id":376007,"date":"2026-04-12T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376007\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T14:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:30:13","slug":"the-hisense-ur9-is-a-great-first-shot-against-oleds-bow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376007\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hisense UR9 is a great first shot against OLED\u2019s bow"},"content":{"rendered":"

RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year, with models coming from all the manufacturers, and the first one of 2026 is here \u2014 the Hisense UR9. It\u2019s the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms, and it\u2019s a step above the traditional mini-LED TVs of years past. HDR is colorful and accurate, it has great brightness, and it is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color space for movies and TV shows that have wider color. But at $3,500, the 65-inch model I reviewed is priced comparably to high-end OLEDs from LG and Samsung, which is tough competition.<\/p>\n

Hisense released the very first RGB LED TV last year, the $30,000 116-inch Hisense 116UX<\/a>, so it\u2019s not too surprising that its top-end models, the UR9 and UR8, are RGB LED TVs and not traditional mini LED (you need to step down to the U7SG<\/a> for that). It\u2019s also the first company to release a more affordable 2026 model, but it\u2019s still more expensive than the flagship mini-LED TVs of last year, like the TCL QM9K<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Hisense<\/a>\"Hisense<\/a><\/p>\n

$3500<\/p>\n

The GoodBright imageAccurate HDR performanceColor coverage beyond P3The BadSome motion judderMore expensive than other mini-LED options<\/p>\n

The Hisense UR9 is available in four sizes: 65 inches ($3,500), 75 inches ($5,000), 85 inches ($6,000), and 100 inches ($9,000). This puts it in direct competition with flagship OLED displays from LG and Samsung, and is a high bar for the UR9 and any other RGB LED TV. I got a look at the 65-inch variety.<\/p>\n

The 65-inch UR9 is 1.8 inches thick across the whole chassis and uses a pedestal stand. Like the U8QG<\/a> last year, the Hisense UR9 has only three HDMI 2.1 inputs. Its fourth input is a USB-C DisplayPort connection, which is situated along the left edge of the TV instead of with the other connections on the back. I\u2019m not a fan of this placement because if you want to have your computer continually connected to the TV, the cable is clearly visible. The TV supports 180Hz native refresh rate, AMD Freesync Premium Pro, HDR 10+, and Dolby Vision. A future update will enable Dolby Vision 2, but we\u2019re not going to see any Dolby Vision 2 content available for a while.<\/p>\n

I set up each TV in my living room on my home theater credenza. I stream movies and shows through the TV\u2019s apps, play discs on a Magnetar UDP900 MkII<\/a> 4K Blu-Ray player (including the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark disc) and movies from a Kaleidescape Strato E<\/a> player, and play games on my Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. This is done at different times of the day and under different lighting conditions, with curtains open, with lamps and overhead lights on, or with blackout curtains up to keep the room dark. While I am a certified ISF Level 3 calibrator, I do not calibrate the TVs before measurement, as the overwhelming majority of TV owners don\u2019t bother. So it\u2019s important to know how well the TVs perform out of the box, with minor tweaks in the menu anyone can do.<\/p>\n

For measurement, I use Portrait Displays<\/a>\u2019 Calman color calibration software, a Murideo 8K Seven pattern generator, an X-rite i1 Pro 3 spectrophotometer, Portrait Displays\u2019 C6 HDR5000 colorimeter, a Konica Minolta LS-100 luminance meter, and Leo Bodnar 4K lag tester.<\/p>\n

One of the touted benefits of RGB LED TVs is their ability to achieve 100 percent of the BT.2020 color space. That\u2019s talking about chromaticity, which is based on saturation and hue and is independent of brightness (or luminance). You might have seen color space triangles on a CIE 1931 diagram<\/a>. But what this chart doesn\u2019t show us is how colors perform across different brightness levels, or in our living rooms. (For a deep dive on this, Caleb Denison released an excellent video<\/a> a couple weeks ago.)<\/p>\n

Also, the vast majority of HDR content uses the P3 color space, which is smaller than BT.2020. So even if a TV is capable of extending beyond P3 and into BT.2020 colors (which the UR9 absolutely is), with most movies and TV shows it doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s also a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation \u2014 we need TVs that can accurately display BT.2020 before the color space is fully adopted by TV and movie creators, but if there\u2019s no content, why get a BT.2020 TV?<\/p>\n

Now, while it\u2019s comparatively not a lot, there is some great video out there that extends beyond the P3 color space and into BT.2020 colors. One example is the BBC documentary series Planet Earth II, which I watched with a Kaleidescape Strato E player. Episode 3 looks at the jungles of the world, and the greens of the trees in particular looked incredibly vibrant on the Hisense UR9. There\u2019s also a segment about hummingbirds in Ecuador that shows off the dazzling colors of the tiny creatures, which the UR9 handled very well. It\u2019s on par with what I saw on the $7,000 TCL X11L<\/a>, and a more colorful picture than I\u2019ve seen from OLEDs like the LG G5<\/a> or Sony Bravia 8 II<\/a>. Without any motion compensation, there was some judder as the camera panned through the jungle. Changing the motion setting to Film helped to smooth that out without giving it an unnatural effect.<\/p>\n

One of the potential issues with RGB LED TVs is color crosstalk, something that LG Display \u2014 notably a maker of OLED panels \u2014 made a video about<\/a> back in December. An example could be when someone is walking past a colorful mural and the red from the artwork causes the person\u2019s face to look a little red, which then changes to be slightly blue when they pass the blue part of the mural. I didn\u2019t see this happen on the UR9 with any of the material I watched.<\/p>\n

\"Hisense<\/a><\/p>\n

The UR9 is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color gamut and handles reflections well.<\/p>\n

\"Hisense<\/a><\/p>\n

Google OS is fast and easy to navigate with loads of apps available.<\/p>\n

\"Hisense<\/a><\/p>\n

The remote is the same one Hisense has included with its TVs for a couple years.<\/p>\n

\"Hisense<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a USB-C DisplayPort input on the side, which unfortunately allows the cable to be easily seen from the front when connected.<\/p>\n

The reason behind this could be one of two possibilities: excellent processing and color filter performance capable of deftly delineating side-by-side colors, or the backlight instead using white light and relying solely on the color filter when the onscreen color information gets too complicated. The second option basically negates the benefit of having individual red, green, and blue diodes, with the TV functioning as a blue or white backlit mini-LED TV, but the only way to know for sure is to take the TV apart and look just at what the backlight is doing. When it comes down to it, though, what matters is how the picture looks, and the UR9 looks really good in HDR.<\/p>\n

OLED still has a big advantage over RGB LED with one of the most important specs: contrast. Contrast is more important to our eyes than color (it\u2019s one of the first things you learn during calibration training). It allows us to perceive depth, movement, and shape, and has been vital to our existence as a species \u2014 and to our enjoyment of movies, TV, and art. RGB LED TVs still use LCD panels, only the backlight system has been improved, and with that comes the inherent LCD drawbacks of light blooming and more limited viewing angles. The UR9 handles both of these issues well (although I think TCL still has a slight advantage with blooming control), but OLED still wins. And because of its pixel-level control, OLED still delivers better overall picture quality.<\/p>\n

HDR formats: Dolby Vision (Dolby Vision 2 with firmware update later in the year), HDR10+, HDR10, HLG<\/p>\n

HDMI inputs: 3 x HDMI 2.1 (one with eARC\/ARC); 1 x DisplayPort over USB-C<\/p>\n

Audio support: Dolby Atmos, DTS Virtual X<\/p>\n

Gaming features: 4K\/180Hz, VRR (up to 330Hz), ALLM, FreeSync Premium Pro<\/p>\n

Sizes available (inches): 65, 75, 85, 100<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s price. With the 65-inch UR9 starting at $3,500, Hisense has positioned its flagship directly against top-end OLEDs from Samsung and LG \u2014 both of which are priced at $3,400 for the same 65-inch size.<\/p>\n

Hisense has historically been less expensive than Samsung, LG, and Sony for like technologies, so that could mean that prices on comparable RGB LEDs from those companies will come in above the UR9, but I don\u2019t think so \u2014 apart from Sony, which almost certainly will be the most expensive of the bunch, and have the best processing to support the price. If the flagship RGB LED TVs from LG and Samsung are equal to or more expensive than the Hisense UR9, it means those companies are putting RGB above their own OLED TVs. Especially with LG, the leader in OLED sales for more than a decade, it would be a surprising move.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s still the step-down models from Hisense and Samsung, the Hisense UR8 and Samsung R85H, which will likely be in the $2,000-or-under range for the 55-inch size. But that again puts them up directly against midrange OLED models like the LG C6, which won\u2019t get as bright as the RGB LED TVs, but still has pixel-level control and excellent contrast.<\/p>\n

The world of TVs in 2026 is pretty exciting. The accuracy of displays across price ranges and manufactures is closer than it\u2019s ever been<\/a>, and we\u2019re continuing to get new innovations like RGB LED. That crowded market means it\u2019s hard to fit RGB LED TVs somewhere that makes sense. They perform better than regular mini-LED TVs and will absolutely overtake them (OLED is still out of reach), but it won\u2019t be until 2027 at the earliest.<\/p>\n

For now, I\u2019d still just buy an OLED. But the future of RGB LED TVs is looking bright.<\/p>\n

Photography by John Higgins \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

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See All TVs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year, with models coming from all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[356,111,139,69,763,370,145,23369],"class_list":{"0":"post-376007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gadgets","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-reviews","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-tvs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}