With great viewing angles, lovely and vibrant colours, good contrast, and impressive black levels, Hisense 65UR9SG RGB mini-LED TV is an all-around good TV. I had the chance to test it in a dedicated room at the Hisense headquarters in Mississauga. The enclosed space, about the size of an average living room, included the TV and a comfortable chair. I had access to adjust room lighting and picture settings at my leisure. I watched content streaming in 4K from a variety of sources as well as YouTube videos, and live TV via Hisense Channels.
If you’re considering the RGB mini-LED TV model from Hisense, you’ve come to the right place. Here, I talk about its top features and offer my key takeaways to help you decide whether it’s the right TV for you.
What is RGB mini-LED?
Before exploring everything you need to know about this TV, let’s first revisit what RGB mini-LED is and its core benefits.
This variation on traditional LED TV uses red, green, and blue LEDs as its light source versus white or blue LEDs that shine through a colour filter to reproduce colours. Removing the colour filter from the equation results in more precise, richer, and vibrant colours. With small lights working together behind the panel to reproduce an image as accurately as possible, RGB mini-LED can typically perform better in bright rooms than OLED. Plus, there’s no risk of burn-in along with good contrast and viewing angles. OLED TVs reproduce fantastic blacks and generally excel more for cinematic viewing in dark rooms.
Is the Hisense 65UR9SG right for your home?
To help you decide if this RGB mini-LED TV from Hisense is the best fit for you, here’s my in-depth review.
Colours pop with the right settings
The Hisense 65UR9SG is a direct lit mini-LED with dynamic local dimming. It offers up to 100% BT.2020 colour coverage, covering the wide colour spectrum. The Obsidian panel promises to deliver up to three times deeper blacks. It supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR 10, HLG, and IMAX Enhanced.
I started with The Boroughs in 4K on Netflix. There’s great colour and detail in intricate parts of the picture, like close-ups on characters’ hair and faces. Wonderful contrast adds a sense of depth. Some scenes, however, had a slightly artificial feel. In Filmmaker Mode, which you can choose in picture settings, the picture is slightly more subdued, more natural with deeper blacks. Colour was pleasant in other shows with bright colours and contrast, too, like Only Murders in the Building on Disney+ and Love on the Spectrum on Netflix.
I watched clips from Spider-Noir on Amazon Prime Video in Dolby IQ Mode and in both black & white and colour (the show uniquely offers both options). There were some contrast issues with scenes that include a mix of very dark and light segments simultaneously. In full colour, there’s incredible detail in scenes like one where a spider is crawling slowly across the screen. Colours were intensified in shows like Formula 1: Drive to Survive when switching to Sports mode. In The Night Agent, blood and redness on a character’s face after a big fight scene is defined but also has a dull feel to it. It’s better in Standard mode, but then you lose some crispness and detail that comes with Filmmaker mode.
Playing the trailer for Toy Story 5 on Disney+, it looked fantastic, vibrant colours popping off the screen. While RGB LED TVs are great for watching movies and TV shows, animated content is a highlight, too. This is a good TV for family viewing.
Diving deeper into colour and contrast
I played an OLED black test video from YouTube, which showed close-ups of fruit and other items on a dark black background. It allowed me to gauge both the TV’s colour performance and black level. Colours were expectedly ultra-bright and detailed with great contrast. Black levels were impressive, too. It might not rival OLED but demonstrates that technologies like mini-LED are slowly closing that gap.
A Calman Ready function offers advanced colour calibration for pro-grade picture accuracy for those who are inclined to go that deep. But for average users, you can tweak settings like Picture Mode, brightness, contrast, and black level. I would encourage you to do so to get the best possible picture depending on not only your room, but also the type of content you’re watching.
Clarity: crisp and clear
Spider-Man: Far From Home on Netflix showed good detail. Skin tones are natural, which I noticed when watching Spider-Noir as well. In Stranger Things, resolution isn’t as crisp in Standard mode, though it’s pleasant.
I decided to check out older content, including episodes of Three’s Company on Amazon Prime Video. There’s expected pixelation since this series was shot way back in the late ’70s. I watched the same clip from my Sony Bravia 9 TV at home to compare, also a mini-LED. And I noticed a similar blur, but with slightly better smoothing.
Brightness is a highlight
Brightness is up to 5,000 nits. This TV certainly excels in the brightness department, so much so that you may want to tone it down. As I watched The Boroughs in standard viewing mode, the opening scene with bright lights throughout looked slightly overblown. I noticed the same in Spider-Man: Far From Home as well as scenes in The Night Agent. It was almost blinding at times.
However, once I adjusted brightness, contrast, and black level in settings, as well as colour temperature (warm or cool), it was much more pleasant. This reinforces the importance of adjusting settings once you get the TV home.
Wide-angle viewing: virtually no reflections
The Obsidian Panel promises ultra-low reflections, absorbing ambient light to reduce them to 1.5–1.8%. I walked around the room as content was playing, both with the lights all the way up and dimmed down, and it offers great viewing angles. When I turn the lights all the way up to simulate a living room with windows and bright lights, there are noticeable off-axis reflections. But it’s very slight. You could easily watch this TV from any corner of the room and get a relatively consistent viewing experience.
Impressive refresh rate
The TV boasts an impressive variable refresh rate from 48Hz to 180Hz. It’s especially noticeable for action movies, gaming, and more. AMC FreeSync Premium Pro and Auto Low Latency Mode further help eliminate screen tearing and controller input lag when gaming.
Gaming wasn’t part of my testing process. However, I did watch intense action movies and shows. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, there’s a particularly fast scene as Peter Parker leaps and flies while Hydro-Man, a monster emerging from the water, wreaks havoc. There was no noticeable motion blur in this scene, which really puts the TV’s capabilities to the test.
In Spider-Noir, there’s great motion smoothing as well. For Formula 1: Drive to Survive, it handles motion well. I did notice slight motion blurring in some of the fastest moving segments, like when the driver makes a very sharp turn and the camera pans to their wheels or the corners of the vehicle.
Decent audio (sound bar recommended)
The Hisense Hi-View AI Engine PRO intelligently enhances sound for an immersive experience. You get Dolby Atmos Sound via 4.1.2 channels, including two mains, two surrounds, and two upfiring speakers, plus a built-in subwoofer. Sound is tuned by Devialet. So it promises to be richer with clearer dialogue and deeper bass.
There was nice, detailed sound, while I was listening to an intense fight scene in The Night Agent. Everything from punches to the slashes of a knife and a body cracking onto the ground were reproduced in great detail. Audio in Stranger Things sounded slightly muffled at times, even crackles a bit. But you get an impressive sense of immersion, even without separate speakers.
That said, audio isn’t as crisp and clear as it would be with separate speakers. I’d recommend adding at least a sound bar to enhance audio.
Design and remote: Gorgeous look
In terms of overall aesthetics, it’s a sleek-looking TV with a thin bezel so you get more screen real estate. It would look wonderful whether mounted on its stand or a piece of furniture or on a wall. However, it’s not as thin as some other TVs in its class.
The TV has a USB-C port for connecting laptops, gaming consoles, mobile devices, and more. At the back are three HDMI 2.1, one eARC HDMI port, and one USB-C, which can even be used for 10W charging.
The remote is larger than most, though I kind of like this. It makes it less likely to be misplaced. It’s comfortable to use with logical button arrangement and smooth keys.
Screen sizes: Go big
The Hisense 65UR9SG comes in 65″, 75″, 85″, and 100″ sizes. This is a TV you want for a main viewing area. While the 65″ TV is a perfect fit for most living rooms, you might want to go a bit larger with this Hisense TV model. Verify viewing distance measurements in your space to see if you can go up to a 75″ or 85″ model.
AI integration: enhanced viewing, sound, and sports
Hisense loads the Hisense 65UR9SG with plenty of AI modes and features, all running on the Hi-View AI Engine Pro. It enhances each frame with advanced scene recognition to optimize skin tones, graphics, and contrast. AI Clear Voice boosts dialogue clarity and speech volume and reduces background noise. It’s useful for shows that often flip from quiet, dialogue-driven scenes to loud action. There’s also AI Sports Mode that eliminates blurry motion while watching the game.
This RGB LED TV is ideal for watching the big game in Sports mode. I watched motorsports via Hisense Channels and it looked quite pixelated, though this could have been the source. Switching to Red Bull TV diving, the picture was crisper and clearer, though there’s slight motion blur when the divers leap from the top of the cliff and their bodies rapidly turn.
Other AI features include AI HDR Upscaler, which upgrades HDR10 content to near HDR10+ quality and SDR content to HDR like with richer colours and improved contrast. An AI Light Sensor auto-adjusts screen brightness and colour temperature based on ambient lighting, optimizing the viewing experience while also enhancing energy efficiency.
You can give voice commands via Alexa and Google to do things like play music, catch up on news, and check weather. There’s also built-in Bluetooth to listen via headphones and wirelessly connect sound bars, speakers, keyboards, and more.
Smart TV OS: seamless Google experience
As a Google TV, the Hisense 65UR9SG boasts a simple, familiar, and intuitive interface with access to thousands of apps, Apple AirPlay. You can also enjoy free channels through services like Hisense Channels. There aren’t many channels on Hisense Channels, but there’s a convenient guide to scroll through when you run out of things to watch.
Who should buy the Hisense 65UR9SG RGB mini-LED TV?
The Hisense 65UR9SG RGB mini-LED TV is a decent option for budget-conscious families. You can comfortably watch in any room, even with bright lighting. While brightness is a highlight, the biggest takeaway for this TV is that you will want to play around with picture settings. You may find you need to adjust depending on what you watch and where to get the best possible viewing experience. Overall, this Hisense RGB mini-LED delivers, with wide-viewing angle, vibrant colours, solid contrast, and impressive black level.
Get the Hisense 65UR9SG RGB mini-LED TV at Best Buy Canada.
