Hisense A6N  TV Review

The Hisense A6N looks nearly identical to most entry-level Hisense TVs, including the step-up Hisense A7N. The glass panel protrudes from the screen enclosure, and it has very thin bezels.

The stand consists of two V-shaped feet that can be placed in either the wide position shown here or in a narrow position if you have a small media cabinet. They lift the TV about 3.8 inches, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand:

• Wide position: 52.4" x 14.6"
• Narrow position: 20.9" x 14.6"

Most of the back of the TV is made of a single metal panel, but the box that houses the electronics is made of plastic. Most of the inputs are side-facing, but they're closer to the middle of the TV, making them a bit of a reach if you're trying to access them while the TV is wall-mounted. Some of the inputs face straight out the back and are impossible to access, and may require an angle adapter to connect an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't come with any clips to help with cable management.

The Hisense A6N is decently built. The stand supports the TV well and only wobbles a bit when nudged. While there's nothing premium about this TV, there are no obvious weak points or issues.

Unfortunately, the Hisense A6N has terrible contrast. Blacks are raised and washed out when there are any bright areas on the screen, and it lacks a local dimming feature to improve this. This TV shouldn't be used in a dark room. If you're looking for a TV with better contrast, consider the cheaper TCL S3/S350G.

It doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no blooming around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. However, as the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, any dark areas in any scene look completely washed out. This is also distracting if you're watching movies that don't use a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The advertising of this TV is very misleading, as Hisense markets it to have a Full Array backlight. This isn't true, and this TV doesn't have a local dimming feature at all, 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 are no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones.

Switching to Game Mode makes no noticeable difference in dark scene performance, it looks just as bad.

The Hisense A6N has disappointing peak brightness in HDR. Its low peak brightness combined with the lack of local dimming and low contrast results in a very flat HDR experience, and bright areas of the scene don't stand out at all.

Switching to the 'HDR Game' Picture Mode makes no noticeable difference in the HDR brightness.

Despite its other flaws in HDR, this TV has surprisingly great PQ EOTF tracking, meaning most HDR content is displayed close to the brightness intended by the content creator. Near-blacks and dark shadow details are raised due to the low contrast ratio, and the TV simply can't display bright highlights at all, but midtones are very close to the creator's intent.

The peak brightness in SDR is okay. Its bright enough that it can handle some glare in a moderately-lit room.

Unfortunately, the color gamut on this TV is just decent. It can't display a wide color gamut, so HDR looks no different from SDR in terms of color vibrancy and saturation.

The Hisense A6N has mediocre color volume. There's a lot working against it, including its limited color gamut, low peak brightness, and low contrast.

The Hisense A6N has good accuracy in SDR before calibration. The white balance is good overall, but almost all shades of gray have too much blue and not enough red, giving the overall color temperature a noticeable cold look. There are very few noticeable color inaccuracies.

This TV looks much better after a full calibration, with few remaining issues. The calibration system itself is a bit buggy, and a few resets were necessary for the settings to work properly.

Make sure to check out the full calibration settings we used.

The gray uniformity on this TV is decent. There's some noticeable dirty screen effect in the center, but it's not too bad. The sides of the screen are noticeably darker, though, and there are a few darker vertical bands across the screen.

The black uniformity is sub-par. There are distracting warm spots across the entire screen, and the whole thing looks blue due to its low contrast ratio.

One of the few great things about this TV is its viewing angle. There's no issue watching from the sides, making it a great choice for a wide seating arrangement or if you like watching the big game with a large group of friends.

The Hisense A6N has decent reflection handling. The glossy coating doesn't do much to reduce the intensity of direct reflections, but there's no noticeable rainbow smear, either.

Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre gradient handling in HDR. There's noticeable banding in almost all shades, but it's worse in dark shades of gray and red.

The low-quality content processing on this TV is nearly non-existent. It doesn't do much to reduce macro-blocking and pixelization when watching low-bandwidth streaming services, but there's no loss of fine details, either.

This TV has okay sharpness processing capabilities when upscaling low-resolution content. 

The TV has an RGB sub-pixel layout, so it doesn't have any issues rendering text when used as a PC monitor.

It's spectral power distribution shows that the panel doesn't use any KSF phosphor or Quantum Dot enhancement film to achieve better color separation.

The response time is just decent. Shadow details transition quickest, so there's no distracting inverse ghosting in near-blacks. Everything else is just slow, though, resulting in noticeable motion blur. There's some overshoot when transitioning to a brighter shade, but it's not very noticeable. If you're looking for a similar TV but with a faster response time, consider the Samsung DU6900 instead.

Unfortunately, the Hisense A6 Series uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight, and there's a low flicker frequency at all backlight levels below the maximum. This low-frequency flicker causes duplications in motion and can cause eye strain if you're sensitive to flicker. The good news is that the backlight is flicker-free when set to max. Since the TV can't get very bright, if flicker bothers you, just make sure that the backlight is at maximum, and you won't have any issues. This backlight behavior is consistent across all picture modes.

This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, also known as BFI. Instead, the backlight always flickers at 180Hz below max brightness, which helps reduce persistence blur but introduces some image duplication below max brightness.

If you prefer smoother motion, this TV has an optional motion interpolation feature. As expected for a budget model, though, it's not very good. It keeps up with slow panning shots fairly well, but there are lots of artifacts and tearing in fast shots.

Thanks to its relatively slow response time, this TV doesn't stutter much when watching movies. It's still a bit noticeable in very slow panning shots, but it's not too bad.

The TV removes judder from most sources automatically. Unfortunately, it can't quite remove judder from 60Hz interlaced sources. Many cable boxes support either 720p or 1080i, so if that's your case, make sure you select 720p instead for a judder-free experience.

Surprisingly for a budget model, this TV supports variable refresh rate technology to help reduce tearing. Due to its narrow refresh rate range, however, it can't take advantage of sources that support low framerate compensation, so you'll see tearing in games that can't maintain close to 60 fps.

The TV has incredibly low input lag in 'Game' mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience with very little delay between your actions with your controller or mouse and the action on-screen.

The TV supports most common resolutions, but only at 60Hz. Chroma 4:4:4 signals are displayed properly at all supported resolutions, which is essential for clear text from a desktop PC.

This TV can't take full advantage of the PS5, as it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.

This TV can't take full advantage of the Xbox Series X|S. It supports a few advanced features, including HDR and VRR, as well as Dolby Vision gaming, but it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate.

The TV supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. It doesn't support the same formats as the Hisense A7N, though, with more limited support for DTS audio formats. This means that physical media collectors should connect their player directly to their sound system instead of using eARC with this TV.

The frequency response is mediocre. Like most TVs, it basically has no bass response, with barely any thump or rumble in deep bass. Dialogue is clear at moderate listening levels, but low treble sounds are a bit muffled.

The distortion performance of this TV is decent overall. There's a bit of distortion at moderate listening levels, but you get more of it as you raise the volume.

Oddly, the Hisense A6N ships with Google TV 11 instead of version 12 found on most other 2024 Hisense TVs. It's still a great interface, though, and it's smooth and easy to use.

Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can't disable them.

The TV has a fantastic selection of apps, so finding your favorite content is easy. You can also cast content from your phone onto the TV or play videos directly from a USB stick.

The included remote is simple, with no number buttons and six buttons for quick access to popular streaming apps. 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.

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