Hisense A7N  TV Review

Unfortunately, this TV has inadequate peak brightness in HDR. HDR content looks flat and dull overall, as the TV isn't bright enough to bring out specular highlights, and with the lack of a local dimming feature, bright spots don't pop at all.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Filmmaker Mode
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 50
• Black Level: 0
• Dark Detail: Off
• Gamma: ST2084
• Active Contrast: Off
• Dynamic Tone Mapping: Off
• Color Temperature: Warm 1

If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, here are the results with Dynamic Tone Mapping set to 'On':

• Hallway Lights: 333 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 247 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 246 cd/m²

Switching to PC/Game Mode causes a slight, but noticeable decrease in overall peak brightness.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: HDR Game
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 50
• Black Level: 0
• Dark Detail: Off
• Gamma: ST2084
• Active Contrast: Off
• Dynamic Tone Mapping: Off
• Color Temperature: Warm 1

If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, here are results with Dynamic Tone Mapping set to 'On':

• Hallway Lights: 333 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 242 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 271 cd/m²

The peak brightness of this TV in SDR is sub-par. There's no distracting variation in brightness with different scenes, but it's not bright enough to overcome glare in a well-lit room, although it's just bright enough for moderately lit rooms. If you're looking for a TV to watch in a brighter room, look up the Hisense CanvasTV QLED 2024 instead.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Theater
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 45
• Gamma: 2.2
• Color Temperature: Warm 1
• Active Contrast: Off

The Hisense A7N has a decent native contrast ratio, so blacks look okay in dark scenes. Unfortunately, it lacks a local dimming feature, so blacks are raised and appear washed out when highlights appear on the screen. If you're looking for a similar TV with a somewhat better native contrast ratio, check out the Hisense QD6/QD65NF QLED.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, so there's no haloing around bright objects or subtitles in dark scenes. But as the TV can't brighten highlights without impacting the rest of the image, dark scenes look washed out.

This TV doesn't have a local dimming feature, 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's no distracting flicker or brightness changes as bright highlights move between zones, as the TV doesn't have any.

There's no noticeable difference in dark scene performance when the TV is in PC/Game Mode.

This TV's black uniformity is decent overall. There's no local dimming feature, so the entire screen is a bit raised and cloudy when bright highlights are on the screen. There are no bright spots, though, and there's no noticeable backlight bleed; just uniform clouding throughout.

The Hisense A7N has decent SDR color volume. It has very good coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, but it does struggle a bit more with yellows and reds. It has mediocre coverage of the widest BT.2020 color space, and the TV struggles with colors across the board in that space. 

The color volume of this TV is okay. It displays a satisfactory range of colors at many luminance levels, but it struggles with some dark saturated colors due to its lack of local dimming. It's also not bright enough to display very bright colors in HDR content. 

The Hisense A7 has impressive accuracy in SDR even before calibrating it. Gamma is very close to the 2.2 level for a moderately lit room, and the color temperature is nearly perfect. Color accuracy is great overall, but with minor color mapping issues, moreso with blues, across the entire color range. White balance is also great, although colors are slightly undersaturated in the entire range of grays.

The TV has fantastic SDR accuracy after calibration, and the TV is easy to calibrate. Any issues with white balance are gone, and the color accuracy is outstanding, with only some minor inaccuracies, again moreso with blues, that aren't noticeable to most people.

See our full calibration settings.

The TV has very good HDR accuracy before calibration. The white balance is excellent, but there's a bit too much blue in some grays, which contributes to the TV's overly cool color temperature. The accuracy of colors is still good overall, but there's some mapping errors throughout, most notably in warmer tones. 

The TV has excellent accuracy after calibration. The white balance is mostly unchanged, but there's a no longer too much blue in brighter grays. The color temperature is now incredibly close to 6,500K, and overall color accuracy is excellent. 

The TV has good PQ EOTF tracking, but it's decidedly not perfect. Blacks and shadows are raised in all mastered content, but then, for content mastered at 600 and 1000 nits, the TV closely follows the curve until it reaches its peak brightness. With content mastered at 4000 nits, the TV is too dark across the entire curve from darker midtones onward, and it gets darker as the content gets brighter. There's a gradual roll-off near the TV's peak brightness with all mastered content, which helps to preserve detail in very bright specular highlights.

The TV has poor low-quality content smoothing. It does a fantastic job at preserving details, but unfortunately, it just doesn't smooth out artifacts in low-bitrate content. If you want a large TV with much better low-quality content smoothing, take a look at the Hisense 98QD5QG.

The Hisense A7 does a good job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are clear enough, but finer details are hard to make out.

Sharpness processing was calibrated with no over-sharpening for low-resolution content, with the following settings:

• Sharpness: 13
• Super Resolution: On

The Hisense A7's gradient handling in HDR is alright. There's some distracting banding in darker shades, especially in grays and blues, but it's also a bit distracting in all other darker colors. Bright shades are displayed well, though, with minimal banding.

The TV has low input lag when set to PC/Game Mode, which ensures a very responsive gaming experience.

There is a weird bug where the input lag is much higher than expected. Rebooting the TV multiple times fixes it, and the input lag numbers subsequently fall within expectations.

The TV supports most common resolutions. It displays chroma 4:4:4 signals properly at all supported resolutions, which is essential for clear text from a desktop PC. If you're looking for an affordable TV that supports 4k @ 120Hz, take a look at the Hisense QD7N QLED.

The Hisense A7 supports all VRR technologies, which is great for gamers. Still, the refresh rate range is narrow, so its usefulness is limited. It also doesn't support Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), so you'll see tearing if your game's frame rate drops below 48Hz.

The TV has sub-par pixel transitions at its maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. Pixels change RGB values pretty slowly, which leads to visible motion blur. Response times are extra slow when the TV exits a dark state, which also leads to some black smearing. Overall, this isn't a great TV if you want clear motion while gaming. 

This TV doesn't support a 120Hz refresh rate. 

The TV has sub-par pixel transitions at 60Hz. Pixels change RGB values pretty slowly, which leads to visible motion blur. Response times are extra slow when the TV exits a dark state, which also leads to some black smearing. Overall, this isn't a great TV if you want clear motion while gaming. 

This TV can't take full advantage of the PS5, as it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. As such, it's best suited for gamers who prefer the 'Graphics' preset in their games and not competitive gamers who prefer 'Performance' presets with higher frame rates.

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. This makes it a better choice for more casual gamers who prefer immersive graphics over higher frame rates.

Despite the relatively slow pixel response time on this TV, there's still some noticeable stutter, especially in slow panning shots.

While the motion interpolation feature is effective at reducing the frame hold time when interpolating 24p content up to 30 fps, the overall experience is poor. The feature behaves inconsistently, leading to an extremely inconsistent frame time and choppy motion overall.

The TV removes judder from most sources automatically, without the need for any additional motion settings. Unfortunately, it can't remove judder from 60Hz sources like an older cable box or from the native apps.

There's some occasional micro judder when watching 24p content sent from a 60p source, but it's very minor.

The Hisense A7 has a decent response time when watching content. You don't notice any added blur in 24 fps and 30 fps content, but there's some noticeable blur behind fast motion in 60 fps content.

Unfortunately, transitions on this TV aren't smooth, and there are noticeable artifacts. Colors don't transition smoothly, causing a noticeable intermediate color, and edges are noticeably blurry compared to the center.

Unfortunately, the backlight on the Hisense A7 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 with the backlight below max, which helps reduce persistence blur but introduces severe image duplication below max brightness.

The TV has mediocre handling of direct reflections, so you do see your lamp, wall light, or window on the screen when watching content or playing video games in a bright room if you have a light source placed opposite the screen. 

The Hisense A7N has fantastic black levels in a well-lit room. Black levels barely go up in a bright room, so blacks stay deep and punchy.

The amount of total reflected light is decent. It reduces the intensity of reflections, but they're still quite noticeable in a room with more than one or two lights on, especially during dark scenes. Unfortuntatly, direct reflections cause noticeable light banding.

The TV's perceived color volume in a bright room is decent. Colors barely lose any saturation when they're exposed to light, so you get almost equally as vibrant colors in a well-lit room as you do a dark one.

Unfortunately, this TV has unremarkable off-angle viewing, much worse than the Hisense A6N. The image degrades rapidly as you move off-center, as colors fade rapidly and brightness decreases, causing the image to appear washed out. This makes it a poor choice for a wide seating arrangement.

The gray uniformity is sub-par overall, but is particularly disappointing with large areas of bright uniform colors. Here, the sides of the screen are very noticeably darker than the center. The center of the screen is also a bit darker, and there's noticeable dirty screen effect. Uniformity is better in near-black scenes, but here there's some visible dirty screen effect.

The TV uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. This doesn't cause any issues for video or gaming content, but it can be a problem for PC monitor use as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.

The TV uses a KSF phosphor coating to produce red light, and it has good color purity, helping it display a wide color gamut. 

The Hisense A7N is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports.

The Hisense A7 Series supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. It supports all major audio formats, so you don't have to worry about compatibility with external sources.

The Hisense 65A7N features a similar design to many other Hisense models, with a metal back enclosure, plastic housing for the inputs, and a set of plastic feet. It's simple, but it's a functional design that looks good enough.

The Hisense 65A7N uses two plastic feet that don't take up a lot of space. They lift the TV about three inches, so most soundbars fit underneath without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 39" x 11.8".

The top section of the TV is metallic, and the section that houses the inputs is made of plastic. Most of the inputs are side-facing, but they're pushed toward 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. However, the HDMI 4, Ethernet, and digital audio out ports located on the back are definitely not easily accessible if you have it wall-mounted. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't come with any clips to help with cable management.

The Hisense 65A7N has decent build quality. The metal back is sturdy, but there's quite a bit of flex on the plastic portion housing the inputs. There's also quite a bit of wobble when the TV is pushed, but it does a good job of settling relatively quickly. Overall, the materials used don't feel premium, but there are no serious issues with its assembly or quality.

The Hisense A7N uses version 12 of the popular Google TV operating system. The interface is 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 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.

There's a single button on the bottom center of the TV that you can use to switch inputs and power the TV on/off.

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

The Hisense A7N has a barely adequate frequency response. Like most TVs, the bass is pretty much non-existent. At least dialogue is clear at moderate listening levels, but the sound becomes increasingly unbalanced as you raise the volume. This is unfortunate since the speakers don't get very loud, so it's best suited for a quiet environment.