The Hisense A7N is a budget, entry-level 4k TV released in 2024 as part of Hisense's A-Series lineup, and succeeds the Hisense A7K series. It's a basic TV, but it does have a few additional features that we don't always see in entry-level models, such as full variable refresh rate support, a wide color gamut, and support for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+. It also passes through most advanced audio formats from DTS and Dolby through its eARC port. It's available in 43-, 50-, 55-, 65-, 75, and 85-inch sizes, so there's something for almost any room setup.
The Hisense A7 is a decent TV overall. It delivers a good gaming experience thanks to its low input lag, and it even comes with a few nice gaming features like VRR support. It looks good in a dark room thanks to its high contrast ratio and good black uniformity. It's not as good in a bright room, though, as it has relatively low peak brightness, so it can't overcome a ton of glare. Finally, it's okay for watching sports or shows, but the image degrades at an angle, so it's not a good choice if you have a wide seating arrangement.
The Hisense A7 is a satisfactory TV for watching shows in a bright room, although try to dim the lights for the best possible experience, as it's just not bright enough to overcome glare in very bright rooms. Still, its SDR brightness is decent, and its reflection handling is good, so it offers a pleasant viewing experience overall in moderately lit rooms. The smart interface is fast and easy to use, and there's a great selection of streaming apps to easily find your favorite shows. It's not as well-suited for a wide seating arrangement, as the image degrades rapidly when viewed at an angle.
The Hisense A7 is a satisfactory TV for watching sports in a bright room, although it's not bright enough to overcome glare when in very bright rooms. Still, it performs well in more moderately lit contexts due to its decent SDR brightness and good reflection handling. It has a great response time, so fast motion in sports looks crisp, with little motion blur. Unfortunately, it's not a good choice for a wide seating arrangement, as the image degrades rapidly when viewed at an angle, and there are noticeable uniformity issues.
The Hisense A7 delivers a good gaming experience. It has low input lag and a great response time, ensuring a smooth, responsive gaming experience with little delay in your inputs. It also supports some advanced gaming features like VRR to reduce tearing. It's bright enough in SDR to look nice in moderately lit contexts, especially with its good reflection handling; just make sure to avoid bright rooms, as it's just not bright enough for those. Unfortunately, it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, which is disappointing for more serious gamers but fine for casual gaming.
The Hisense A7 is decent for watching movies in a dark room. It has a good native contrast ratio, so blacks are deep and uniform in darker scenes, although they look noticeably raised when bright highlights are present due to the lack of local dimming. It also has an impressive wide color gamut, so HDR content looks vivid and lifelike. Sadly, it can't get very bright in HDR, which results in a fairly flat HDR experience, as bright specular highlights don't stand out from the background.
The Hisense A7 Series delivers a good gaming experience, but HDR adds little due to its mediocre HDR peak brightness. Plus, it lacks a local dimming feature, so bright highlights in games don't stand out at all, and everything looks flat overall. Still, even though it's not quite bright enough to make its colors pop in brighter scenes, it does have an impressive color gamut in HDR, so darker games look vivid and realistic. It also has a low input lag and a quick response time, resulting in smooth motion and a responsive feel.
The Hisense A7 is good for use as a PC monitor, although it does have some inconveniences for that usage. Its viewing angle is narrow, which results in the sides of the screen appearing non-uniform if you're sitting close to the screen. It also has alright gray uniformity, but you'll notice uniformity issues when browsing the web or doing any sort of desktop work as the edges of the screen are noticeably darker than the center. Still, it's bright enough for a pleasant experience in moderately lit offices, especially with its good reflection handling. Plus, it has very low input lag and a quick response time, leading to a responsive experience overall. Finally, it displays chroma 4:4:4 at all supported resolutions, which is great for text clarity.
We tested the 65-inch Hisense A7 TV, and our results are also valid for the 43, 50, 55, 75, and 85-inch models. The 43-, 50, and 55-inch sizes only have three HDMI inputs, but they have a full-sized composite input with dedicated audio and video ports. The 65-, 75, and 85-inch sizes have four HDMI ports, but they require an adapter for composite inputs, which is sold separately.
Size | US Model | HDMI Ports |
---|---|---|
43" | Hisense 43A7N | 3 |
50" | Hisense 50A7N | 3 |
55" | Hisense 55A7N | 3 |
65" | Hisense 65A7N | 4 |
75" | Hisense 75A7N | 4 |
85" | Hisense 85A7N | 4 |
The unit we tested was manufactured in January 2024, and you can see our unit's label.
The Hisense A7 is a decent budget TV with a few nice features for the price. While it lacks some of the features found on the higher-end Hisense U6/U6N, such as local dimming, it still has VRR support with low input lag for gamers, and it supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+. Plus, it passes through most advanced audio formats through its eARC port. Ultimately, this is one of the best options at this price point, as it offers satisfactory image quality overall, and its performance is good enough not to make you regret your purchase. It also competes well against slightly more expensive models like the TCL Q6/Q651G QLED, and if you're in need of more features, you can always consider upgrading to the U6N.
See our recommendations for the best 4k TVs, the best budget TVs, and the best 4k gaming TVs.
The Hisense U6/U6N is better than the Hisense A7N, mostly due to its fantastic local dimming feature. This lets the U6N display much deeper blacks than the A7N can, leading to a much better HDR viewing experience overall. The U6N is also brighter in HDR and SDR, so ultimately, all content pops more on that model. Still, the A7N is much more accurate in SDR prior to being calibrated, but it doesn't quite make up for the U6N's edge in image quality.
The TCL Q6/Q651G QLED and Hisense A7N trade blows, as they are evenly matched, except for gamers. The TCL is a bit brighter overall, but the Hisense has better reflection handling, so they look similar in brighter rooms. The Hisense has the much better upscaling, so it performs better when watching low-resolution content from DVDs, but the TCL has better low-quality content smoothing, giving it the edge when watching low-bitrate content from streaming apps. Now, for gaming, the TCL has a trick up its sleeve: it supports 120Hz at 1080p and 1440p. This definitely makes it the better choice for gamers. For everyone else, just get the cheapest one you can find.
The Hisense A7N is better than the TCL S4/S450G. The TCL has one noticeable edge over the Hisense: a better native contrast ratio. While that does give it deeper blacks in dark scenes, it can't make up for the Hisense's edge in HDR and SDR brightness, as well as its wider color gamut. This makes the Hisense's pop more in most content. Plus, the Hisense has a much faster response time, with a narrow VRR range, also making it the superior product for gamers.
The Hisense A7N is a bit better than the Hisense A6/A65K, but it's close. The older A6 has slightly better contrast, giving it the edge when watching darker content. However, the A7 has a lot of minor but noticeable advantages: it's a bit brighter in HDR and SDR, with better HDR accuracy. It also has slightly better reflection handling, giving it the edge in brighter rooms. Plus, it has a faster response time, making it better for gaming.
The Hisense QD7N QLED is better than the Hisense A7N in most ways. The QD7 has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth for up to 4k @ 144Hz gaming with VRR, so it's fully compatible with modern consoles and is better for gamers looking for the best possible performance. The QD7 also gets brighter overall, so it's better suited for a bright room. However, the A7N has much better contrast and black levels, so it looks much better when watching movies or shows in a dark room.
The Hisense CanvasTV QLED 2024 and Hisense A7N deliver similar performance, but in different areas. The cheaper A7N has the better contrast, and is much more accurate in SDR prior to calibration. The Canvas is noticeably brighter in SDR, but way less accurate, so if you prefer SDR pop over accuracy, it's the TV for you. The Canvas also has better image processing, and is the better choice for gamers due to offering full 4k @ 144Hz support, with VRR, while the A7N is limited to 60Hz at all resolutions.
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 TV 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.
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.
Unfortunately, this TV has mediocre 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:
If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, here are the results with Dynamic Tone Mapping set to 'On':
Switching to PC/Game Mode causes a slight decrease in overall peak brightness.
These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:
If you prefer a brighter but less accurate image, here are results with Dynamic Tone Mapping set to 'On':
The TV has excellent 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 peak brightness of this TV in SDR is just decent. There's no distracting variation in brightness with different scenes, but it's not quite bright enough to overcome glare in a very bright room, although it's certainly 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:
The Hisense A7 has an impressive HDR color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, although with some color mapping accuracy issues. The TV has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, with most of the same color mapping issues, but here highly saturated colors, in particular cyans and greens, are mostly undersaturated and off the mark.
The color volume of this TV is decent. 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 and good, but unexceptional, native contrast.
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.
You can see our full calibration settings here.
The gray uniformity is alright 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 much better in near-black scenes, but here there's some visible dirty screen effect.
This TV's black uniformity is excellent 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.
Unfortunately, this TV has disappointing off-angle viewing. 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 overall reflection handling of this TV is good, especially when it's dealing with glare from ambient sources of light. When dealing with direct sources of light, such as from lights or windows placed directly opposite the TV, it's satisfactory, but the resulting glare is more noticeable.
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 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:
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 a quantum dot color converter to produce green light, as confirmed by the TV's spectral power distribution (SPD).
Unfortunately, the backlight on the Hisense A7 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 an optional motion interpolation feature to improve the clarity of motion, but it doesn't work very well. Even slower-moving scenes have some noticeable artifacts. The TV really struggles in faster-moving scenes, and at times, the TV stops interpolating altogether.
Due to the TV's quick response time, there's some noticeable stutter when watching movies or TV shows, and it's most apparent in slow panning shots.
The TV removes judder from most sources automatically, without the need for any additional motion settings. Unfortunately, it can't 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.
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, so you'll see tearing if your game's frame rate drops below 48Hz.
The TV has incredibly low input lag when set to PC/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.
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.
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.
The TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on all four HDMI ports, but it does support both Dolby Vision and HDR10+.
The TV 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 TV 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.
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.
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.