The Hisense H9E Plus is one of Hisense's top TVs for 2018, and it offers good mixed-usage performance. It has an excellent native contrast ratio and produces very deep blacks, but has a bad local dimming feature that doesn't improve dark room performance much. It has a good wide color gamut and very good motion handling. It supports HDR, but unfortunately it isn't bright enough to produce bright highlights, so the effect is lost a bit.
Note that this is a different TV from the Hisense H9E.
Good TV for most uses. It has an excellent native contrast ratio great for movies. For TV and sports it has a fast response time and good peak brightness, but can't overcome glare in a bright room and has poor viewing angles. Very good TV for gaming, with low input lag, but gaming in HDR doesn't add much to the experience. While it can be used as a monitor, it doesn't properly support 4:4:4 so text is blurry.
The Hisense H9E Plus delivers a good movie-viewing experience in a dark room. The high native contrast ratio means blacks don't look gray in a dark room, but unfortunately the local dimming feature is bad. The response time is excellent, and motion looks great. The TV can remove judder from all sources.
Good TV for watching TV during the day. It has good reflection handling and good SDR brightness, but it isn't bright enough to overcome glare in a really bright room. 720p and older TV shows are upscaled well without any artifacts. Unfortunately, the viewing angles are poor and it is best enjoyed from directly in front.
Decent TV for watching sports during the day. The Hisense H9E Plus has good reflection handling and good SDR brightness, but can't quite overcome glare in a bright room. Motion looks great thanks to the fast response time. Unfortunately, the viewing angles are poor and this TV is best enjoyed from directly in front, so it isn't great for watching the big game with a group of friends.
The Hisense H9E Plus is very good for playing video games. Input lag is very good, low enough for all but the most competitive gamers, and the response time is excellent, so fast moving objects are crisp and clear. Unfortunately, it doesn't support any of the new gaming technologies like VRR or auto game mode.
The TV delivers a good HDR movie experience, but HDR doesn't add much. The excellent native contrast ratio is perfect for dark room viewing, but the local dimming feature is bad and it can't produce very bright highlights in HDR. It has a good wide color gamut and decent color volume.
Good HDR gaming experience. Very good low input lag for gaming in 4k, and motion looks great thanks to the fast response time. The H9E Plus produces a wide color gamut and has decent color volume. Unfortunately, HDR doesn't add much as it can't produce bright highlights and the local dimming feature is bad.
Decent TV for use as a PC monitor. The TV has very good low input lag and an excellent response time. Unfortunately, the viewing angles are poor, and it can't properly display 4:4:4 color, so text always looks a bit blurry.
The Hisense H9E Plus has a decent design. The borders are thin and it has a modern look that should fit well in most rooms. The stand is sleek and metallic, but it is nearly the full width of the TV, which could cause issues depending on the width of your table. There is no dedicated cable management, but there are two plugs that come pre-installed in the top VESA mount holes that can be used to guide cables around the back.
The rear of the TV is made of plastic and has a textured finish. There are two plugs that come pre-installed in the top VESA ports; we're not quite sure what these are for but they could be used to route cables around the back, as there is no other cable management. These plugs must be removed in order to VESA mount the TV.
The main screen is very thin. The design is similar to the LG OLED TVs like the C8 and B8, with a thin top screen portion, and all the electronics housed in a thicker bottom portion. At the transition between the thicker bottom portion and the thin top part, our unit is bent backward. We don't know if this is intentional, a defect, or if the TV was damaged when we installed the legs. It isn't noticeable when watching TV, but care should be taken when attaching the legs.
The Hisense H9E Plus is edge lit and has a bad local dimming feature. It is able to turn off dark zones to improve the contrast, but only in large vertical bands which can be distracting. Overall, it is more aggressive than the Samsung NU8000; producing deeper blacks but more blooming, and zone transitions are more evident.
Decent SDR peak brightness. The H9E Plus isn't bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room but is bright enough for a dimly lit or dark room. There is very little variation in screen brightness based on content, which is good.
Sub-par brightness in HDR. HDR content is noticeably dimmer than SDR. There is very little benefit to watching content in HDR on the H9E Plus. Overall brightness is fairly consistent with varied content, and some small highlights are boosted in some scenes.
If you find HDR content too dim, see our recommended settings for HDR here.
The Hisense H9E Plus has good gray uniformity. Some small bands are visible throughout, but these shouldn't be distracting when watching sports. The sides of the screen are noticeably darker than the rest, but this shouldn't bother most people.
The Hisense H9E Plus has bad viewing angles. Even slightly off center, the black levels increase significantly and the image appears darker. This is a problem if you have a wide seating area, or even if you are sitting too close to the TV, as the edges of the screen will be much darker than the rest of the screen.
Excellent calibration out of the box. The most accurate results are with the 'Calibrated' Picture Mode. The white balance is very good, and while the color error is a bit higher, most people won't notice the errors enough to benefit from a professional calibration. Gamma is a bit darker than the target of 2.2.
After calibration the accuracy is nearly perfect. White balance is nearly perfect, but color inaccuracy is still a bit high, although most people won't be able to notice it. The calibration system is very sensitive; small changes result in a significant shift in color accuracy. The gamma curve is nearly perfect.
You can see our recommended settings here.
The H9E Plus has a good, wide color gamut. We test with 75% stimulus colors which are very bright, and at this brightness the TV's color accuracy isn't great; however when we send 50% stimulus colors which are less bright the color accuracy is better, with both P3 and Rec 2020 colors.
The HDR EOTF curve in the HDR Standard picture mode is brighter than the target PQ curve, so HDR content will look brighter than intended. If you want to make HDR content even brighter you can raise the Contrast to '100', which brightens the EOTF, and if that's still not bright enough you can also set Active Contrast to 'Medium'. The EOTF in the HDR Game picture mode is nearly identical to that of HDR Standard.
You can see our recommended settings for HDR here.
The Hisense H9E Plus produces decent color volume, similar to the TCL S517. It can't produce deep colors or bright blues very well, but produces red and greens almost as bright as pure white.
We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.
The Hisense H9E Plus has an excellent fast response time. There is significant overshoot in some transitions, this can cause some artifacts in some scenes and can be seen in the motion blur photo. Most down transitions undershoot their targets before leveling out but this is fairly minor and most people won't notice it.
The H9E Plus does not have an optional Black Frame Insertion feature.
The Hisense H9E Plus can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120 fps. The option for this is called Motion enhancement. The 'Film' setting can be used to remove judder without adding any extra interpolation or Soap Opera Effect. The 'Smooth' setting provides the maximum amount of interpolation. With higher levels of interpolation, there are more artifacts during fast motion.
When watching 24p movies, from a Blu-ray for example, there is some stutter, since each frame is held static on the screen. The overall stutter of this TV is decent, but it can be noticeable to some people, especially in wide panning shots.
The TV can remove Judder from all sources, but only when Motion enhancement is set to 'Film'. This mode of interpolation removes judder without adding any extra interpolation or soap opera effect.
The Hisense H9E Plus does not support VRR. We tested this with a PC and with the Xbox One S.
Great low input lag. The 4k input lag is a bit higher than similar models from this year. 1080p input lag is very low, great for gaming with older consoles.
The H9E Plus cannot display 120 Hz content from any source.
The Hisense H9E Plus can receive a Chroma 4:4:4 signal, but can't display it correctly. When we sent our test image in 4:4:4, every vertical line under the text should display as the same color, but they don't. This doesn't have a significant impact under normal usage, but when used as a PC monitor, text isn't clear.
The TV has a native 120 Hz panel, but when a 120 Hz signal is sent it drops every other frame. The only way to display at 120 Hz is to enable motion interpolation. This is similar to last year's Samsung Q7F or Q8C.