Hisense H9G TV Review

The Hisense H9G is Hisense's flagship 4k LED TV in 2020. It sits above the Hisense H8G and it's the replacement to the Hisense H9F. Expect its main competitors to be the TCL 6 Series/R635 2020 QLED, Samsung Q60/Q60T QLED, and the Vizio P Series Quantum 2020.

The Hisense H9G has a nice and simple design, very similar to 2019's Hisense H9F, except the back has a textured finish. Hisense added tracks on the back panel and clips on the stand for cable management. The stand has a unique design and it's an overall simple-looking TV with thin metal bezels that looks nice in any setup.

The metal stand is a bit bigger than the stand on the Hisense H9F, but it has the same shape. The stand is solid and the TV doesn't wobble much.

Footprint of the 65" stand: 35.2" x 13.4".

The back panel is completely plastic and it has a textured checkerboard-like finish to it. The Hisense H9G has tracks on the back panel and clips on the stand for cable management, which is a nice improvement over the Hisense H9F.

The borders are thin and aren't distracting.

This TV isn't very thick and shouldn't stick out much when wall-mounted.

The Hisense H9G has a good build quality. The plastic on the back is solid and there isn't much flex, except for near the inputs, where the plastic bends a bit more. The border around the TV is metal, giving it a more premium look. Overall, the TV is sturdy and there aren't any issues.

The Hisense H9G has an outstanding contrast ratio, which is expected from a VA panel. The local dimming feature really improves the contrast and the TV displays extremely deep blacks, similar to the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019.

This TV has a great local dimming feature. It handles zone transitions fairly well, and even though the zone transitions are noticeable with the test pattern, they aren't visible with real content. There's no black crush and small details pop the way they should, and even though there's some minor blooming around bright objects, it's not very distracting. Subtitles get very bright, but there isn't any blooming around them. We did notice some blotching in the Star Wars opening crawl as it was trying to brighten each star and darken the space between them, and there was also some film grain during the opening of Stranger Things, which could be distracting. However, these are specific examples and shouldn't be common with most content.

The Hisense H9G has amazing peak brightness and it easily gets bright enough to combat glare. This is a slight improvement over the Hisense H9F. Sadly, its brightness isn't very consistent across varied content, so if you're watching content with large, bright areas, like a hockey or basketball game, it's dimmer than with most other content.

We measured the brightness after calibration in the 'Theater Night' Picture Mode with the Backlight set to 'Max' and Local Dimming to 'High'.

If you don't care about image accuracy and want the brightest image possible, set the Picture Mode to 'Standard', Local Dimming to 'High', and Backlight to 'Max'. We were able to get 1,569 cd/m² in the 25% peak window test.

The Hisense H9G has great HDR peak brightness, and it's much better than the lower-end Hisense H8G. It gets bright enough to bring out highlights in HDR, but like the SDR peak brightness, it's not very consistent with different content.

We measured the brightness before calibration in the 'HDR Theater' Picture Mode with Local Dimming set to 'High' and Backlight to 'Max'.

If you want the brightest image possible, set the Picture Mode to 'HDR Standard' and Backlight to 'Max' with Local Dimming on 'High'. We were able to get 1830 cd/m² in the 25% peak window test.

The Hisense H9G has good gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are a bit darker and there's some very minor dirty screen effect visible in the center, which could be distracting during sports. The uniformity is much better in near-dark scenes. Note that gray uniformity varies between units.

The Hisense H9G has poor viewing angles, which is expected from a VA panel. The image quickly loses accuracy when viewing off-center, and it's not suggested for wide seating arrangements.

The Hisense H9G has incredible black uniformity, much better than the Hisense H9F and the Hisense H8G. There's almost no visible blooming with or without local dimming enabled.

Excellent reflection handling. This TV performs extremely well in moderately-lit rooms, and even in direct sunlight, the reflections don't get too distracting.

The Hisense H9G has mediocre out-of-the-box color accuracy. Most colors are inaccurate and the white balance is off, which affects the way shades of gray are displayed. The color temperature is warm, giving the image a red/yellow tint, and gamma doesn't follow the curve very well, so most scenes are brighter than they should be. If color accuracy is important to you, check out the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED.

Note: With Gamma set to '2.4,' the gamma followed the target better with a result of 2.29. However, this made the TV less accurate as the white balance dE and color dE each got worse, so it's better to leave the Gamma at '2.2'.

After calibration, the color accuracy is remarkable. There's almost no visible inaccuracies in colors and shades of gray, and the gamma is nearly perfect.

You can see our recommended settings here.

The Hisense H9G upscales 480p content, like from DVDs, well without any issues.

720p content, like from cable boxes, is upscaled well.

1080p content looks almost as good as native 4k content.

4k content is displayed perfectly and there aren't any visible issues.

The Hisense 65H9G is a 4k TV that can't display an 8k input.

This TV uses a BGR subpixel layout, which can affect the way text is rendered when using the TV as a PC monitor, similar to the Samsung TU7000. You can read about it here.

The Hisense H9G has a great wide color gamut, but it's not as good as the Hisense H9F. It has outstanding coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space, but it has limited coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space. If you want a similar TV with a wider color gamut, check out the TCL 6 Series/R635 2020.

The EOTF doesn't follow the target curve very well and most scenes are brighter than they should be until it rolls off at the TV's peak brightness. The EOTF in 'Game' mode follows the target better, as seen here.

If you find HDR too dim, set the Picture Mode to 'HDR Theater', Backlight to 'Max', Local Dimming to 'High', and Active Contrast to 'Medium'. This makes the image a bit brighter, as you can see this EOTF.

This TV has a very good color volume. It displays dark, saturated colors well due to the outstanding contrast ratio, but like most LED TVs, it can't display really bright blues.

The Hisense H9G has great gradient handling. There's some banding with dark gray, red, and green, but it's not very noticeable. There's no gradient smoothing feature, and enabling Noise Reduction and Digital Noise Reduction doesn't improve the gradient handling.

There are no signs of temporary image retention, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast static test image for 10 minutes.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The Hisense H9G has an extremely fast response time, much quicker than the Hisense H8G. There's still a bit of overshoot in some transitions and the response time is a bit slow in the 0-20% transition. This may lead to some motion artifacts in dark scenes, but for the most part, motion looks clear on this TV.

Note: there have been a few reports of serious motion artifacts with some content. We haven't noticed this on our unit, but Hisense has confirmed that they're aware of the issue, and they're working on a fix. Let us know in the discussions below if you've experienced this issue.

Although the backlight uses PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to dim its backlight, the flicker frequency is extremely high and shouldn't bother most people. It still flickers at 960Hz even with the backlight at 0%, although the graph at 0% appears different than the graphs at 50% and 100% backlight settings.

This TV has a Black Frame Insertion feature that flickers the backlight at 60Hz, which may cause some duplication of motion. The BFI feature also suffers from bad crosstalk, which creates visible ghosting and motion artifacts. To enable the BFI feature, simply turn on Motion Clearness. The picture above appears brighter than the BFI settings on other TVs because the dimming of this TV is brighter than others, and you can't change the Backlight setting when the BFI is enabled.

This TV is able to interpolate motion up to 120fps, which is known as the 'Soap Opera Effect'. Sadly, it doesn't stop interpolating even in busy scenes, so there are a lot of noticeable artifacts with fast-moving content.

See the settings for the motion interpolation feature here.

Since the Hisense H9G has a good response time, there's noticeable stutter with lower-frame rate content as each frame is held longer.

The Hisense H9G is able to remove judder from any source, such as Blu-ray players or native apps. It automatically removes judder from native 24p sources and 24p via 60i. To remove judder from 24p via 60p sources, set the Motion Enhancement setting to 'Film'.

The Hisense 65H9G doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology.