Hisense 110 UX TV review: Big, bright, and bragworthy

Hisense 110 UX

MSRP $20,000.00

Score Details

“The 110 UX is a jaw-dropping marvel of a television from Hisense.”

Pros

• Unprecedented brightness
• Excellent black levels
• Superior blooming/halo control
• Vivid, accurate color
• Strong off-angle performance

Cons

• Highly reflective gloss screen
• Polarizing speaker design

I’ve been anticipating this Hisense 110 UX review since I first saw the television at CES at the beginning of the year. It’s been a long wait. But now that it’s here … the wait was worth it.

The Hisense 110 UX is almost peerless when it comes to the total experience. Projectors don’t quite match it. Micro-LED doesn’t quite match it. The only other TV you can buy that really competes — at this size, anyway — is the 115-inch TCL QM89, and we’ll get to that.

In a way, that this is only one of two consumer TVs you can buy in the well-over-100-inches size class could make the job a little easier, right? If the 110 UX doesn’t perform as well as a reference-grade TV in a smaller size, it shouldn’t be shocking. This is new territory, so we expect first-gen problems. And if you want a TV this big? Well, this is what you get.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it: This TV costs just shy of $20,000, and that kind of money should buy you more than just size. It should buy you top-tier performance, too.

I went into this review prepared to be a little forgiving. But it turns out I didn’t have to be, because this TV is one hell of a performer. I keep looking for a smoking gun against it, and I can’t find one.

It doesn’t get everything right. There’s certainly room for improvement, at least if you’re a purist with super-high standards. But if you’re going to spend a small fortune on a TV? The 110 UX — you’ll also see it referred to as the Championship Edition with an NBA tie-in — is the best argument in favor of that move that I’ve seen yet. Not only that, but this TV is a clear sign that Hisense has the processing chops to go toe-to-toe with the best in the business, which is not something I’ve been able to say before.

And when this processing technology trickles down to TVs like the Hisense U8 series? Watch out.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though. Let’s start out by talking about all the non-picture quality considerations.

Hisense 110 UX specs

Big and glossy

The 110 UX is a big TV. And it is heavy. Yes, it can be safely mounted on your wall, but make sure a professional does it. That way, if anything happens, it’s on them — not you — and you’re covered.

Surprisingly, this TV has a footprint that allows it to be placed on larger media cabinets. From the outside edge of one foot to the other, you’re looking at 44 inches, which is not far off from the spacing I see on many 65-inch TVs.

Consider this, though: Placing this TV on a media cabinet means the top edge of the TV probably will be over 7 feet high. That means when you’re seated, you’ll have to tilt your chin up a bit. It’s a little like sitting in one of the front rows of a movie theater. This is something I didn’t notice about the TCL 115-inch because we have that TV on floor stands, so the center of the TV is much closer to eye-level when seated.

Next: the screen is glossy. A lot of folks are going to prefer that — it really does give the image a bit more luster. However, anyone hoping this is the ultimate bright-room TV should probably temper their expectations a bit. Sure, the TV can get more than bright enough to do battle with a sun-soaked room. But bright light sources are reflected with more intensity here than with a TV that has a more aggressive anti-glare coating.

If I had to guess, I’d say Hisense went with what would look best in a dark room, figuring this TV is more likely to land in a dedicated media space than a traditional living room. It’s hard to dock points for the glossy screen, but I feel I must since even dimmer sconce lighting is going to be a little distracting when watching dark movie scenes.

Now, a quick word on the user interface. This TV runs Google TV better than any other Hisense TV I’ve ever tested, so it gets two thumbs up from me there.

Big bass and big feel, but …

When it comes to the audio system, I wish my takeaway was a bit more positive. Hisense clearly made audio performance a priority, because it had to know these side-mounted speakers were going to be polarizing. To Hisense’s credit, it made the speakers as stealthy as they could be. And I applaud Hisense for not phoning it in with down-firing speakers.

On the positive side, I will say this TV does produce a significant amount of bass, which can at times give the TV a very big feel. Also, I appreciate the stereo effects this TV produces — the wide placement of the speakers makes them all the more convincing.

However, my praise ends there. Despite Hisense’s efforts, I’m just not a fan of how this TV sounds. I know most folks who buy this TV will likely also invest in an equally impressive audio system. But these polarizing side speakers were a gamble that just doesn’t pay off.

It hardly seems fair to Hisense, as I’m sure there would be complaints either way, right? It’s kind of a lose-lose situation. If they hadn’t put this much effort into the audio system, we’d complain that a TV this expensive should have had more effort put into the sound. But with these speakers, I feel like they really needed to bowl me over — and they just don’t.

When I fire up this TV, I just immediately wish I had a soundbar running. There’s a big hole in the frequency response somewhere, and the fidelity is just not what I want. Any virtual surround sound, including Atmos effects, is just nonexistent. (Your mileage, as always, may vary.)

For the ‘Nit Nerds’

While it sounds like I’ve started out negative, it just so happens that most of my complaints are around non-picture quality factors. Because the viewing experience this TV offers is delightfully excellent.

For all you Nit Nerds out there, I have some shocking numbers to share. But I have to preempt these numbers with a caveat: Over the past few years, as we’ve been chasing down the best HDR performance from TVs, we’ve been excited about high peak brightness numbers because not only do we want dazzling HDR highlights when watching HDR, but we also enjoy a nice, bright, vivid TV when watching SDR content in brighter rooms.

However, the obsession over peak brightness measurements has, for me, gotten a little out of hand. And I realize the irony of saying that when I’ve nicknamed a community “Nit Nerds.” For sure, I’ve been part of the hype train that some manufacturers have fed into.

But I want to explain first and foremost that the peak brightness numbers I got from this TV are, in many ways, kind of a party trick. What’s more important than the numbers is what the image actually looks like when viewing content.

I measured this TV using the filmmaker mode picture preset in both SDR and HDR. And for Dolby Vision, I used primarily Dolby Vision Dark — though I did play with the higher APL Dolby Vision Custom mode, which I tweaked to have the right color temperature while also disabling all motion smoothing.

In SDR Filmmaker Mode, with the default brightness setting of just 20 out of 100, I measured peak brightness of about 680 nits, which is higher than the SDR standard, but more to the liking of most viewers. When I bumped the brightness setting up to 45, I got 1650 nits, and when I maxed it out at 100, I got a blistering 3,700 nits — and with a standard 10% window, by the way.

The white balance is a bit off, with the red channel a little high. But, those readings changed after the TV had been in operation for about 5 minutes. When I went back and reran those measurements, the white balance settled into excellent performance, with delta errors of less than 3 across the entirety of the measured grayscale. This is excellent performance considering no calibration was performed — and I’d hoped for that from such an expensive TV. To make sure this wasn’t a fluke I remeasured several times, and when the TV had been in operation for about five minutes, those measurements held true. So, I guess the TV needs a little warm-up time until it’s at its most accurate.

Color gamut performance was very good, with delta errors of less than 3, and the color checker test came out really well, too, with most errors under 3. That’s not reference quality, but it’s in the same ballpark as some of the best TVs (before calibration) on the market.

Switching to HDR is where things got really interesting. First, there’s only one real negative I have to call attention to: This TV overly brightens everything. It tracks well above standard on the electro-optical transfer function (EOTF) test. This would be fine if it was the result in anything other than the Filmmaker Mode. But Filmmaker Mode is meant to be the most accurate mode, and this is not correct. Will most people enjoy it? I’d argue they will. But it is not correct for Filmmaker Mode, and I’d like to see Hisense fix this.

Here’s a shock I wasn’t ready for: Peak brightness with a 10% window was 4,200 nits. Impressive, but not unexpected from a TV that claims up to 10,000 nits peak brightness for HDR highlights. I reduced the window size to 5% and the 110 UX started at 10,000 nits, pushed up to 13,000 nits, and then dropped — which is typical. TVs can only do this ultra-high brightness stuff in small areas for short periods of time.

I reduced the test window to 2% and the TV came in at a roaring 18,000 nits before falling off after a couple of seconds.

The meter I use is only rated to be accurate to 10,000 nits, though I know it can read higher than that. I think the margin for error could be in the hundreds — not thousands, though — so seeing a number like 18,000 nits is insane.

It’s important to note that you are never going to get 18,000 or even 15,000 nits from this TV in real performance. Most HDR is mastered to 1,000 nits and doesn’t have information directing the TV to go over that number. There is a handful of content mastered to 4,000 nits, and no doubt this TV can do that without blinking. There is virtually no content you can access that is mastered at 10,000 nits — so this TV will never be called to do any higher than that. However, if you turn on Dynamic Tone Mapping, this TV will push HDR highlights as hard as it can, and it’s kind of bonkers just how bright this TV can get.

One last note: Perceived brightness doesn’t have a linear relationship to the measurement. Double the nits is nowhere close to double the brightness. So the difference between 10,000 nits and 18,000 nits is not nearly as much as you’d think. But the notion that this is the brightest TV I’ve ever tested? Well, there’s no doubt about that.

Color, motion, and upscaling

Moving away from peak brightness measurements, the 110 UX performs admirably with color, showing marginal deviations from the standard when luminance errors are factored in. Rec. 2020 color gamut coverage came in at 83% — we’re used to seeing about 76% for context — and the TV did about 99% of DCI-P3 coverage.

Overall, the TV measures extremely well before calibration, and Hisense makes the tools available to dial it in to near perfection.

Outside of those measurements, I continued to get outstanding results. I put this TV through a gauntlet of torture tests, and the 110 UX did extremely well with all of them — in some ways outperforming some of the best-rated TVs on the market.

When it comes to motion, I was downright impressed. Due to the very quick response time on this TV, I saw a little bit of flashing from bright objects during slow camera pans, but it’s nowhere near as noticeable as it is with OLED. I have not had a problem with film judder or dropped frames on this TV, and I have watched a lot of content.

For upscaling and cleanup of low-quality content, this is the best I’ve ever seen from Hisense. I can’t find any reasons to complain. This TV far exceeds the performance I’ve seen from the likes of the Hisense U7N and U8N — I watched some really tough content, and it looks better than I expected on a screen of this size.

However, when watching content with film grain, whether digitally inserted or carried over during a digital transfer from actual film, that’s where you notice the screen size if you are sitting pretty close. This is true for every TV on the market, where the grain can seemingly take something away from the sharpness, while also adding depth and character. It’s just that the grain is more obvious on a big screen if you are sitting very close to it. I have no complaints about how the 110 UX handles film grain, though.

I also lucked out with an exceptionally clean panel: There was zero perceivable dirty screen effect.

Passing the torture test

Test after test — even the torture tests — the 110 UX does extremely well. I feel like it delivers the experience you would expect from an extremely expensive TV, and borders on reference quality in most cases. I’m shocked at how good this TV looks.

Watching a film like Mad Max: Fury Road where the flames and sun reflections are intensely bright … I’ve never seen them pulled off with such intensity, even with dynamic tone mapping turned off. But turn on dynamic tone mapping and this TV really juices things up. In a dark room, I’d leave dynamic tone mapping off. But in a bright room? It makes HDR content sing in even the most challenging of environments.

Sports are a treat to watch on this TV. Even low-quality streaming sports looked surprisingly good — again “from a screen of this size.” When you blow even a 1080p cable or satellite signal up to this size, the low bit rate is pretty apparent. Still, I was never distracted by excessive noise or blockiness or banding on this TV.

So, the shorthand is this: The 110 UX is an exceptional big-screen TV. It very much backs up its asking price not just with size, but with a very high-quality image.

Ditching all the nerdy stuff, I had an absolute blast watching this TV and playing video games on it. Everything was a treat. It’s bright, vivid, punchy, and colorful, and everything I watched on it has looked really good, not just big.

This TV isn’t just fun, though. It’s downright impressive. It is easily one of the most bragworthy TVs I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing and testing.

I know some folks have concerns about longevity and reliability, and it is an ongoing frustration that I am not able to do more long-term testing. But what I have noticed is that the last two generations of Hisense TVs I’ve tested seem to be performing just as well now as the day I got them. I think Hisense is taking some big strides in terms of build quality and reliability.

This TV is cleaner-looking and has far more accurate measurements than the TCL model. I’m not sure that is going to be meaningful to many folks — some would just prefer to get five more diagonal inches for about the same price. But if you’re more of a purist? There’s no question that the 110 UX has tested better than the TCL QM891G – which, frankly, I didn’t see coming.

For now, I’ll applaud Hisense for doing something unprecedented: creating a flagship-level TV at a monumental screen size. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

For later: I’m going to ask that Hisense apply everything that makes the processor, the build quality, and the overall performance capabilities so great, and hurry up with trickling it down to some of their more affordable models. I get that this is the moonshot cost-is-no-object TV. But now that we know you can do it, Hisense? You’re on the hook for bringing it to a larger audience. And if that isn’t a big tease for CES, I don’t know what is.