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Hey guys.. I've been looking around the Net for some good deals on LED TVs and I've zeroed in on a 50" Hisense model. Now obviously Hisense isn't a name brand, at least not yet, but they seem to be an emerging brand, and as we speak, they're #4 in the world of LED TVs in terms of unit share. Of course one can say they got there because they offer cheaper products (which is very much welcome in today's economy), but they're obviously good deals only if the products perform well for the entirety of their service life and are built to last, otherwise all of Hisense's efforts to be a global brand would be wasted. I've also seen some videos on Youtube about some people having bought a Hisense and they seem pretty happy with it. In my country I could get said 50" Hisense for just about $505. That would make you think long and hard, wouldn't it? So, you guys have had any experience with Hisense? I know it's kinda risky considering it's an off brand, but you don't just get to #4 without building quality stuff and it's not like the market isn't flooded with other off brands like Konka, TCL, or Haier, and even Vizio was also an off brand just a few years ago.

No, they are not any good. Hisense make cheap rubbish and cut many corners to get the price down, it would seem.

• Amazon reviews seems to confirm en-masse that the customer service is awful - which matters a lot because they are apparently unreliable.
• Critic reviews seem to confirm that they are as cheap as they look and not especially good value even for their low price.
• My own experience is that the picture looks bad with nasty OSD menus and sluggish responses from a slow internal processor.

The model I looked at (briefly) was reviewed by PC Mag with the comments below:

performs like a budget set; its color quality is sketchy, background noise is apparent, and shadow detail is mediocre.

You'd only buy one because it looks good on paper, so what you should actually do is ignore the specs on paper and go and look at some TVs in person.
My advice would be to get a discounted & discontinued model from a decent brand like LG/Samsung/Sony/Toshiba/Panasonic/Vizio. You can sometimes find last year's stock at close to half the list price on clearance.

Update: took delivery of an LG 42" unit (42LB552A) yesterday. It's actually for my in-laws as my Christmas present, and also in gratitude because they've been treating me and my wife abroad and around the country for a while now. Coming from an old Sony RPTV, the LG's sharpness/image clarity, color, brightness, brightness uniformity, and contrast (in short, everything) are just way, way better, so they seem quite happy to get a nice, new TV. It's quite a bit smaller than the Hisense but it's also cheaper. More importantly it's a brand I can trust and I know LG service and support are good, or at least existent, which may not be said for an off brand like Hisense.

If you care about image quality, i would recommend spending good amount of time standing in front of the LED TV and judge yourself which one suits the best to your eyes. (I had spend almost half an hour with each LED TV before making my decision to go with Panasonic LED TV - also, I had compared it with Sony, LG and Samsung models)

EDIT: Oops didn't read about you making the purchase, any way congrats.

Unfortunately, the TVs on display in your local Buy More are probably all cranked up to maximum brightness, so you're not seeing them at their absolute best. You can probably still spot the difference between a good LCD TV and a cheap one from halfway across the store.

ronch wrote:

Hey guys.. I've been looking around the Net for some good deals on LED TVs and I've zeroed in on a 50" Hisense model. Now obviously Hisense isn't a name brand, at least not yet, but they seem to be an emerging brand, and as we speak, they're #4 in the world of LED TVs in terms of unit share. Of course one can say they got there because they offer cheaper products (which is very much welcome in today's economy), but they're obviously good deals only if the products perform well for the entirety of their service life and are built to last, otherwise all of Hisense's efforts to be a global brand would be wasted. I've also seen some videos on Youtube about some people having bought a Hisense and they seem pretty happy with it. In my country I could get said 50" Hisense for just about $505. That would make you think long and hard, wouldn't it? So, you guys have had any experience with Hisense? I know it's kinda risky considering it's an off brand, but you don't just get to #4 without building quality stuff and it's not like the market isn't flooded with other off brands like Konka, TCL, or Haier, and even Vizio was also an off brand just a few years ago.

I pounced on what was the best deal I'd seen at the time a year or so ago, ~$340 for a 40" HiSense TV/monitor. It has three partially dead pixels, abhorrent color reproduction, and ghosting issues. I recently tried the K ENB Pure Light in Skyrim and at night outside Whiterun, it looked so bad my wife thought something was wrong with my setup. The color reproduction is just that bad. The dithering... *shudder*. The ghosting is pretty bad, but at least I can ignore it half the time.

I was told to go to AVSForum for calibration settings. But no one savvy enough to visit those forums and spend the time to calibrate their TV seems to have purchased this brand. One user on that forum said, "You are not going to find many people that buy or own Hisense. They are budget tv's for the kids." Based on my experience, I agree with this statement.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Unfortunately, the TVs on display in your local Buy More are probably all cranked up to maximum brightness, so you're not seeing them at their absolute best. You can probably still spot the difference between a good LCD TV and a cheap one from halfway across the store.

I don't know if it is allowed in US, but in India i had asked for the remotes and played with each LED model, changed their display settings to my liking and compared it before making a decision. Also, my personal preferences were finding the ghosting issues, and viewing angles. At that time Panasonic LED had the best picture quality was also matching my budget.

Well, in the Philippines where I live, whenever I check out TVs at appliance stores I sometimes ask salesmen to see if the screen settings are set at 50% so I could at least have a rough point of comparison between the different models on offer, and they're OK with getting the remote controls to check settings. I guess I don't have the tenacity or maybe I'm just not that fussy when it comes to getting the very best image quality. I've seen some pretty bad LCD monitors though (we have a 2010 model LG 19" monitor in the house that I think is pretty bad), and I'm not very satisfied with a 42" LG unit my brother bought for our uncle back in 2012 (although perhaps it just wasn't calibrated properly) so I know these bad displays when I see them, but I haven't encountered them during my recent trips to appliance stores lately. Also, I tend to dim down the display when viewing mostly white images (e.g. surfing the net) because I have high astigmatism (which means I'm not particular about getting the brightest displays), and when the LG for the in-laws arrived they complained about excessive brightness. Turned out the brightness and contrast settings were set high so we had to adjust them accordingly. Beyond that, they praised the TV for its good looks and great image quality.

I guess my reference would be my almost-6-year old 22" LG LCD monitor (W2252TQ). It's not the best display out there but I'm pretty happy with it, noticed much better image quality when I bought it to replace my 3-year old Acer 17" 4:3 LCD in early 2009, and have no plans to replace it until it quits working. And oh, I'm still stuck with a 29" (27" viewable) LG CRT TV! I rarely use it though, so a new LED TV isn't exactly on top of my wish list despite them being so cheap these days.