The Hisense E6N is an affordable yet feature-rich TV that performs well in bright viewing environments and delivers reliable performance for basic needs. It features dependable software, an appealing design, a very ergonomic remote and covers all the essential functions. On the downside, the overall picture quality could have been better. The HDR experience in particular is a little underwhelming, but that is perhaps to be expected at this price.
Hisense E6N is an affordable LED TV that runs the Google TV interface and comes with some interesting gaming features like VRR and ALLM. While the affordable TV landscape is quite competitive and dynamic, if you are looking for an option from a familiar brand, the Hisense E6N must have turned up on your list. The Hisense E6N 4K Smart LED TV stands out as a solid option from a well-known brand. But is it truly worth its price? How does it fare in terms of picture quality and overall performance? Let’s answer these questions and more in this detailed review!
The Hisense E6N LED TV has slim bezels on three sides. I noticed that the edges of the display cover glass are bare and not shielded by side bezels, which subtly enhances the design. The metallic chassis extends beyond the glass by a few millimetres to provide a safeguard. The stand at the bottom is made of plastic and offers sturdy support. Frequently used ports are side-facing but are positioned towards the centre. This means they will be a tad difficult to access when the TV is wall-mounted.
I really like the Hisense remote that comes with the E6N. It’s ergonomic and the white D-pad makes it easy to use in the dark. It includes hotkeys for five popular apps: Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Hotstar, and Sony Liv. There is also a customisable Media key, which you can assign to any app or function of your choice. The Menu button provides quick access to useful settings as an overlay while content is playing – a feature we truly appreciate.
The Hisense E6N has a basic LED LCD Display. Our unit has a VA panel and we recorded a contrast of 3817:1. The peak display brightness reached approximately 300 nits in the Dynamic mode (HDR) and dropped to just 260 nits in the more accurate Cinema mode and Filmmaker mode which has relatively warmer white. This is not enough brightness for an impactful HDR experience, but that’s also the case with most of the affordable HDR options that we have tested.
Also Read: QNED vs QLED vs OLED TVs: What’s the difference?
The TV can reproduce roughly 90% of sRGB colour space and roughly 77% of DCI-P3 colour space, which is standard for affordable LED LCD TVs. The viewing angles are not very wide and we noticed loss of luminance and colour when viewing off-axis.
We use Spectracal C6 HDR2000 colourimeter, VideoForge Pro pattern generator, and Calman Ultimate software to test TV displays. The Hisense E6N has reasonable colour accuracy for the price but greyscale and luminance errors are considerable and as a result, colours look washed out.
In SDR we measured an average delta error of 4.6 and a maximum delta error of 8.5 which is decent for affordable TVs. Super-resolution which uses AI to subtly sharpen object edges in real-time is enabled by default. Even after disabling it, the picture felt slightly over-sharpened.
In HDR 10, the TV tracks the EOTF curve brighter than the reference. The colour accuracy also drops further. We must also mention that if we discard the luminance error, colour accuracy stats improve considerably. Also, we noticed some banding and posterization artefacts in HDR content.
The TV also supports Dolby Vision HDR, but once again the overall Dolby Vision experience is not up to the mark. In dark Dolby Vision sequences, the Dolby Vision Bright overbrightens the shadows and the Dolby Vision Dark completely crushes dark details. We often found ourselves switching modes and settings to get the picture right which is not something a common consumer should need to go through.
The TV has slight motion smoothening enabled by default. We did not notice any major issues with upscaling of legacy content.
This Hisense TV is powered by a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage (with 5.6GB available for users). We did experience occasional stutters when fast-forwarding content or switching between apps, but this is again common among affordable and midrange TVs. Overall, the performance was reasonably snappy for the price.
The TV runs on the Google TV platform based on Android 12, with several added customisations. You can access quick settings and shortcuts using the input key. The Google TV interface integrates seamlessly with Google services and apps on smartphones. You can use the virtual remote in the Google TV app, manage your watchlist directly from your PC browser, or even download apps directly to your TV from your phone. Google Assistant and Alexa are both supported on the TV.
Also Read: 10 Google TV Tips and Tricks That You Must Know!
You can cast videos from your Android phone or Apple iPhone from popular apps like Netflix, YouTube and more. Apple AirPlay and Homekit are also supported so you can seamlessly mirror screen from Apple devices as well. The software does not have much bloatware and Hisense adds useful toggles to let users fine-tune picture quality on the TV.
To test the gaming capabilities, we played Witcher 3 and Spiderman 2 on the TV. While the TV has several gaming features like VRR and ALLM. With the game mode enabled, the display felt responsive in our testing. Gaming visuals in HDR and SDR lack contrast and look slightly washed out.
The audio from the 24 Watts speaker is loud but flat. The bass lacks sharpness and diaglogue clarity is also about average. For a proper audio experience, you will have to invest in a soundbar.
The Hisense E6N is an affordable yet feature-rich TV that performs well in bright viewing environments and delivers reliable performance for basic needs. It features dependable software, an appealing design, a very ergonomic remote and covers all the essential functions. On the downside, the overall picture quality could have been better. The HDR experience in particular is a little underwhelming, but that is perhaps to be expected at this price. In terms of picture quality affordable options like Coocaa Y73 Pro, TCL T6G and Thompson 4K OP Max LED TV have performed better in our tests.
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