Over the years, there’s been a long list of display technologies and iterations to refine TVs into what we have today. In 2020, we can pretty much agree the top end of the market is an 8K OLED or QLED display, while on the low-end you’ve got a regular LCD panel with edge-lighting.
Of course, there are some steps in between like full-array backlighting in LCD panels, but Hisense has a very interesting new TV that claims to offer near OLED quality in terms of resolution, colour accuracy, response times and importantly black levels.
That new display technology is Dual Cell and they’re introducing it to Australia in mid-September with the 65″ Hisense 65SX model.
The display technology uses a greyscale layer that controls luminance, while a second layer controls colour. Essentially the greyscale layer sits behind the colour layer and effectively blocks light from pixels that need to be to be darker, creating more than 2 million dimming zones.
With a 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160, modern TVs are displaying just under 8.3 million pixels. This means if you have 2 million dimming zones, you’re essentially lighting just 4 pixels at a time, that’s seriously impressive.
The even more impressive part of this display technology is that it has almost no downsides. Viewing angles, response times, colour accuracy all remain fantastic, while offering one huge advantage over OLED, a much cheaper price.
The 65SX Dual Cell from Hisense is still very much a premium display, but the RRP of this comes with a much more affordable price tag of A$3,499.00.
By way of comparison, the 2019 OLED from Hisense (65PX) also at 65″ has an RRP of A$4,999.00. At $1,500 cheaper and very close to the same quality and black levels, this is a seriously compelling offering from Hisense and one I’m sure many will be tempted by.
With that saving, you could invest in a surround sound system and still come out on top.
Speaking of sound, Hisense has actually included a nifty stand with the 65SX. Not only will it hold up your TV on an entertainment unit, it also houses a powerful 4.1 subwoofer.
Should you decide to wall-mount the TV, this sub can be placed anywhere in the room and wirelessly connect to the TV. While I haven’t heard the sound in person, I actually really love this idea of TV stands being far more functional than adding a hook for cable management and calling it a day.
“Hisense’s proprietary Dual Cell technology uses a highly complex composition and design to deliver a quality of colour, contrast, brightness and accuracy that we believe sets a new standard in LED TVs.
We’re incredibly excited to be the first market globally to introduce this game-changing innovation and hope Australians realise the benefits Dual Cell offers as a new leading premium TV technology.”
Andre Iannuzzi, Head of Marketing at Hisense Australia
Hisense engineers have also worked their magic with an AI-powered upscaler that helps to address the embarrassing level of sub-4K content being broadcast in Australia.
Streaming services have certainly come to the party with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple+, YouTube and many more all supporting 4K. In 2020, our broadcast TV lags behind, offering 1080p at best and still far too often we get just 720p.
In 2020, 65″ represents the most popular TV size and the best inches per dollar value. Stretching so few pixels (1280×720) to 65″ would typically result in large blocky artifacts and a gernally poor TV viewing experience. With a great upscaler this content won’t be 4K, but could be much more acceptable.
Some other almost checkbox features are also ticked off, with Hisense supporting Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, HDR10, Google Assistant and Alexa on this TV.
With support for voice assistants, you can connect a smart device (likely your phone), and a voice command can take the place of many button presses, just say “Change to Channel 7”, “Open Netflix app” or “Turn up the volume”.
“Dolby and Hisense share a common goal to deliver best-in-class experiences to consumers in their living rooms. The combined Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos experience in a single form factor will allow Hisense Dual Cell customers to experience their favourite content as the creators originally intended.
With a large and constantly growing library of titles available, consumers in Australia can instantly access this amazing content in Dolby Vision & Dolby Atmos,”
Ashim Mathur, Senior Regional Director Marketing, Emerging Markets at Dolby Laboratories
If you’re done fighting over the remote, you can grab the RemoteNow mobile app and share the control while you leverage the soon to be released universal search across apps on the platform.
Hisense are the first to offer Dual Cell technology to the consumer product and if you’re excited about having it at your house, you can leverage an AR app by Hisense that lets you see how the TV looks hanging on your lounge-room wall.
For more information, head over to Hisense.
