Hisense U7KAU 4K TV review: a strong Mini LED matinee

In the long-running battle of best TV technologies, Hisense is firmly in the category of Mini LED over the OLED technology favoured by some of its competitors. Sitting in the middle of the brand’s 2023 range, the Hisense U7KAU provides the bright benefits of Mini LED technology at a reasonable price.

With so many TV technologies to choose from, it can be confusing to determine what’s best for your situation. There’s a seemingly endless number of brand-specific acronyms and trademarks that only add to the confusion. This year, Hisense’s vision is a simple one: market Mini LED as the ideal format for Australian homes due to the technology’s inherent capacity for pushing high brightness levels.

As a quick primer, Mini LED panels are lit by thousands of backlights roughly the size of a half-grain of rice. This is compared to older edge-lit LED technology still used by many TVs today, using LEDs along the top and bottom of a screen to produce an image. OLED panels, on the other hand, are self-lit, with each pixel emitting the light it needs to illuminate a full picture.

To simplify matters, edge-lit TVs are generally the most affordable, followed by Mini LEDs and then OLEDs. As one of the better-priced Mini LED TVs on the Australian market, the Hisense U7KAU is great for daytime viewing under $2,000. At night, some of its limitations, albeit reasonable given the affordable price point, show up.

First impressions

Like many modern TVs, you can use an app to set up the U7KAU. Hisense uses the VIDAA app and corresponding operating system, which comes with many of the most popular streaming services. Even if your desired platform isn’t natively supported, it’s easy to cast media from your smart device if you have the app already installed.

Although the VIDAA app makes for a relatively effortless setup, you’ll likely want to do some tweaking to get the best image. Unlike the automatic calibration services included in some of the other brands’ apps, you’re left to manually adjust settings yourself. Out of the box, the Hisense U7KAU presents a high-contrast, heavily saturated image that’s worth adjusting so you can enjoy a more natural and accurate look.

When plugging in my game consoles, I realised that of the four HDMI ports, only two are HDMI 2.1, with one of them being the designated eARC input recommended for soundbars. Not every household has multiple game consoles, so this won’t be an issue for everyone. However, if you have a PS5 and an Xbox Series X, plus a soundbar, you’ll need to choose between refresh rates and having the best audio experience. Or regularly unplug and plug devices as you use them, which is a bit inconvenient.

With the setup out of the way, the Hisense U7KAU looked nice across gaming and watching. Particularly with the layout of my living room being next to a large window and glass sliding door, the high brightness helped increase the visibility of everything on-screen. As bright as the TV gets, it was the HDR in low-light conditions that produced the most mixed results.

Hisense U7KAU specifications

Size reviewed	65-inch
Sizes available	55, 65, 75, 85, and 100-inch
Display resolution	3840 x 2160 (4K)
Backlight technology	Mini LED
Operating system	VIDAA U7
HDR format	HDR10 / HDR10+ / Dolby Vision
Audio format	Dolby Atmos compatible
Inputs	4x HDMI ports (2x HDMI 2.1 @ 144Hz, 2x HDMI 2.0) Ethernet USB 2.0 / USB 3.0 (A-type) Headphone in Composite in RF input Optical audio Wi-Fi 5 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) Bluetooth 5.0
Price (RRP)	$2,299 (65-inch)
Warranty	Three years manufacturer’s warranty
Australian website	Hisense Australia

Hisense U7KAU performance

General viewing

When viewed directly head-on, the Hisense U7KAU looks good no matter what it’s showing. Images look crisp and colourful, and you’ll enjoy smooth motion while playing games. I did notice that when watching the TV at an angle or from further away, the image looked slightly darker. You can still comfortably watch when on an angle, it just won’t look quite the same as the painstakingly calibrated image you spent ages tweaking when sitting in prime position.

If the widest possible viewing angle is vital to you, you’ll need to spend more for an OLED display, as they tend to look near-identical when viewed from side-on as they do from directly in front.

As has been mentioned multiple times already, arguably the biggest benefit of Mini LED TVs is brightness. With 10,000 backlights powering the display, the U7KAU gets super bright. During daylight hours, this is great for offsetting any sunlight glare so you can still see all the action. This being said, I still found the reflections to be highly noticeable at times, although the bright display meant this wasn’t as obtrusive as some other TVs I’ve used.

Blooming

My only main complaint about this TV concerns its HDR performance and night-time viewing. When watching anything with high-contrast lighting between bright and dark, you’ll notice significant blooming, or a halo-like effect around bright parts of the image. For one example, I fired up Disney+ and put on a random Star Wars film. Here, the opening title crawl produced blooming below the letterbox cropping as the text moved up from the bottom of the image.

To get technical for a second, one of the major differences between Hisense’s U7KAU and the slightly pricier U8KAU Mini LED TV is dimming zones. Both TVs are reported to have 10,000 backlights but the U7 has roughly 100 zones compared to approximately 500 in the U8. Meanwhile, the top-of-the-line Mini LED X model houses 20,000 backlights and more than 5,000 dimming zones. Along with a price jump of roughly $2,000, mind you.

More zones mean more control over what sections of the screen get illuminated by the backlights. Without having a U8 TV on hand to directly compare, it’s tough to say how much of a tangible difference there is between models. In theory, you’d expect less blooming because of its increased dimming zones over the U7KAU. To revisit the viewing angle observation from before, the light blooming effect isn’t too pronounced when seated directly in front. From an angle, however, it’s far more pronounced.

Audio

Oh, and do yourself a favour and use a soundbar. While the in-built audio isn’t bad, per se, it lacks depth and produces a thin audio profile. It’s clear enough for dialogue but not much comes through on the lower end. To get the most out of your TV shows, movies, and video games, you’ll want something with a bit of bass.

Gaming

With support for up to 144Hz variable refresh rate gaming, the Hisense U7KAU meets the criteria for a modern living room gaming display. Although your PS5 or Xbox Series X only reach 120Hz as a maximum, it means plugging in your PC for a few extra frames is an option.

Limited HDMI 2.1 ports aside, any game you throw at the TV looks great. From Starfield to NBA 2K24, Fortnite and anything in between, there’s no screen tearing to be seen or input lag to be felt. You can access the game menu with a single button press of the remote, giving you access to a frame rate counter and additional settings to adjust on the fly.

One setting I’d love to see Hisense add to its quick-access game menu is a night mode. When reviewing the LG QNED91 Mini LED TV, I made good use of its night mode toggle that dimmed the backlight at multiple stops so as to not sear the eyes during evening gaming sessions. The U7KAU’s game menu includes a toggle for brightness, not the backlight. Although this dims the image somewhat, it does so at a colour level, which isn’t ideal.

Granted, the Hisense TV does have an automatic light detection that does a reasonable job of adjusting the backlight depending on ambient light. It’d just be nice to have a quicker way to adjust the backlight without needing to go several menu options deep.

Software and user experience

Getting started with Hisense’s VIDAA ecosystem is nice and easy, regardless of whether you choose to use the companion smartphone app or not. Once set up, the VIDAA U7 looks similar to other manufacturers’ operating systems – benefits and drawbacks included.

It’s mostly good, though, with a sleek and responsive interface that lets you access your content quickly. There are plenty of popular streaming apps included. For our household, Kayo Sports gets a heavy workout, as does YouTube. Because we all watch media on various devices, I appreciated how easy the U7KAU made it to quickly cast content to the TV. We also happen to be a predominantly Apple household, so the included AirPlay support was a big reason for the ease of casting.

Unlike some of the overseas Hisense models, this TV doesn’t natively support Chromecast. If you want to cast videos from an Android device, you have two options. One is to use the TV’s built-in screen-mirroring feature. Your other option involves plugging in a separate device like a Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV for a more seamless streaming experience. You’d only really need to consider this if your preferred streaming service isn’t already included on VIDAA U7.

As seems to be the case with every modern TV, there are multiple apps and free streaming services that you can’t remove. Likely tied to a licensing deal with Hisense, these services take centre stage on the UI but are easy to ignore.

Speaking of licensing deals, the remote control that comes with the TV sure has a lot of buttons. It’s a fairly unremarkable remote in all other aspects. Unless you have huge hands, it is too tall to comfortably reach every button without awkwardly shuffling your hand up and down the device. That, and you have to make sure you point the remote directly at the TV, otherwise it won’t pick up the input. Or you could just use the VIDAA app.

User-friendly in just about every other aspect, I believe there’s room for improvement with Hisense’s initial calibration process. It’s easy to get the TV started after plugging it in but wading through the picture settings was an effort. Many of the individual settings presented fairly straightforward explanations as you navigated through them, but not all. For more details on some of the more technical settings, I had to view the electronic manual buried deep in an entirely different menu section.

Who is the Hisense U7KAU for?

Aimed at people who want a TV they can point their sofa at, the Hisense U7KAU requires a little bit of picture tweaking to truly deliver on its promise. Once you’ve adjusted the settings to your liking, this affordable Mini LED TV is well-suited to daylight viewing of your favourite shows, movies, sports – you name it.

At less than $2,000 at most retailers for the 65-inch model, the U7KAU doubles as one of the more reasonably-priced gaming displays for your living room, too. Its high refresh rate makes it a solid companion for the latest game consoles – although it could do with an extra HDMI 2.1 port.

If you want something that looks its best in the evening, you might want to spend extra to get a TV with more dimming zones, like the U8KAU model, to limit the blooming effect noticeable during dark scenes. At this price point, it’s a reasonable compromise, considering that, if you want no blooming at all, most OLED TVs start at $3,000.