The Hisense U8 series has historically provided the very best picture quality for the dollar on the market. And if you're looking for a super spec out TV with excellent performance without spending a super premium price, this TV is it – you could call it the budget video files dream.

At this point, it's my responsibility to sit down and just watch this TV a lot, which I assure you is not going to be a problem. Uh, because I'm recovering from pneumonia and honestly, I shouldn't even be shooting this video right now. But uh, I have lots of downtime on the couch planned, and I'm going to dig into this TV. Things that I'm going to pay particularly close attention to are well, of course, the backlight performance – it's a mini LED TV.

I've got a lot to pay attention to with this particular TV. Of course, we want to look at the peak brightness everybody gets excited about that this thing promises over 3,000 nits and Hisense is usually very conservative about their ratings. So, we're going to see how much over that line it actually punches. We're also going to want to look at the backlight performance itself – we're going to know how many zones this is broken down into, how fast the backlight adapts, whether or not it manages to control uh blooming well without sacrificing peak brightness in HDR highlights.

More importantly though, I really want to take a look at the processing. I feel like that's the one area in which Hisense needed to improve a little bit to punch up a little bit closer to some of the more expensive brands on the market. If Hisense can provide really great picture quality performance through excellent motion handling, really good upscaling as well as uh the cleanup of low bit rate content so streaming stuff does it clean that up and make it look really good – can we ditch the macro blocking? Can we make sure that we don't have a lot of banding in uh large color areas?

That's the kind of stuff I'm going to look at, and of course, it's going to be interesting to check out how the audio performance is on this TV as well. Anyway, there's lots of work to do but I was really excited to share with you that we got a U8N in so early normally I go to these events for these first look things and then we get the TVs.

This is the first time in a long time that I've gotten a TV before I went to the launch event – I'm headed to a Hisense launch event later this month as a matter of fact, but we've got one of their most interesting TVs of 2024 right here. The review is going to come out before I even fly out to New York to check out what Hisense says will be some certain surprises – stuff that was not announced or shown at CES.

So, there's still plenty of reason to go out there – the Hisense U8N, the first TV reviewed for me at least in 2024, I'm very excited to show it to you and hey if you appreciated our little mystery reveal today would you do me a favor smash that like button? We would appreciate it so much as would I. I'm sure the YouTube algorithm also subscribe because you're not going to want to miss any of the content that we have coming out over the next several weeks and months – all the best stuff is about to come at you and I don't want you to miss any of it.

Thank you much for watching today, I really appreciate it. We'll see you on the next one, and until then here's two other videos I think you might like

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWhat's up everybody how's it going good to see you again so for the last month and a half or  so I've been flying all over the nation taking a look at the very best TVs of 2024 and you've  probably seen some of the videos for those come out but while I was out flying around had a little  surprise drop on my doorstep and since it was a surprise for me I thought why not make it a  surprise for you too so for the very first time I'm not going to reveal the TV I'm unboxing and  setting up for you until the very end my question for you is do you think you can guess what itis welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and a couple of things before we get started  one I apologize for the sound of my voice I lost it last week and it is slow to come  back so you get raspy Caleb today uh number two there is some crazy construction going  on right outside the studio uh so if you hear some weird noises my apologies uh nothing we  do about that I'd ask him to stop but they've got a job to do speaking of jobs Zeke's got a  tough one ahead of him today because I don't know how he's going to shoot this so that we  don't accidentally reveal the make and model of this television but I do want you to play  along I want you to try and guess what this is see if you can figure it out before we make the  big reveal and please no cheating no scrubbing to the end of the video and finding out what it  is and then coming back and leaving a comment let me know if you figure it out I'm going to  try to drop some clues some subtle some maybe not so subtle I promise you it's an exciting  TV so thanks in advance for coming along on the ride now let's start cutting into thisthingall right so I'm going to go ahead and pull thisdown and then we need to get the uh the stand set up on this thing so I was talking to some  other reviewers uh a week or so ago on a trip and they commented on how much they hate putting  the TV face down oh that might give something away right there uh they hate putting the TV  face down to uh install the legs or the pedestal like I've got no problem with it at all in fact I  prefer it that whole thing where you like have to do some puzzle with the base of the box to  install the legs or the stand and do it from I no no thank you so I'm all about reinforcing the box  with the foam that came with it and um carefully laying it down flat on something soft you protect  the screen you're going to have no problems at all I know a lot of folks worry about that I get  the concern but the fact of the matter is if you do everything very carefully this is a very safe  way uh to get your TV up and running all right now we got to get the pedestal on this actually  is pedestal a clue or is it maybe a little bit of a misdirection no logo what does this say  sub so if you really know your TV designs then you might already have a feeling you know what  this TV is by now just from this but we got to get the pedestal on this and for that I'm going  to need my tool because there's a bit of screwing to do so the stand for our mystery TV is actually  quite robust this is a very heavy metal plate with plenty of uh anti-skid pads on the bottom  um and I think the way I'm going to go about this is we'll attach the collar to the television first  and then once this is on we'll attach the base plate uh to the the collar or whatever we want  to call this thing all right so it looks like a little bit of cable management is available here  oh good two mystery screws yeah okay so this is multi-positional so if you wanted a little more  clearance uh so you have uh space for a soundar you'd want to mount this lower um or if you want  a stealthier low slung look you mount this higher two different position options marked one and twowe're only two screws into this and it already feels really well locked in I am pleased with  the build quality so far now we got to get this heavy thing mounted onto here there's a couple  of little tabs here we just line those up yeah that'll hold while I get the four screws into thisthing yeah what what's going wrong here you would think that the screws would go in from the bottom  of the plate and screw into this uh they do not they actually screw down into the plate  from the top um so thank you Zeke for saving my butt cuz I was about to freak out there for a  little turns out the design's not dumb I am the stand is in time to put this up on the uh theBDI all right blankets coming off not sure if this is going to actually reveal much um hm  what do you think got this figured out yet um I will say this the picture on the box which we'll  show you in a little bit here once we've revealed the TV makes this look like it's going to be much  thinner than it actually is now I'm not upset at its thickness with a mini LED TV such as this um  you need to have a little bit of room for the backlight system also we've kind of gotten away  from ultra thin TVs in favor of performance which I'm also good with still seems a little bit uh  you know thicker than what I expected thankfully though the bezels are nearly non-existent there's  basically a frame here to hold in the screen and that is it so it's still a pretty slick looking  TV um but yeah let's get some of this protective film off and uh plug it in and then at that point  there's no hiding what TV this is all right so fairly stout three-prong power cable here  which is a good sign uh if you like your TVs nice and bright not so great if you're into conserving  uh energy um but yeah I actually think that's a a pretty good sign now let's see how this cable  management works so I'm going to do a couple of these just to illustrate because I have given this  company a little bit of guff for not providing adequate cable management and I am glad to see  that uh there's at least some here only problem uh with you know having cable management on a  central pedestal style stand like this is that uh go on in there um you have to have longer  cables now to go from where they plug in to where they're going to get managed which is right here  in the center so we just basically take our HDMI cables or optical cable whatever you're plugging  in slide them in uh and move them over so they reside behind this clip and we're getting three  fairly Stout HDMI cables in there um although not a whole lot of uh room on one of these because  it's not quite long enough but at this point we should be able to clip on uh that little coverplate get it just right why does the back of this TV remind me of  Darth Vader that's not quite enough space for three stout cables but it'sfunctional so let me get the film off this guy either it's got film  on the screen or we got some bubble issues all right now for my favorite partthat'll just crackle in the background it's like a roaring fire from the from the front anyway it's a  pretty sleek looking TV uh if this little metal sort of bezel strip down at the bottom isn't a  dead giveaway I don't know what is but if there's any suspense left at this point uh it's going  to end as soon as I plug this TV in uh at least that has uh historically been the case so let's  see what happens shall we all right we're plugged in any moment now we shall see a logo haha there  it is how many of you had the Hisense U8N down in the comments before whatever the time stamp is uh  at this point in the video that's right hi ense U8 I suppose I can remove this little piece of  gaffer tape not that you can really see the logo on this anyway it's not illuminated it's tucked  away in the lower left corner which I appreciate and there's our Google TV start screen so yeah  let me go ahead and get through a couple of steps here so we're not just looking at this so since  we're doing stuff different today I'm going to set this up as a basic TV we'll set up Google TV  later but a lot of folks have expressed interest in getting a dumb TV and while that doesn't really  exist save a few very inexpensive small TV models this kind of gets you close uh you with a Google  TV you can choose setup basic TV and what you'll notice is that it basically um obscures movie and  TV shows from favorite streaming apps meaning you're not going to get at your streaming apps  uh personalized recommendations not going to show you anything like that no Google Assistant it will  allow live TV and access to the HDMI devices so antenna and HDMI inputs I've never really shown  anybody what this looks like though so let's go ahead and get into it and see what it does look  like if you set it up as a basic TV so right off the bat one indication that it's not really  a dumb TV even in basic TV mode is that it asks to be connected to the internet presumably this  is going to be so that it can check for updates the thing is that's kind of important a lot of  new TVs ship uh with the intention of updating the firmware to their final version once the  TV has gotten out of its box and into a home it needs to be connected to the internet so it can  process that update that right there is going to cause folks some concern why can't TVs just  be fully prepared out of the box I don't know why can't video games not need updates as soon as you  download them here's another thing that doesn't give you dumb TV Vibes you're having to accept  terms and conditions from Google right so this is another reason why I don't recommend Google  TVs as a dumb TV option um it it's going to drag you through this stuff in the initial setup and  as you notice there's no skip option here boy it really makes you jump through some uh hoops help  improve Google TV no we won't do that turn that off uh services and your privacy uh sure go ahead  and uh pair the remote having gone through all of that not really dumb TV stuff stuff  so yeah um different remote for this TV it's not actually metal though it looks like metal  feels like plastic it's a pretty lightweight too but it's an attractive remote we don't currently  have a soundbar hooked up so we're just going to skip that this is what I'm talking about like even  when you say set it up as a basic TV it's still connecting to the internet it's still asking for  a lot of approvals of terms and conditions most of which is much longer than you want to read um  yeah you know there is no such thing as a dumb TV anymore now having gone through that rant I  should point out that there's nothing about this experience that's unique to Hisense this is going  to be true for any brand that uses Google TV as its base operating system which includes how you  interact with like the picture setting menu and everything and even though I set it up as a basic  TV and I said no to just about everything that I could look it still looks like Google TV and  while there's stuff missing from the top here um we still have apps what happens if I click one ofthem it still loads up Netflix like it's not a dumb TV I feel like it's just smoke and mirrors  okay side quest over let's bring it back to the Hisense U8N itself now the reason that I  think this is such an important TV the reason as I said at the beginning of this video I think it  should be on the short list for anybody looking for a TV in 2024 is that this series of Hisense  TV the U8 series has historically provided the very best picture quality for the dollar  on the market this and one other TV from another competitor if you're looking for a super spec out  TV with excellent performance without spending a super premium price this TV is it you could  call it the budget video files dream and I have that has applied to U8 series TVs in the past at  this point it is my responsibility to sit down and just watch this TV a lot which I assure you is not  going to be a problem uh because I'm recovering from pneumonia and honestly I shouldn't even be  shooting this video right now but uh I have lots of downtime on the couch planned we I'm going  to dig into this TV things that I'm going to be paying particularly close attention to are well  of course the backlight performance it's a mini LED TV I have a lot to pay attention to with this  particular TV of course we want to look at the peak brightness everybody gets excited about that  this thing promises over 3,000 nits and Hisense is usually very conservative about their ratings  so we're going to see how much over that line it actually punches we're going to want to look at  the backlight performance itself we're going to want to know how many zones this is broken down  into how fast the backlight adapts whether or not it manages uh blooming well without  sacrificing peak brightness in HDR highlights more importantly though I really want to take a look  at the the processing right I feel like that is the one area in which Hisense needed to improve  a little bit to punch up a little bit closer to some of the more expensive brands on the market  if Hisense can provide really great picture uh performance through excellent motion handling  really good upscaling as well as uh the cleanup of low bit rate content so streaming stuff does  it clean that up and make it look really good can we ditch the macro blocking can we make sure that  we don't have a lot of banding in uh large color areas that's the kind of stuff I'm going to look  at and of course it's going to be interesting to check out how the audio performance is on this TV  as well anyway there's lots of work to do but I was really excited to share with you that we  got a U8N in so early normally I go to these events for these first look things and then  we get the TVs this is the first time in a long time that I've gotten a TV before I went to the  launch event I'm headed to a Hisense launch event later this month as a matter of fact but we've got  one of their most interesting TVs of 2024 right here and the review is going to come out before  I even fly out to New York to check out what Hisense says will be some certain surprises  stuff that was not announced or shown at CES so there's still plenty of reason to go out  there the Hisense U8N the first TV reviewed for me at least in 2024 I'm very excited to show it  to you and hey if you appreciated our little mystery reveal today would you do me a favor  smack smash that like button we would appreciate it so much as would I'm sure the YouTube algorithm  also subscribe because you're not going to want to miss any of the content that we have coming  out over the next several weeks and months all the best stuff is about to come at you and I  don't want you to miss any of it thank you so much for watching today I really appreciate it  we'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like\n"