Hisense L9G Series

Hisense 100L9G, Prepare to be impressed! – I thought the L5F Single-Laser UST Laser TV was impressive, but wait ‘till you see this. It’s so much brighter without highlight clipping and its potential colour volume is like a ULED/QLED/OLED display. Just be prepared to set Colour Gamut to ‘Auto’ for normal TV viewing. If you leave it on ‘Native’ everyone looks like sunburnt lobsters due to TV’s rec709 limited gamut being pushed to the edges of this projector’s BT2020 range. Unfortunately some work is needed by Hisense on the Vidaa firmware we’re stuck with as it defaults Std Def TV channels to BT2020 off its own tuner. Seriously, why not also allow fully manual colourspace selection like the Android OS versions in the US allow!!? Such an unnecessary fault that indicates no one at Hisense bothers to use their Aussie product and improve on it. The ability to do deep, saturated reds can’t be matched by laser-phosphor projectors like the L5F. Even in the correct colourspace you may still need to back off Red in the White Balance settings to taste. The attached daylight-shot iPhone video doesn’t do it justice and looks very desaturated compared to what you actually see. I just used the CLR Cinema screen that came with my previous 100L5F and this L9G projector IS bright enough to watch through the day. The single-laser/phosphor L5F can be too, but not without clipping colours, highlights and obvious posterisation to get the light level high to meet its published specs. Sound is good and natural for a smallish box. It has bass but not a lot; just pleasant for general viewing. Certainly less ‘boxy’ sounding than the L5F. One minor downside to tri-chroma laser projectors like this is Chromatic Aberrations which manifest as colour fringing around white text on dark backgrounds. I was noticing red fringing a lot and was concerned. Then I realised a lot of it was actually being generated by wearing glasses and imperfect vision. It changes in degree as I turn my head and look at the same area using a different part of my eyes. The narrow spectrum of three separate laser colours were bending unevenly in my eyes’ lenses! Squint (like we oldies do to try to read without glasses) and it’s almost invisible. You do get used to it and US reviews say this unit is better than most others in this regard. Laser-phosphor projectors like the L5F don’t behave this way due to the broadband spectrum of its light engine and required colour wheel RGB filtering. It’s neither coherent or has 3 distinct narrow-band source colours like RGB Laser. Only minor laser speckle (like how if projecting onto a shower curtain might look) on this L9G projector either at normal viewing distances. Black levels are typical 0.47” single-chip DLP; good but in reality just dark grey and dependent on screen gain and laser drive settings you use. DLP Rainbow effect is still present on the L9G due to its ubiquitous single-chip DLP but it’s generally less obvious than on La-Ph colour wheel projectors. Still no Disney or Apple TV Plus on the latest firmware, but their VIDAA-equipped TVs added them recently, so maybe they’re on the way to the projector firmware too. One can but hope. With a brilliant 3 year warranty; come on Hisense, start supporting Aussies stuck with Vidaa like you do the US Android versions and update Firmware over its lifecycle. Despite any criticism I am continually impressed by what Hisense have achieved over the last years in Aus. They still offer great value compared to the ‘other’ brands with performance that matches or exceeds them. Well done! It’s hard to believe that anyone would not be impressed with this L9G. If you’re not that invested in reproducing neon-like colours, look at the L5F series too. They’re on runnout/discontinued model atm and are outstanding value for performance.