Hisense UR8 (65UR8STUK) review

It’s fair to say that the great RGB Mini LED revolution of 2026 has been a little underwhelming.

While the technology clearly has lots of potential, it has somewhat suffered from high pricing that has forced comparisons with flagship OLED sets that, thanks to perfect blacks, pixel-level contrast control, awesome responsiveness and ample brightness, have ultimately come out on top.

There may come a time when an RGB Mini LED TV can beat a flagship OLED, but in 2026, the mid-range is where the greatest opportunities for success lie, and that’s precisely where the Hisense UR8 comes in.

Unlike the UR9 we tested earlier this year, the UR8 (also known as the UR8S) undercuts on price not only flagship OLEDs, but also (at least in the UK) mainstream models such as the LG C6.

In one way, then, that gives this step-down Hisense an easier ride, and its specs are not to be sniffed at, either, with a claimed 3500 nits peak brightness, 936 dimming zones, 180Hz panel and Dolby Vision 2 support being the obvious highlights.

Hisense isn’t the only one playing this game, though, and while the UR8 looks like good value next to many OLEDs, it’s still got lots of backlit competition, not least from its compatriot TCL. And, unfortunately, its on-paper abilities don’t translate into a truly impressive real-world performance.

Price

The 65-inch version of the Hisense UR8 we’re looking at launched with a price tag of £2299 / $2000 / AU$2495, making it proportionally more expensive in the UK than the US and Australia.

Thankfully, while pricing in the US and Australia has remained more or less static, the UR8 is currently available in the UK for £1699, making it a much more appealing proposition than it was at launch.

There’s still a problem, though, and it’s in the form of the C8L, the flagship model in TCL’s so-called Super Quantum Dot Mini LED range. While this launched with similar pricing to the UR8, its price has dropped, too, and at the time of writing you can pick it up for less – around £1600 / $1700 / AU$2295.

And we mustn’t discount OLED here. While the Award-winning LG C6 costs vastly more than the UR8 and C8L in Australia (AU$3995), in the UK, its £1899 price means it will be just about in reach of many buyers considering the UR8, and it’s in fact currently the most affordable of all of these sets in the US, where it costs just $1400.

Design

The Hisense UR8 is a reasonably pleasant-looking TV, even if it doesn’t have much in the way of design flair.

Its slim black bezels help the picture take centre stage, while the dark grey bottom lip adds a touch of class. There’s also a subtle RGB Mini LED logo on the lower left, complete with a rather retro-looking red, green and blue graphic.

The stand is basic but practical, with two legs connected to a fairly neat baseplate with a relatively modest width of 40cm. There are high and low positions, too, allowing you to choose between a lower-profile installation and extra clearance for a soundbar.

The UR8 isn't especially thin, but that does allow room for a more substantial built-in sound system than you’ll find in many TVs. Its cabinet does feel rather plasticky, though, which takes a little of the shine off the overall impression during initial installation, but won’t be a factor once in situ.

Hisense has made the connections easy to access, with a generously sized recess that avoids the cramped arrangement found on some rival TVs.

The remote is a bit of an irritation, though. It’s far too long, requiring you to adjust your grip to reach buttons at each end. The solar panel on its face contributes to that length, and while placing it here rather than on the back makes practical sense, it doesn’t exactly look elegant.

The remote can also be charged via USB-C, which is handy, but the absence of backlighting is a shame.

The UR8’s most distinctive physical feature is its matte screen coating. This does an excellent job of suppressing reflections, to the extent that the lights, equipment rack and even the reviewer opposite the screen are barely visible on its surface, which very much isn’t the case with the glossy TCL C8L we have set up next to it.

That’s a genuine advantage for anyone watching in a bright room. The trade-off is that blacks look a little greyer under ambient lighting, but for those who regularly watch with all of the lights on or very bright sunlight beaming through the windows, the excellent reflection suppression could prove well worth the compromise.

Features

The UR8’s headline feature is its RGB Mini LED backlight, which replaces the conventional approach of using blue LEDs and a quantum-dot colour layer with individual red, green and blue LEDs.

The idea is that these separate colour sources can produce purer, more vibrant colours, while offering more precise control over brightness and contrast. Hisense claims up to 100 per cent coverage of the BT.2020 colour space, which would be an extraordinary achievement if fully realised.

The 65-inch version of the UR8 has 936 local dimming zones, while Hisense quotes a peak brightness figure of 3500 nits. Those are impressive numbers, although, as we’ll see, the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Processing comes courtesy of Hisense’s Hi-View AI Engine RGB, which is designed specifically for this backlight technology and handles tasks such as upscaling, contrast optimisation and colour processing.

The UR8 is also among the first TVs to support Dolby Vision 2, and this is a point of interest even though Dolby Vision 2 content is not yet readily available. Any ‘standard’ Dolby Vision content you play now brings up the Dolby Vision 2 Max logo, indicating an extra degree of processing to the Dolby Vision signal. It’s hard to tell, though, what effect this is having as it can’t be turned off. The Dolby Vision performance is interesting, nonetheless, as we’ll see later.

Every other HDR format is supported, too, so whether your content is delivered in HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, the Hisense UR8 will happily play it. The TV is IMAX Enhanced certified as well.

Gamers are also very well catered for. The UR8 has four HDMI 2.1 sockets and is capable of handling signals up to 4K/180Hz (including in the much more common 4K/120Hz format), with VRR. ALLM is also supported, of course, so the TV will switch to a low-latency mode whenever a game signal is detected.

The latency isn’t as low as we expected, though: we measure 27.4ms at 1080p/60Hz. After much additional tweaking of settings, we manage to get that figure down to 14.2ms, but that involves switching Local Dimming off altogether, which inevitably compromises gaming picture quality significantly.

In fairness, while 27.4ms sounds like a lot, anything less than about 30ms is imperceptible to most gamers, and those who are prepared to sacrifice picture quality for additional responsiveness do at least have the option.

In the US, the Hisense UR8 features the Google TV smart platform, whereas UK and Australian buyers get Hisense’s VIDAA system. Broadly speaking, this isn’t a bad thing: VIDAA is straightforward, and it covers almost all of the most important streaming-service bases.

For starters, Freely is on board, granting aerial-free access to live terrestrial TV. There are dedicated BBC iPlayer, ITVX, 4 and 5 apps, too, and the likes of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Paramount+ are all present and correct.

In fact, while there are absences, they’re mostly more niche services, such as GeForce Now, Amazon Luna, Steam Link, VLC, Tidal, Apple Music, Qobuz, TuneIn and Shudder.

There is one big frustration, though, and that’s the Apple TV app, which lacks access to both the Store and your Library. That means there’s no way to browse and play the movies you’ve bought through Apple’s excellent pay-as-you-go service, which is a shame.

Picture quality

While the Hisense UR8 looks mighty fine on paper, the opening scenes of Alien: Romulus quickly expose a couple of significant problems.

Surprisingly, given the promise of RGB Mini LED, there’s remarkably little life to colours, with Rain’s red jacket taking on a grey-green hue and the flames of a bin fire lacking the orange and red vibrancy they should possess. Even the red helmets worn by workers in the background look strangely dull.

There’s a similar lack of intensity to the flames and the lights of the industrial equipment behind them, resulting in a picture that feels flat and underwhelming.

We’re watching in Filmmaker Mode, but switching to other presets doesn’t really solve the problem. Standard brightens the image considerably, but colours still lack richness, while HDR Dynamic pushes the picture towards an increasingly garish appearance. HDR Cinema is much like Filmmaker Mode, while IMAX Cinema adds a little more pop without straying too far from a broadly cinematic presentation.

IMAX Cinema is our preferred option, particularly if you’re watching in a brighter room, but even this mode doesn’t bring colours to life.

Black depth is an equally serious issue. Compared with the TCL C8L, the Hisense produces noticeably greyer blacks, even in a completely dark room. The black bars above and below a widescreen movie are visibly lighter, and the general lack of contrast makes images look less solid and three-dimensional.

The opening starfield of Alien: Romulus is particularly disappointing. The stars lack intensity, while the surrounding blackness looks hazy and grey, robbing the scene of the impact it should deliver.

Blooming is present, too, although not quite in the way we usually expect. Rather than producing small, intense halos around bright objects, the UR8 tends to create a softer, more diffuse glow that spreads across larger areas of the picture. That makes the effect less obviously distracting, but it comes at the expense of black depth and contrast. The TCL handles this balance considerably better.

As the spacecraft drifts into view, it lacks the definition and solidity it should possess, blending into the background rather than standing out convincingly. The interior of the ship is similarly flat and hazy, with the robotic pilot module struggling to visually separate itself from its surroundings and the lights and monitor readouts lacking punch.

Faces look a little grey and lifeless, too. There’s plenty of shadow detail, but it’s the lack of richness and contrast that makes the overall image feel so underwhelming.

This is particularly frustrating when we consider that the UR8 can get plenty bright enough. The problem is that brightness alone can’t create a convincing HDR image. Without the black depth and colour vibrancy to reinforce those highlights, the picture lacks the dynamism we expect from a TV at this price.

Blade Runner 2049 reinforces the point. The opening logos and text produce surprisingly extensive – albeit soft and diffuse – blooming, with large areas of the screen brightening around each paragraph as it appears. The text itself looks a little soft, too, and the combination of weak blacks and diffuse glow makes the sequence far less impactful than it should be.

Civil War is a more encouraging experience. The forest fire has reasonable impact, and there’s good detail in the highlights, but the flames still lack the brightness and three-dimensionality that the TCL produces. The wide shot of Kirsten Dunst sitting on the back of an armoured truck is similarly competent in isolation, yet looks noticeably less solid and dynamic when next to the C8L.

In brighter scenes, at least, the Hisense can produce a reasonably satisfying picture. There’s decent punch, good detail and enough brightness to give HDR material some appeal. The problem is that the image rarely feels as convincing as it should, because the contrast isn’t strong enough to give bright and dark elements the necessary separation.

Oppenheimer is another difficult test. The spotlights during the bomb test are controlled reasonably well, with little obvious blooming in some shots, but that’s largely because the black level is already raised. The TCL manages similarly restrained blooming while retaining considerably deeper blacks.

It’s worth noting that shadow detail itself is good, and the TV’s motion handling is a genuine strength. Even with Motion Enhancement and Clear Motion switched off, the movement of objects remains smooth and relatively sharp without looking unnaturally processed. It’s a nicely judged, cinematic presentation, although there is a little smearing that will be noticeable to anyone accustomed to the crisp solidity of an OLED.

Standard dynamic range material is much more successful than HDR. Watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on DVD, upscaling is clean, with a decent level of detail for such a low-resolution source, and strong shadow definition. Colours are slightly exaggerated, with Robert Downey Jr’s face looking a little too pink, but the overall picture is pleasant and enjoyable.

The real improvement comes when we switch to Dolby Vision, though.

Playing F1: The Movie in Dolby Vision Pro Reference mode, the UR8 delivers a noticeably better-balanced picture. Colours have more vibrancy, contrast improves (even though black depth remains somewhat limited), and the overall image gains a level of depth that is largely absent when we watch HDR10 material.

Skin tones look more convincing, highlights have greater impact, and there’s a better sense of solidity to the image. Detail levels are high, too, with sharpness that feels natural rather than forced. Motion remains good, and the picture is considerably more satisfying overall.

It’s difficult to say exactly how much of this improvement is attributable to the Dolby Vision 2 Max processing, because we can’t simply switch it off and compare like for like. What we can say is that the TV’s Dolby Vision presentation of F1 is substantially better than anything we watch in HDR10.

Unfortunately, the improvement isn’t consistent enough to solve the underlying problem. Watching Wolfs, again in Dolby Vision, we’re back to a slightly grey, murky image. The opening cityscape lacks the solidity it should possess, while the interior shots of the apartment look flat, with furniture blending into its surroundings.

So, while Dolby Vision makes the UR8 a more enjoyable TV, at least with some material, it doesn’t make it a consistently convincing one.

Sound quality

The UR8 features a 2.1.2-channel sound system tuned by Devialet that includes side-firing drivers mounted towards the top of the TV’s chassis, and it’s broadly more successful than its picture performance.

We start with chapter two of Blade Runner 2049, and, as most do, the sound system initially struggles with the demanding low-frequency effects, producing a bit of buzzing from the drivers. This distortion is less pronounced than it is from many TVs playing this scene, though, and it settles down quickly.

Dialogue is clear and well projected across all of the content we test, and sound effects have enough room to breathe to create a reasonably atmospheric presentation. There’s a decent level of detail, too, and the overall tonal balance is good, with a reasonable amount of bass that integrates fairly well with the rest of the frequency range.

Switching from Standard to Theatre mode adds a little more space to the presentation, although this comes at the expense of a small amount of clarity.

Even in Theatre mode, the soundstage doesn’t stretch as far beyond the edges of the screen as it does with some rivals, and there are moments when effects seem a little too centralised. The commentary during the opening race of F1: The Movie, for example, sounds more direct and central than it should.

Even so, the UR8 delivers a fairly open, spacious sound for a TV’s built-in speakers, and it’s certainly good enough for everyday viewing, though a dedicated audio system – even just one of the best cheap soundbars – will improve on it significantly.

Verdict

The Hisense UR8 is a frustrating TV. Its RGB Mini LED backlight promises a great deal, its feature set is excellent, and its gaming specifications are impressive, but the picture quality too often falls short of expectations.

The peculiar lack of colour vibrancy and black depth with HDR10 content are the big issues, and while some Dolby Vision content looks better, it’s still hit and miss.

In many other respects – detail, sharpness, insight, brightness and motion, for example – the UR8 is an accomplished TV, but those many qualities are undermined by those two fundamental flaws, which all too often leave the picture looking grey, flat, and a little bit lifeless.

At this level, you shouldn’t have to compromise to that degree. And, in fact, rivals such as the TCL C8L prove that you don’t.

SCORES

• Picture 3
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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