As the world’s third-largest TV manufacturer, Hisense has a lot to live up to when announcing its 2019 lineup of TVs at CES. The headlining product is the Sonic One TV, a “self-contained” TV with a piezoelectric speaker that allows sound to be delivered from the panel to viewers sitting nearby. It’s a super thin television, measuring just 1.1 inches at its thickest point, thanks to the aforementioned speaker tech.
While some high-end TVs that deliver sound through the display may have solid sound quality, nothing beats a dedicated soundbar setup. It’s a market that thrives because most televisions have average speaker quality. I’d like to hear it (and see it) in person to believe it, but until I do, I’ll remain skeptical of its sound performance.
Hisense is continuing its trend — going on three years now — of releasing laser TVs. The new Hisense 4K Smart TriChroma laser TV (yes, it’s a mouthful) uses the primary colors — red, green, and blue — with three separate lasers to produce a wide array of colors (including what Hisense dubs “pure white”), a 32-microsecond refresh rate serving 8.3 million pixels, and, to top it off, it reaches 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, further ensuring its color accuracy.
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Pricing and retail availability for the Sonic One and the TriChroma have not been announced. However, Hisense does have a number of new TVs that have release dates and prices. The Hisense U9F uses ULED technology to produce a purportedly bright and crisp image on a 75-inch 4K display. The catch? It costs a whopping $3,499 once it launches in June. Thankfully, smaller and less expensive variants exist in the form of the Hisense H9F, a 55-inch 4K TV that will launch in May 2019 for $699, or $999 for a 65-inch version.
Hisense is also launching an ULED version of the current available Roku TV R7, which is appropriately called the Roku TV R8. It’s unique because it’s the first Roku TV to feature Hisense’s ULED technology, which is based on LED tech with Hisense’s own improvements. The Roku TV R8 will launch “later in 2019” at $599 for a 55-inch variant or $749 for the largest 65-inch model.
Update January 8th 1:55PM ET: Hisense’s ULED technology is LED, not OLED, we regret the error.