Hisense 100L10E Laser TV Review– Picture Quality: Out-of-the-box Picture Quality, Skin Tones, Black Level, and Shadow Detail, 4K SDR
A Hisense Laser TV is designed to be a good home entertainment projector. It is not design to be competitive against a serious home theater projector in a dark room. This UST laser projector when paired with an ALR type screen is geared toward traditional rooms, living rooms, family rooms, or bedrooms – not a serious home theater/cave.
The 100L10E’s color reproduction is good but not highly accurate. The Hisense 100L10E has a total of seven preset picture modes. The picture modes that are the most accurate out of the box are THEATER and CALIBRATED which were the closest to the D65 rec709 standard. While these modes deliver more accurate colors, they were also the least bright. Prior to calibration, to achieve the best SDR picture I choose THEATER with Color Temperature set to LOW.
The VIVID mode and STANDARD modes are the brightest and are designed to fight through high ambient light. The Standard mode which is the default picture preset was warmer with slightly boosted contrast. In addition, Hisense also includes a GAME, a SPORT, and an ENERGY SAVING mode.
Its black levels aren’t as deep as a home theater projector in its price point, but in a room with ambient light, the differences in black level performance would be difficult/impossible to see. Overall, the Hisense Laser TV provides the type of picture quality that will satisfy most of the folks considering it for their homes.
The above screen shots give a rough idea of the color accuracy for each picture mode. However, when viewed in person, the skin tone will look better than shown in these photos.
The first are shots of a skin tone test image showing the different preset modes. Also included is a variety of screenshots showing skin tones under different scene lighting.
As I mentioned earlier, the THEATER and CALIBRATED modes produced the most accurate skin tones out of the box. Overall skin tones were very good in the mode that Jason calibrated.
Above are images of a variety of videos and photos in 4K and HD resolution. Like all our photos, they remain unadjusted for color, so they do not look as good as what the projector produced. All the HD and 4K images were taken with the 100L10E set to either THEATER or CALIBRATED mode (the best preset modes for non-SDR viewing in a room with ambient light).
The 100L10E blacks were dark gray not deep black. This was obvious when watching darker scenes at night in my demo room. There are home projectors in the 100L10E price point that can provide better black level and shadow detail, but they are not nearly as bright nor are they ultra-short throw units. While we have reviewed several home theater projectors many have much better black levels and higher contrast, but these are only beneficial in a darkened theater or room with lots of light control.
Most Hisense 100L10E Laser TV owners will likely utilize the projector in family rooms or spaces that have higher ambient light which would prevent them from fully appreciating ultra-deep black levels anyway. In those environments, the extra brightness, longer life and lower maintenance provided by a DLP based Laser projector would likely be more beneficial.
While most Blu-ray UHD content is available in HDR10, a lot of 4K streaming material is still only 4K SDR. The 100L10E had no problems delivering sharp detailed 4K imagery.
Since a 4K DLP chip does not actually have 8.3 million mirrors, the 100L10E utilizes pixel (mirror) shifting to deliver the perceived sharpness of 4K resolution. This approach works very well because it is very difficult to see a difference in sharpness when comparing a 4K DLP projector like the HU70LA to a native 4K LCD/LCoS model.
Out of the box the 4K picture was good and after calibration, I thought the picture was excellent.
