Meet Maggie, PCMag'sLast year, Hisense surprised me with the U65QF, the first budget TV I’d seen to break 1,000 nits of brightness. It easily earned our Editors’ Choice award for its light output, vibrant and accurate colors, and generous gaming features. Its successor, the U6SF Pro, builds on that foundation with significantly higher brightness and even lower input lag for faster, smoother gaming. Best of all, it keeps nearly the same budget-friendly pricing: $1,099.99 for the 65-inch model I tested, routinely discounted to $649. Its few shortcomings—light bloom, alongside the omission of an ATSC 3.0 tuner and hands-free voice controls—are ones you can expect on any budget-friendly TV. Unsurprisingly, the U6SF Pro easily succeeds its predecessor as our Editors’ Choice for affordable TVs.
The U6SF Pro looks simple but not chunky, with a narrow black plastic bezel running along the bottom edge. The top and sides are bezel-free. It sits on two thin, flat legs that lift it barely an inch off the ground. If you plan to pair it with a soundbar, you might want to wall-mount it.
Around the back of the TV, four HDMI ports (two 4K144, one eARC), a USB port, and an RF antenna/cable connector sit near the left edge facing left. A few inches further in, a second USB port, an Ethernet port, and an optical audio output face directly back. The power connector is on the right side of the back of the TV, facing right.
The included remote is a standard Fire TV design, a flat black plastic wand with a glossy circular navigation pad near the top and a pinhole microphone and voice button above it. Playback controls, menu buttons, and volume and channel rockers sit in the middle, with dedicated service buttons for Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube near the bottom.
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Like its predecessor, the U6SF Pro uses Amazon Fire TV, eschewing the Google TV platform that runs on most higher-end Hisense TVs. Amazon Fire TV offers a pretty robust interface that covers all major streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Netflix, Twitch, and YouTube, and Hisense added Google Cast for streaming from your Android phone or tablet, or Chrome tab. The Fire TV interface is very ad-heavy, though, and can feel cluttered.
It also features Amazon’s Alexa AI voice assistant, though unlike Amazon’s Omni TV series, the U6SF Pro doesn’t have a far-field microphone array; you need to press the voice button on the remote and speak into it for voice control. Models with Google TV, like the U7SG ($1,499.99, 65 inches), UR8 ($1,999.99, 65 inches), UR9 ($1,999.99, 65 inches), or the U8QG ($2,199.99, 65 inches), all feature hands-free voice control with Gemini instead of Alexa. Google TV also has ads and can still be visually crowded, but it’s a bit cleaner.
The U6SF Pro is a QLED mini-LED TV with a 144Hz refresh rate and support for high dynamic range (HDR) content in Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and hybrid log gamma (HLG). It has Wi-Fi 6 wireless connectivity and an ATSC 1.0 tuner for over-the-air broadcasts, but not ATSC 3.0.
Testing the U6SF with an HDR10 signal in HDR Filmmaker mode with a Klein K-10A colorimeter, Murideo SIX-G 8K signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman software, I measured a peak brightness of 723 nits with a full-screen white field. That’s quite bright for any TV lighting up its entire screen, but dropping to an 18% white field, the U6SF Pro puts out double that, 1,442 nits. It’s noticeably brighter than the U65QF’s 1,024 nits with the same size field, and well exceeds the 1,000-nit floor to do HDR content justice. It’s much brighter than the $398 Vizio Mini-LED Quantum TV (969 nits, 18%), though pricier flagship LED TVs like the $2,200 Hisense UR9 (3,364 nits, 18%) and $2,500 TCL QM8L (3,956 nits, 18%) can pump out much more light. As a mini-LED TV with local dimming, it shows perfectly dark blacks, though with some light bloom along high-contrast edges.
Color performance is also excellent. The above charts show the TV’s color levels in Filmmaker mode with an SDR signal compared against Rec.709 broadcast standard colors, with an HDR10 signal compared against the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space, and with a Dolby Vision signal in Dolby Vision IQ mode compared against DCI-P3. The H6SF Pro doesn’t attempt to reach beyond digital cinema levels like higher-end models, but it covers almost the entire DCI-P3 space with remarkable accuracy. Whites are spot-on, and colors show very little drift.
The U6SF Pro’s strong contrast comes through in the party scenes of The Great Gatsby. The highlights of white lights, balloons, and shirts stand out while black suits look appropriately dark and retain the fine contours of their cuts and textures. Light bloom isn’t too apparent along the edges of shirts and suits, though the black letterboxing bars for the film’s anamorphic format show some noticeable haze that expands and intensifies when the top or bottom of the frame is especially bright.
BBC’s Planet Earth II looks lifelike on the U65SF, with the greens and blues of the land and sea in the “Islands” episode appearing varied and vibrant. The sun peeking through the trees looks very bright, while backlit areas stay dark. Textures like bark and fur come through clearly, regardless of whether they’re light or dark, illuminated or in shade.
Demonstration footage on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD benchmark disc similarly looks excellent. Snowy shots look very bright, especially for a budget-priced TV. Highlight details are strong as well, with falling snow, wisps of clouds, and the curves of snow-covered hills in backgrounds discernible against all that white. Other landscape shots look vivid and natural, properly reproducing red cliffs, blue skies, and opalescent geysers.
Torture-test shots of bright, colorful objects against black backgrounds show admirably little light bloom when viewed straight-on. This changes when moving off-center past about 30 degrees, at which point the objects show a wide aura around them. This is a common occurrence among mini-LED TVs; if you want to completely escape light bloom, you’ll need to get a pricier OLED TV like the LG Evo C6 ($2,699.99 for 65 inches). Besides the light bloom, off-angle viewing on the U6SF is excellent, showing little fading or shifting in color or contrast, even when viewing the screen from an extreme angle.
Game performance is another field where the Hisense U6SF Pro swings well above its weight class. It has a 144Hz native refresh rate with VRR and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, a strong feature set for a budget model. It’s also incredibly responsive.
Using a Leo Bodnar 4K video signal lag tester with the TV in Game mode, I measured an input lag of 4.6 milliseconds with a 1080p120 signal and 9.2ms with a 4K60 signal. That’s faster than the Hisense U65QF by 3.9 and 0.4 milliseconds, respectively. The Roku Pro Series OLED is the first TV I've tested to go below 9ms with a 4K60 signal, though it's a hair slower than the U6SF Pro at 1080p120 (4.8ms). In terms of total latency between 4K60 and 1080p120, the Roku Pro Series beats the U6SF Pro by a fifth of a millisecond, earning our latest PCMag Lab Award for lowest input lag.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Hisense 65U6SF Pro
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
The Hisense U6SF Pro outdoes its already impressive predecessor in picture quality and performance while sticking with a very wallet-friendly price. It’s appreciably brighter than the U65QF, putting out more light than any other budget TV I've tested, and it has among the lowest input lag I’ve seen on any TV to date. Small compromises like light bloom, no ATSC 3.0 tuner, and lack of hands-free voice control are easy to forgive at this budget tier. Simply put, you won’t find a better TV near this price, which is why the U6SF Pro easily earns our Editors’ Choice award.
SHOULD I UPGRADE?
If your Hisense U65QF is bright enough for your space and you don’t game heavily on it, you won’t see a lot of benefit by switching to the U6SF Pro. If you play a lot of video games or there are times of day when the TV could use a brightness boost, the Hisense U6SF Pro is the answer. If you have any other budget TV you're unsatisfied with, now’s the time to upgrade. The U6SF Pro is far better than any other TV in its price range.
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About Our Expert
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I've served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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