There’s no support for the HDR10+ system, but getting support for even one active HDR system (Dolby Vision) on such an affordable TV is good news. Enabling local dimming almost completely eliminates the backlight bleed and cloudiness, and the black uniformity looks fantastic overall. There's a smooth roll-off as content approaches the TV's peak brightness, ensuring fine details are preserved. DTS Virtual X – DTS Virtual X is a premium audio post-processing option for televisions that elevates the viewing experience.

Skin tones, in particular, are varied and convincing - and the E7K Pro does good work in describing skin textures too. Its trio of HDMIs do, though, unexpectedly handle variable refresh rates (up to 60Hz) and non HDR 1080p at 120Hz – despite the screen only using a 60Hz panel. It has incredibly low input lag for a responsive desktop experience, with very little delay between your actions with your mouse and the cursor moving on-screen. Unexpectedly it’s Dolby Vision sources that most expose the 55E7K Pro’s apparent issues with knowing how best to marshal its picture quality troops.Switching to the Filmmaker Mode preset (designed to meet the requirements of the third-party UHD Alliance) predictably does the best job of getting the colours right, toning down the green and delivering a generally more neutral, balanced look to the colour palette that holds up much better during dark scenes. The U7H delivers slightly better picture quality, with a better local dimming feature and slightly better contrast.

The U8H also delivers a better gaming experience, as it has a significantly faster panel with much less ghosting behind fast-moving objects.In fact, it seems more at home with the more ‘definite’ colours and details of high-quality game sources than it is with video, delivering a more consistently vibrant, and actually just more consistent, performance with any type of game at any frame rate. Its input to a movie mix can sound a bit tonally detached, though, rather than slotting itself perfectly onto the bottom end of the main speaker sound, and the film world’s most bombastic basslines can cause a bit of buzzing and distortion. It comes with the user-friendly Google TV 11 interface, an upgraded version of the Android TV interface found on the 2021 Hisense lineup.

Other inputs include a pair of USB ports, an optical digital audio output, an Ethernet network port and a headphone jack, along with the now inevitable Wi-Fi support. VIDAA’s interface is a little basic in its presentation compared with some rivals, but it’s very easy to use and runs slickly and stably. Like most TVs on the market, the Hisense U7H uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional Red-Green-Blue layout. Hisense positions the 55E7HQTUK as an entry-level QLED Quantum Dot TV, capable of reproducing ‘over one billion shades of colour.Or you may prefer to use Hisense’s proprietary VIDAA Voice because, well… maybe you’re a Hisense employee, or maybe you don’t trust Jeff Bezos. On the other hand, the color temperature is extremely close to the target, and gamma is very close to the 2. The local dimming feature effectively boosts the contrast, but it's not as good as the Hisense U8/U8H or TCL Q7/Q750G QLED.

Even the dreaded televised sport can’t ruffle the Hisense - it grips on-screen movement hard and is never prone to judder or stutter. Any shot that isn’t pretty much blazingly bright ends up having its depth flattened, its colours shifted and its contrast hammered by the cloying greyness that hangs over everything. When in ‘Game’ mode, Hisense is claiming a response time of 6ms for the E7K Pro (in 55-inch size) - which, if it’s anywhere near accurate, makes this TV rapid in the extreme. Unfortunately, like the Hisense U8/U8H, it's difficult to calibrate quickly, as small changes to some areas made others worse.

The Hisense performs much better in a dark room due to its more effective local dimming feature, better contrast and black uniformity, and highlights pop a bit more in HDR thanks to its slightly better HDR peak brightness.