Hisense 40-inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV review

The Hisense Roku TV is that the first intuitive smart TV. With nearly limitless content options and solid image quality, this model may be a bargain. Get details in Hisense 40-Inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV Review.

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Pros & Cons

FOR
Excellent Roku interface
More streaming options than the other smart TV
Easy setup
Picture has pleasing, accurate colors

AGAINST
Not-so-subtle contrast
Audio quality could use improvement

Who is this for

Who it’s for: Anyone who’s been intimidated by smart TVs or who just wants access to the foremost streaming entertainment without hassle — at a bargain price.

Roku and Hisense have succeeded where other smart TVs have failed. that’s to mention , by adding Roku’s features to Hisense’s $350, 40-inch H4 Series, this set may be a lot easier to use and more streamlined than the other connected TV on the market. (Other sizes are coming in 2015.)

Roku is that the leader in streaming set-top boxes permanently reason. It offers more choices than any competing device — over 1,800 channels— and employs an interface that’s easy on the eyes and doesn’t require an engineering degree to find out . The advantage of getting Roku inbuilt is that it incorporates best-of-breed streaming-media features. there is no external box to line up, and Roku also integrates what are often inscrutable TV settings into its streamlined interface.

Design: Basic Black

The Hisense H4 is not any fashionista of design, but it doesn’t need to be. Its beauty is below the surface (that is, the interface and usability).

Though only 3.3 inches thick, the H4 looks chunky next to a high-end Sony or Samsung. The set also features a wide black bezel round the screen. That’s about it. it isn’t bad, but it isn’t exciting, either.

Features: quite Capable

The Hisense H4 includes 3 HDMI inputs, which is ample for a model during this size and price range. And with Roku inbuilt , you will not need an HDMI input for a streaming-video device. One feature i prefer is that that you simply can set a special picture mode for every input — still novel for a budget set. (More about those below.)

Also included are the requisite RCA analog, optical audio output and USB inputs. The set also has built-in Wi-Fi for accessing the web and RF for antenna or older cable or satellite connection.

Roku Built In – Hisense 40-Inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV Review

Adding Roku to a TV may be a wise idea, if only because it offers more streaming services than anyone else. Whereas other sets may have a couple of dozen apps and include only the main services, like Netflix, Pandora and MLB, Roku has many streaming options, from pet channels to special foreign-language programming. Consequently, in terms of pure streaming entertainment, no other smart TV comes close.

Roku’s system also has one among the higher search features because it taps into up to a few dozen channels (including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, Vudu,. for instance , an enquiry for Clint Eastwood will happen Million Dollar Baby for $2.99 from Amazon (see best shows), Vudu and Blockbuster. The set also will list options from liberal to on demand, so you do not find yourself paying for something you’ll have already got access to on, say, Netflix. Roku’s searches cover all the main video and programming sources, with one important exception: It cannot search your local broadcast TV guide (though Roku has said it’ll some day).

Ease of Use: A Paragon of Simplicity

The opening screen of the Hisense H4l seems like a typical Roku menu, with primary selections arranged vertically down the left side of the screen, and tiled options like those selections arrayed on the proper side. If you’re already conversant in Roku’s set-top boxes or the Roku Stick, you will be comfortable with the Hisense set. If not, you’ll still pick it up quickly.

The H4 adds menu choices with icons for the set’s inputs, which appear as large, easy-to-understand icons: Computer, PS4 and Antenna in one among our setups, for instance . Selecting My Channels invokes the quality 1,500-plus streaming services, starting from Netflix to special Korean stations.

Roku didn’t stop there. It also put advanced picture adjustment settings into clear menus and plain English using common terms like tint, backlight, brightness, color and sharpness.

Remote: Fewest Buttons Possible

Another smart idea was to dumb down the remote . rather than the standard button-addled affair, the Hisense H4 comes with a foreign modeled after the one that comes with Roku’s set-top boxes. There are Home and Back buttons along the highest , also as dedicated buttons for Netflix, Rdio, Vudu and Amazon. (Well, a minimum of you’ll use one among them.) There also are volume up, volume down and mute buttons.

If you’re conversant in Roku’s remote design, there are only a couple of other changes: The remote doesn’t have a headphone jack (something that’s very fashionable on the Roku 3 remote), and therefore the “OK” button is within the middle of the four-way directional pad, instead of below it. I quickly adapted to the minor changes.

Hisense 40-Inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV performance Review

The set’s colors were generally faithful and pleasing to the eye; the ocean was a solid blue, lipstick was cerise , and red hair looked natural, without skewing toward orange or magenta. In an HD recording of an NFL game at 720p, green turf wasn’t overly tipped toward the yellow end of the size . the general image was also sufficiently bright, but relinquished some deep blacks, which looked more gray, as a consequence.

When watching a Blu-ray of the Technicolor classic The Red Shoes, I found some dot crawl noise, which may create a scintillating sheen on scenes containing tons of open ocean or sky.

Color: Warm and pleasant

If the Hisense Roku TV features a weakness in terms of picture quality, it’s that it can look a touch oversaturated sometimes , emphasizing, for instance , red over pink. Our color-gamut measurements within the default mode confirm this with the palette skewed slightly toward the hotter , red end of the spectrum.

The Normal and Movie modes attended look the foremost accurate; even Eco save mode (a low-power setting) was fine during a dimly lit room. Vivid and Sports modes leaned too far toward the DayGlo end of the spectrum for us, like other TVs. We also noticed that a Blu-ray version of Skyfall looked too sharp and tangerine in normal mode; Movie mode settings were considerably better.

Contrast and black levels – Hisense 40-Inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV Review

For movie viewing, we pushed the set’s backlight to supply the foremost pleasing overall picture. It did entail slightly less-deep blacks, but the trade-off meant that I could figure out the distant star clusters in scenes from the Blu-ray of Gravity. it had been almost up to the extent of detail offered by a pricier $1,000 (list price), 50-inch Sony KDL-50W800B that I tested. That lack of subtlety also came in touch in terms of contrast — confirmed in our test measurements — where darker shadows looked more severe and lacked some details, like the highlights and shadows in Sandra Bullock’s helmet.

Sports mode — which presumably tries to catch up on fast-action blur — didn’t introduce annoying artifacts, just overly bright greens and reds. (Maybe it should be called sportsbar mode.) In Movie mode, the Hisense set handled action scenes without trouble. During the rooftop chase scene within the Blu-ray of Skyfall, not all the terracotta tiles showed as clearly as they could on a group costing 3 times the maximum amount . On the opposite hand, we didn’t witness any of the annoying artifacts, like pixilation, we have seen in expensive sets that do tons of video processing trying to smooth the action.

Audio Quality: Just Adequate

Audio reproduction with the Hisense H4, like nearly every HDTV on the market, wasn’t particularly noteworthy. It attended be brassy, but not so harsh on be tinny. The sound was very focused at the middle of the set and wasn’t open or spacious. The set could achieve volume levels sufficient to fill a front room with a bombastic soundtrack, albeit without what we might call high-fidelity sound.

Bottom Line

The Hisense H4 isn’t for cinephiles, but it provides a perfect mixture of features, performance and price that ought to appeal to a really wide audience. Picture performance with a spread of fabric was surprisingly good during this price range. The addition of Roku’s straightforward interface and thousands of streaming offerings should make this 40-inch set a winner for apartment dwellers, families that need a second set or anyone trying to find a top quality , bargain-priced smart TV.

Hisense 40-inch Class H4 Series LED Roku Smart TV review – how to mount?

Pros & Cons

Who is this for