The Hisense 98UX is a TV which has such impressive specs that you’d be led to believe it's the holy grail of displays, and will finally lay the OLED vs Mini LED debate to rest giving you the best of both worlds. Yet even the best laid plans oft go awry, and specs don’t always translate to what you see on screen, so can the 98UX live up to the hype and deliver the best picture available at 98” under $5,000, or will it fall short of expectations, well let’s find out.
The Hisense 98UX is so far one of my favorite large TVs. Although it does fall short of OLED in many aspects, the sheer clarity and size of this TV offers a level of immersion for large rooms that’s just unbeatable at its current price, and with OLED alternatives priced in excess of $20,000 the value on offer here can't be compared. Yet with its performance falling short of expectations in terms of contrast, some odd bugs in the firmware, and limited availability, many buyers will likely consider purchasing more attainable alternatives.
Specifically Hisense needs to work on their firmware to improve contrast further by adjusting their dimming algorithms, thereby widening the gap between the 98UX and TVs like the 98” QM7, because although the 98UX is better in my opinion, it’s also much more expensive. If you see it on sale it could be a good buy for bright rooms, but also keep an eye out for 2025 models which looked very impressive at CES.
Disclaimer: This TV was sent to me by Hisense to keep for review, but no scores or talking points were dictated, and all opinions are my own.
For this review I’ll be using an X-Rite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, Color Checker Display Plus colorimeter, Calman Ultimate, Portrait Displays Video Forge Pro 8K pattern generator, a Sony RX100 VII 1000fps camera, an SM208 Screen Luminance Meter, & a Sony Cinema Line FX3 mirrorless video camera. All together at least $12,000 worth of testing equipment alone and of course years of experience testing displays.
Above is the Connectivity for this TV. Most importantly it does come with four HDMI ports, two of which are HDMI 2.1 (4K 144Hz), and two of which are 4K 60Hz (one of which is eARC). Additionally it comes with two USB ports, ethernet, one Coax, one 3.5mm composite, optical out, and 3.5mm out.
The Hisense 98UX is an absolute beast to set up, and is one of the heaviest TVs I’ve ever lifted. While opening the box is easy enough, I recommend at least 4 people for mounting it, and I really hope to see handles included on future models as it was a bit nerve racking to lift.
Once you do get it set up however, the menu is a breeze to navigate, and it certainly looks beautiful hanging on a wall. When compared to more affordable SKUs such as the U8N the UX TVs have a more elegant design that suits large spaces well, and the side firing speakers ad an interesting design element that I personally like, but others may be more mixed on.
These days all premium TVs are capable of outputting great looking wide color gamuts that dazzle buyers, but one metric many fall short on is the accuracy of that color. Thankfully this is an area where Hisense has been excelling at, and the 98UX is no different. The color vibrancy, and accuracy for both SDR and HDR is nearly spot on, and especially if you want to watch bright content in HDR the 98UX really stretches its legs providing awe inspiring images while staying true to the creator’s intent in the Filmmaker mode.
Testing Deep Dive - sRGB Gamma 2.2
Out of the Box the Hisense 98UX follows the Rec.709 BT.1886 EOTF curve fairly well, but it slightly oversaturated colors.
Thankfully adjusting a few settings creates a near perfect image.
Testing Deep Dive - HDR BT.2020
The default HDR FMM mode is excellent, tracking both brightness and color very well.
Testing Deep Dive - Color Volume HDR
The Hisense 98UX has great HDR color volume out of the box delivering over 100% DCI-P3 coverage.
SDR Color accuracy is ok with an average DeltaE of 2.9, but the HDR results did fair much better.
Casual movie viewers and enthusiasts alike will find the color and brightness of the 98UX to be exceptionally good, especially in HDR.
A bright sunlit room makes a Mini LED TV the ideal solution for many thanks to their superior brightness when compared to OLEDs, and the 98UX is no exception. In fact the Hisense 98UX is advertised as being able to reach 5,000 nits making it one of the brightest TVs you can buy, and in my testing it displays impactful, colorful, and bright HDR imagery that breathes life into movies and games in a way that is a marvel to behold at such a large size.
During my testing of 4K HDR movies, one that really sold me on the 98UX was Moana in Dolby vision. Dark nights looked convincingly moody, and even more impressively the sun shining through clouds or the fiery antagonist crawling towards the hero showed a level of contrast that will simply be breathtaking to viewers who have not yet experienced a Mini LED or OLED display yet.
Testing Deep Dive - Brightness
The Hisense 98UX is the second brightest TV I have tested in window measurements.
Unfortunately in real world HDR content it falls behind to the middle of the pack just behind the 85U8N, a far less expensive TV.
Now although the 98UX shows bright movies with incredible highlight details, and measures as one of the brightest TVs ever in synthetic tests, in real HDR content the results may vary. In some games and lower contrast scenes the 98UX can fall short of expectations, but in bright colorful content it really shines and can go toe to toe with some of the most dazzling TVs on the market.
Hisense 98UX has excellent contrast with bright HDR content.
In terms of the overall contrast & shadow detail, the 98UX is hit or miss. In higher APL scenes it delivers excellent contrast, but in darker scenes with dim objects against a pure black background the dimming algorithm really falls off a cliff showing significant blooming which can obscure details and distract from watching a film. For example, one movie that really struggles was Escape from LA. This film has many scenes with dim objects at night that really show the issues of the backlight.
Hisense 98UX contrast issues with very dark content.
This issue is very bizarre as depending on the source the 98UX is supposed to house around 5,000 local dimming zones giving it in theory the ability to show incredibly high contrast imagery, however I was never able to measure more than roughly 3,700 zones functioning properly on my unit when running local dimming tests, which may explain some of the oddities I witnessed. Hopefully this is just a bug or issue with my unit, and I expect most retail models to perform better after firmware updates. In my talks with Hisense I was told part of the contrast issues were a limitation of the ADS Pro panel as well as their choice to prioritize viewing angles at the cost of contrast.
While this does lead to excellent viewing angles and great brightness as well as color performance, even on the highest local dimming setting contrast still does fall short of expectations at times, and I personally believe Hisense would do well to include an even more aggressive local dimming setting to reduce blooming further.
All in all, sometimes the contrast is incredible, and sometimes it’s bested by much less expensive Mini LEDs depending on the content. If contrast is your primary concern it may be worth waiting to see Hisense’s new 2025 Mini LED TVs as I suspect they will have far more consistent contrast performance.
Hisense 98UX judder reduction set to 2.
The 24p judder handling on this TV is once again a little hit or miss. For some reason especially on the launch firmware this TV struggles to remove judder without slowdowns and stutter on streamed content, but on 4K HDR discs it did an excellent job. Now after some updates it has been improved significantly, but some streamed content still seems to have some issues when using dejudder settings, and overall I found a dejudder setting of 2 to be an excellent middle ground between the creators intent while reducing stutter from 24p content.
When it comes to gaming the 98UX has a lot of options such as VRR and 144Hz for PC, but it falls short of OLED in terms of motion performance as you might expect. Mini LED simply can’t match the near instantaneous response that OLED is well known for, and this is true for even the fastest options, but the 98UX isn’t particularly impressive even for a Mini LED. It has significant blur resulting in difficult target acquisition for fast paced online gaming, though it’s certainly good enough for single player couch gaming.
Testing Deep Dive - Latency
28ms of total system latency is excellent for a Mini LED, and in fact it's right next to some of the best OLEDs.
Hisense 98UX motion performance falls short of expectations.
Hisense needs to improve their motion performance if they want to compete closer with OLEDs, but for most buyers this will be good enough.
Hisense 98UX RGB subpixel arrangement
Now in terms of the text clarity and the subpixel layout, overall, it's really good. It uses a standard red, green, and blue subpixel arrangement leading to the highest clarity possible out of a 4K display.
Even better, in terms of the finish Hisense has gone for what I can only describe as one of the clearest and most beautiful glossy coatings I've seen, leading to unmatched clarity when watching TV or movies. In all honesty when combining this clear coating with the 98” size it leads to an image so in focus that I was spotting details in movies I had never seen before despite seeing them many times. In fact this TV may very well have the clearest picture money can buy for quite some time as it seems the industry is moving towards using more VA panels which typically have an irregular subpixel arrangement, but perhaps they will shift to RGB. One can hope.
Now as much as I love this coating and wouldn’t want Hisense to change it, the display does seem to lack an anti reflective treatment which means it can act a bit like a mirror if bright objects are in front of the TV, so if your looking to buy one just be aware of this when planning where you want to mount the display.
Hisense 98UX: Reflection & Ambient Light Handling
While Mini LEDs can display bright and impactful HDR, the biggest reason I have avoided using one as my main TV is due to the typically horrifically poor viewing angles, but this is one area where Hisense does far, far better than the majority of their competition. In fact, especially in terms of the horizontal viewing angles the 98UX has impressively little loss in terms of color and contrast allowing for a whole room of people to enjoy the image.
Hisense 98UX Viewing Angles
If you're after a TV that can be enjoyed from more than just right in front of the screen the 98UX may be one of if not the best Mini LED options on the market. When comparing it to other options such as the Hisense U8N or TCL QM7 it absolutely wipes the floor with them, and almost looks like an OLED by comparison. If I had to choose one of these TVs for my personal theater I would without question spend the extra for the 98UX just for this one feature as my specific viewing room has some chairs at quite an aggressive angle that would make almost all other Mini LED TVs look very bad in comparison.
The sound on the 98UX is strangely poor out of the box, but even more strangely by tuning it in the EQ it can actually sound quite good. More specifically by default it seems to have some distortion, it lacks clarity, and overall it's just a bit muddy, but after fixing it with some simple changes in the EQ menu the timbre and clarity improves drastically, though of course audio is subjective, so your results may vary.
I didn’t run into any major bugs outside of the streaming plus dejudder oddities, however overall the menu navigation performance is a step below the performance I observed on the more affordable 85U8N, which is very strange considering they run the same excellent google OS. I suspect firmware updates could improve this performance substantially, and I was told by Hisense that it’s something they are aware of.
Overall the Hisense 98UX is an interesting TV. On the one hand it has produced some of the best, and most immersive HDR images I’ve ever seen, but on the other hand in some darker low contrast images the blooming can be quite distracting making the overall picture performance far more suited to bright room viewing where you would not notice these issues.
For that reason It’s my belief that the 98UX at the right price is an excellent choice and conversation starter for a well lit room that sees significant sunlight, especially considering it’s far superior viewing angles that almost no other Mini LEDs can match on the market today as of the writing of this article. However, if you're looking for a pixel perfect image for light controlled home theaters you may want to look into OLEDs which have over 8,000,000 local dimming zones since each individual pixel can turn on and off, or wait for 2025 Mini LED models to become available, as what I saw at CES this year was extremely impressive. In fact the 2025 Hisense UX models with their RGB backlights produced some of the most color rich and high contrast imagery I’ve ever seen on a TV and I can’t wait to review them this year if I get the chance, as it seems to be one of the largest jumps in picture quality for Mini LED I’ve ever seen.
However in the meantime the 98UX is still a mighty impressive TV, and although the listed price is very high, I have seen it drop far below that on sale, so if you can find it for a significant discount it may be worth considering as I believe it displays the most clear image I’ve ever seen on a TV bar none, and if that’s your primary concern, well then look no further than the 98UX.
Picture: 3.5/5
Value: 3/5
Total: 3.5/5