Projectors

Brightness is impressive, too. There's enough here to give the picture striking 'pop', create a reasonably convincing portrayal of HDR, and combat ambient light. That's not to say you can watch extreme-contrast HDR content, such as A Quiet Place on 4K Blu-ray, in full daylight and expect to get the same experience a flatscreen TV might give you. You'll want to at least darken your room as much as possible when watching a movie if you're after a cinematic vibe.

With regular TV shows and sports footage, the 100L5FTUK's pictures hold up in terms of brightness, colour saturation and, surprisingly, shadow detail – especially if you use the HDR Dynamic preset. Just make sure to turn off the over-enthusiastic noise reduction, and switch the motion processing to the well-judged Clear option. The PJ's Adaptive Contrast feature is clever at subtly expanding dynamic range, apart from the High setting which adjusts baseline brightness so often and so aggressively that it becomes a distraction.

The 100L5FTUK isn't completely immune to DLP's rainbow effect. However, it's much less troublesome than I'd feared it might be considering the bright output.

While its performance exceeds expectations in a well-lit setting, I'd like it to adapt a little better to dark room conditions. Clearly visible during the night-time sequence in A Quiet Place where the children hide in the fields, were black levels that weren't very inspiring. All dark areas appear fairly grey and flat, and while the HDR Night and Standard presets – plus the Light Level setting – can improve things, this is a limitation I could never fully resolve.

The 100L5FTUK's colours with A Quiet Place are also a little thin using any of the picture presets bar HDR Dynamic. During the family's walk home from town at the film's start, skin tones and leaves and grass look pallid and unnatural, as well as rather jaundiced in Hisense's HDR Day/Night modes.

The aforementioned Dynamic Mode shows the 100L5FTUK can achieve a nice, rich colour response. With this preset engaged in a dark room, A Quiet Place's daylight scenes, and night-time red lights, enjoy levels of vibrancy and saturation that track beyond the SDR REC.709 levels many non-laser models stick at. In fact, if anything, the Dynamic preset comes on a touch strong for a dark room, causing clipping in peak areas of some HDR images.

There's a quite comprehensive set of calibration tools available, allowing colour performance to be massaged. With this in mind, if you like the idea of the 100L5FTUK enough to spend £3,000 on it, getting it professionally calibrated might be a good investment.

After all, despite its underwhelming black levels, this Hisense provides an enjoyable bigscreen living room experience for just a fraction of the cost of a 100in TV – and less than some premium 65in sets.

HCC Verdict

Hisense 100L5FTUK

Price: £3,000 
www.hisense.co.uk

We say: A remarkably affordable way of getting a king-sized screen experience, with excellent connections and smarts. Black levels for dark room viewing aren’t the best.

Overall: 4/5

Specifications

3D: No 4K: Yes. 3,840 x 2,160 resolution via mirror-flipping 0.47in TI chip HDR: Yes. HDR10; HLG CONNECTIONS: 4 x HDMI inputs; 2 x USB ports; RF tuner; Ethernet port; digital optical audio output; VGA BRIGHTNESS (CLAIMED): N/A CONTRAST (claimed): N/A ZOOM: Fixed DIMENSIONS (SCREEN): 2,241(w) x 1,272(h) x 5(d)mm DIMENSIONS (Projector): 550(w) x 350(d) x 150(h)mm WEIGHT: N/A

FEATURES: UST DLP laser projector; built-in 2 x 15W audio with Dolby Atmos; claimed 25,000-hour laser lamp life; Standard, Day, Night, Dynamic and Sports picture presets; 28.7cm throw distance; Ultra Smooth Motion system; VIDAA U Smart TV platform; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; 100in Ambient Light Reflecting projector screen; Freeview HD tuner (Freeview Play); quad-core processor