Hisense 43A71F Review: The BEST Affordable 4K TV is Here!

The Hisense 43A71F from their new A71 series has a 43 inch 4K panel in addition to having really good hardware and software features, and it supports HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atomos, and all these numbers and features are something that I really wasn’t expecting to see on paper for a price point of just 24,990 Rs.

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But we’ll have to check how well it performs in the real world, because on paper it really looks like a deal that is too good to be true, and there’s really a lot to cover in this video, because this TV offers a lot more features than I was prepared to cover.

WHO IS HISENSE?

If you don’t already know about Hisense, they have just entered in the Indian market with launch of this A71 series, but they are actually quite well established in the world, and they have launched some really high end stuff like world’s first 8K 10 bit HDR Dual Cell TV, and you can also check the reviews they have been getting in countries like US on Amazon dot com.

Even when I received this TV, I got a call for installation, so I enquired about the service centers, and they do actually have it here already in my city of Udaipur in Rajasthan, where some other popular brands don’t have service centers, so it is really great that they already have a well-established service network in India.

UNBOXING, SETUP, AND INSTALLATION

You are also going to have someone sent to your location for installation when you buy it. Even without help, the installation on a table is very simple as you just have to install the stands and put it on the table.

One great addition they have here is that they provide the wall mount in the box, so you won’t have to pay 600 Rs. extra to buy it separately like with some other brands.

After that, the setup is also very simple as it is an Android TV, and you can just use your phone to quickly set it up by following the instructions on screen.

DESIGN

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The design of the TV is pretty good, it does have thin bezels which make it look nice, and while the rest of the design elements are pretty standard in this range, the clever integration of the body with the display panel does make it look modern.

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INPUT/OUTPUT PORTS

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On the left side, you have easy access to most of the ports, so you have an optical out port for audio, a port for internet via ethernet cable, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 3 HDMI 2.0 ports, with one of them supporting HDMI ARC, and then a 3.5mm jack for headphone or speakers, and finally the antenna port for a cable connection if you have that.

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The component ports are on the back side of the panel, so they won’t be very easy to access if you have it mounted on a wall, but I am guessing most people won’t need to use this.

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You also have a physical button under the TV which you can use to power it on or off, or for switching the inputs.

DISPLAY QUALITY

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Coming to the display quality, I am 100% satisfied with it, but first we will discuss what makes it so perfect.

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So you have different color profiles that you typically see on the TVs, and the profiles like Dynamic, and even Standard are kind of too saturated for my taste, but what surprised me was that they have also included a calibrated color profile, and when you select it, the colors do look very accurate, and balanced, and you can go a step further and tweak the contrast, saturation, and adjust the color temperature, so I boost the blue channel a bit to make it cooler, and then I finally reach to a look that I find to be perfect.

This is such an important feature to have for people who don’t like the oversaturated look that TVs generally have, and I really appreciate the fact that they offer such an advanced and granular control over these settings.

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So the colors are just perfectly saturated for me, and on a hardware level, the panel is also very capable, the contrast is surprisingly good, the viewing angles are also great, and you’re not going to see any color or contrast shift while being off center. The backlight uniformity is also really good, and you’re not going to notice any unevenness with video content on this TV.

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If I had to nitpick, I’d mention that there is a visible gap between the backlight and the display panel if you get really close and look at an angle, but this isn’t visible even on close viewing distances, except for a thin line at one edge that you might notice if you view it at an angle.

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The display has an almost glossy coating which is slightly matt, if you wanted to know about that.

It is a 43 inch panel, and 4K resolution is very high for a panel of this size. You might think you would need a bigger panel to enjoy 4K, but you can also just move closer to it to fill your field of vision and even from a distance 4K looks way better. Not all content is available in 4K, so 1080p is also going to look really great on a panel of this size. I will also mention the price of bigger sized panels in this series later on.

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They also have a UHD upscaler, smooth motion option for sports, and some noise reduction features, but the more important part is that the raw performance of this panel is good.

HDR SUPPORT

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This TV also supports HDR, HDR10+, HLG Decoding, and Dolby Vision, which I don’t think other TVs have in this range. We don’t have any kind of local dimming on the panel, and this isn’t an OLED, so you’re not going to have the same HDR experience as the super expensive 2 lakh Rs. TVs, but I tested different HDR content on it, and it looks pretty good, and even without local dimming, the contrast is very good.

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They have some software algorithm that adjusts the contrast curves for HDR, so that seems to be working well.

So you are going to get good compatibility with HDR titles, and even games, so that is nice.

GAME MODE

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One of the things that makes TVs less suitable for gaming with a playstation or PC compared to monitors is their input lag, which is the latency between a computer sending the frame to the TV through HDMI, and the TV actually displaying it. TVs generally have high input lag, which creates a difference between you pressing a button in the game and the action appearing on the screen.

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This TV has a game mode, and even without activating it, this TV has very low input lag, but on game mode, its performance is on a totally another level.

I tested it with a duplicated display with my 4K monitor, and the performance in gaming was really outstanding as it felt that the gunshots were instantly activating with my mouseclick, but then I recorded it at 120 fps slow motion with my camera, and what I found was that the TV actually had slightly lower input lag than my monitor.

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Now this is not a gaming monitor, but the fact that a TV in this price range can beat a regular monitor is really surprising, and my mind was totally blown away by this. Also keep in mind that this is with a 4K 60Hz RGB signal which is uncompressed.

So if you’re looking for a TV to use with your playstation, Xbox, or PC, this will really be perfect for that purpose, and you can even play FPS games on it without a problem.

REMOTE

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The remote was another pleasant surprise on this TV, unlike the minimalist approach by some other brands here, this remote has many buttons that are actually useful, so you won’t have to get frustrated trying to do everything with 3 or 4 buttons, and the bigger size also fits in the hands better.

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Not only do we have dedicated buttons for Netflix and Amazon prime, but we also have them for Hotstar and YouTube, which I really liked, and finally we also have a dedicated button for switching inputs, which is extremely useful.

In addition to the mute button, the remote also has a button to turn off the backlight, which is another very useful addition, because you can turn off the display while listening to music or watching podcasts on YouTube.

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Sending the TV to sleep state also requires only a single button press, which is also nice because it will wake up instantly.

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I think that the remote also has additional functionality to integrate it with a set top box or use it with a cable connection, but I don’t have a cable connection so I couldn’t test that.

SOFTWARE

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The TV comes with Android TV 9.0 installed, and that is really great. You have the familiar Android TV interface, which works well, and the nice thing about it is that you have access to all the apps and games in the Google play store, and you can side load any app from the USB, and as I talked about earlier, there are some additional features in the software which I have not seen on other Android TVs before.

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You also of course have Google Assistant which you can access by pressing the dedicated button on remote, and you can use it to do Google assistant things like quick searches on web, or for finding content on different platforms, and the voice commands are easy to use as the remote has a mic.

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The TV also has Chromecast built in, so you can cast online content directly from your phone, and it also has a screen mirroring feature, which lets you mirror your phone’s screen on the TV.

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In addition to Netflix, Amazon prime and other streaming apps, You can also play content directly from pen drives with VLC player, install browsers to browse websites on TV, amongst other things that are typical for smart TVs.

WIFI + BLUETOOTH

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It also comes with Dual Band Wi Fi, so you can also connect it to your 5 GHz Wi Fi network which is awesome, and it also comes with Bluetooth which I just consider to be critical in a smart TV, so you can use all your Bluetooth speakers, headphones, use Bluetooth keyboards, mouse, gamepads so they really haven’t skipped on anything to achieve this low price point.

SOUND QUALITY

[WATCH VIDEO FOR SOUND TEST]

Coming to sound quality, it is really good for a TV. You have 2 12 Watt speakers, and they get really loud, with plenty of headroom for videos with low volume. The TV also supports Dolby Atomos, even with the inbuilt speakers, and it does work well as it improves the sound when you enable it.

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In addition to great performance by the speakers, you also get very good control over the sound of the TV, so you have settings for a better sound when TV is wall mounted, and there are different sound profiles, including one for use with headphones. You also have an equalizer which is nice to see, and it also has additional features for Lip sync and audio delay adjustments, so you shouldn’t have any issues with audio video sync, which could be very helpful.

Overall, you are getting a really great sound experience, and I don’t think you’ll need to use a sound bar or external speakers if you’re only watching movies and tv shows.

PERFORMANCE

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The Performance also is pretty good, you have very adequate horsepower for everything that you’ll do on TV, it has a Quad Core processor that handles things well and I didn’t face slowdowns while switching between apps.

You have 2 GB of RAM on board, which is good to have in this segment, and 11 GB of available internal storage is also higher than what I have seen on other devices like Firestick and competing TVs.

The Mali 470MP GPU will also allow you to play 2D games very well, and you can even play some graphic intensive 3D games at lower settings.

The TV can really play every codec you throw at it, so it’ll play VP9 4K 60fps HDR video on YouTube, and so on, so you really don’t need any other external device like firestick or a TV Box for anything, which is really great.

PRICING

So looking at all the features and performance, the price tag of around 25,000 is really amazing, I really thought that there will be some compromises in some areas, but this TV has delivered in every area very well, and even exceeded my expectations with how much control it provides over the hardware and software. The input lag for games being lower than my monitor was also something I really wasn’t prepared for, especially at this price, and overall, I really don’t know of any other TVs that come close to it in this price range.

Another great news is that the pricing on bigger size versions of this TV is also really amazing, so the 50 inch version is available at 31,000 Rs., the 55 inch at 35,000 which I think is the sweet spot.

There are also going to be discounts from 1000 to 2000 Rs. during the first 3 days of sale from 6th to 9th August, and they’re also offering 5 year warranty on the panel in this period, and getting 5 year warranty on the panel is actually really cool because that is the most crucial part of the TV, so if you are planning to buy this and you’re watching on these dates, I would highly recommend that you buy it today.

I haven’t tried the bigger versions, but I am assuming they will offer a similar or better performance in comparison, so I think they will also be a great purchase.

In addition to Amazon and Flipkart, it’ll also be available to purchase from Reliance digital and Tata Cliq stores so you can buy from the store of your choice.

⭐ Buy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ieF84O

⭐ Buy on Flipkart: http://fkrt.it/XyWIPcNNNN

⭐ 50 Inch Version: https://amzn.to/2PEJk1v

⭐ 58 Inch Version: https://amzn.to/3i4sPYC

⭐ 70 Inch Version: https://amzn.to/3kifPAD

⭐ My Recommended Products on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2k6BCku

⭐ Subscribe for FREE: https://bit.ly/subreflex

 

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