Hisense L9Q Pro First Look: Better Blacks, Bigger Ambitions
The Hisense L9Q Pro is here, and it has me asking a question: could this be the UST I would choose for a dedicated home theater?
The original L9Q delivered a bright, vivid picture that made it a compelling choice for media rooms and living rooms. The Pro adds better native contrast and an adjustable iris, and my first measurements and movie sessions suggest that its appeal could extend well beyond those spaces. This is a hands-on preview, with the full review still to come.
Building on the L9Q
The L9Q was a standout last year. It took the judges’ top picks for overall picture quality, mixed-room use and dedicated theater use in the 4th Annual UST Projector Showdown.
Its brightness was a major advantage with a good ambient light-rejecting screen and a little light in the room. Under those conditions, its elevated black floor became less obvious. Complete darkness put more emphasis on black levels.
My early assessment is that the Pro brings roughly twice the native contrast of the L9Q baseline I’m comparing against. I measured 3,984:1 in Vivid and about 2,800:1 in SDR Filmmaker, with the iris unused and dynamic black-level laser dimming off. We’ll get into the details in the full review.
What the iris adds
The iris has eight static settings, zero through seven. Dynamic operation is still waiting for a firmware update, but I tested the individual settings in SDR Filmmaker.
The first few steps cost surprisingly little brightness. At setting three, white retained 94% of its setting-zero level while sequential contrast rose from about 2,780:1 to 3,476:1. At setting five, it retained 81%, with contrast reaching 4,843:1.
Setting six recorded 11,078:1, retaining about 59% of the original white brightness. Setting seven recorded 10,771:1, retaining about 38%. Translated to a 100-inch, 1.0-gain screen, those white readings are approximately 148 nits at six and 94 nits at seven, compared with 252 nits at zero. These are calculated brightness equivalents from the iris series; the contrast ratios come from the measured white/black pairs.
A very dark scene can trade some highlight brightness for a lower black floor. The staircase sequence in 1917 is the kind of low-average-picture-level material where that trade could be useful. A mixed scene with deep shadows, intense color and bright highlights also needs strong native performance. The static measurements show the available tradeoff; dynamic-iris behavior remains for the full review.
Quick white-balance correction
We utilized Portrait Displays’ Calman color calibration software.
Filmmaker Mode initially looked a little reddish. Three rounds of two-point white-balance correction took less than ten minutes and made a substantial improvement. The saved 21-point grayscale sweeps show average ΔE2000 falling from 7.82 to 3.08, calculated over 5–100% stimulus with luminance error included. The corrected sweep still has bright-end error to refine, peaking at 6.88 ΔE2000 at 90%.
Peak white by screen size
The Calman measurements and my SDR demo loop used a 100-inch, 16:9 Stewart GrayMatte 70, with an effective gain of 0.6 for this UST setup. That is the effective gain I’m using for these calculations.
The Vivid measurement recorded 249.02 nits white, equivalent to about 415 nits at 100 inches on a 1.0-gain screen. The corrected SDR Filmmaker sweep measured 169.03 nits, equivalent to about 282 nits at the same size and gain.
The table estimates SDR peak-white brightness as the 16:9 image grows, with projector output unchanged. Here, peak white means the measured 100% SDR white stimulus. These are point-white estimates, not whole-screen averages or HDR highlight-window measurements.
| SDR white record / screen gain | 100″ | 120″ | 150″ | 200″ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vivid / 1.0 | 415 | 288 | 184 | 104 |
| Vivid / 0.6 | 249 | 173 | 111 | 62 |
| Vivid / 0.7 | 291 | 202 | 129 | 73 |
| Corrected Filmmaker / 1.0 | 282 | 196 | 125 | 70 |
| Corrected Filmmaker / 0.6 | 169 | 117 | 75 | 42 |
| Corrected Filmmaker / 0.7 | 197 | 137 | 88 | 49 |
Estimated SDR peak-white luminance in nits. Values use measured white × target gain ÷ 0.6 × (100 ÷ target diagonal)². Larger image sizes were not measured.
The Vivid reading, corrected Filmmaker sweep and iris series are separate measurements. The corrected sweep’s iris position was not logged, so its brightness should not be treated as the setting-zero result from the iris series.
Many lenticular UST screens are around 0.6–0.7 gain, making the 0.6-gain rows a useful guide for what to expect from that class of screen. For example, WUPRO’s Gallery Lite BSP specifies a lenticular structure and 0.7 gain. A 0.7-gain screen gives about 17% more light than 0.6 gain at the same size and projector output. Actual results depend on the screen and projection/viewing geometry.
Features on the spec sheet
Hisense specifies a 4K RGB triple-laser engine, an 80–200-inch image range and a 0.18 throw ratio. The ±5% vertical lens shift is a feature I’m especially interested in testing for setup flexibility. The U.S. spec sheet also lists Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG support, Google TV, active 3D, and a ten-speaker Devialet sound system rated at up to 116 watts. Hisense U.S. spec sheet
The L9Q Pro deserves a deep dive. I’ll test the lens shift and work through its many features in the full review, including HDR playback, 3D, smart TV functions, audio and dynamic iris once that firmware is available.
The picture so far
My six-minute reel, captured in 4K, looked natural and cinematic in SDR on the GrayMatte 70. Faces were convincing, metallic surfaces had the right sheen, and there was very little visible speckle. The separate HDR playback looked more intense, with richer color and greater perceived contrast.
Ian Lainof, Kaleidescape’s consumer electronics product manager, also visited. We watched scenes from The Greatest Showman, Top Gun: Maverick and Tron: Ares on the 100-inch StudioTek 100. Deep-looking blacks, vivid color and bright highlights came together in a picture that looked shockingly seamless. I stopped thinking about whether it looked good for a UST and started considering it for a dedicated theater.
This is production hardware with unfinished firmware. I’m still waiting for dynamic iris and possibly stronger anti-rainbow processing; I saw a fair amount of rainbow effect in earlier viewing. The full review will go deeper into color accuracy, Dolby Vision and dynamic behavior. For now, the L9Q Pro has made a strong first impression.
