First impressions, to the point, it's stunning! From the vivid colors and crisp image to the sheer size of the screen we've been thoroughly impressed so far. Everything we've thrown at it from IMAX enhanced movies, NBA games, to 4K Xbox games have looked and performed flawlessly. More in depth thoughts on our use case, setup and experience below but the short and sweet is we're beyond happy with the purchase. Please excuse the organization in the pictures, we're still waiting on the final cabinet stand to arrive but wanted to make sure we had ample time to take advantage of the 100 day return promo. We purchased the Hisense 100L9G to replace a 60" Samsung LED TV that's experienced 2 failing video boards in the short span of about 3 years.
After living with red vertical lines for months I knew I wanted to replace it with not only a bigger screen but to also move away from a panel TV if possible. We took a long look at both Epson and Samsung's UST offerings before eventually settling on the Hisense as it seemed to be the best balance across the color/brightness, throw distance, input lag and general system features that were most important to our primary use cases of a mix of movie watching, sports, and semi-regular casual gaming.
We paired it with the soft cinema screen option as it would be installed in our basement theater room that is fully light controlled.
Screen Setup:
The screen assembly was mostly straight forward, though there were a few inconsistencies from the included instructions. Most were small such as one of the initial right angle brackets had an additional hole on one leg not depicted in the instructions and it was unclear which orientation it should be installed, it didn't end up mattering but still tripped us up a bit.
The worst being the orientation of the screen in the protective roll. Following the depiction in the instructions on how to unroll the screen resulted in the screen actually rolling out upside down which made for an extra challenge of flipping it over without introducing any folds or damage. Once assembled, mounting the brackets and hanging the screen were straight forward thanks to the included template.
Projector Setup:
Basic setup of the projector itself is well... basic. Set it on your stand and plug it in. From there following the on screen prompts to get it connected to your network if you're using wifi is all straight forward. Once that's done we launched into perfecting the projector/screen alignment. This was admittedly fairly tedious to get just right. Making slight adjustments to the various feet and turning the projector ever so slightly to make sure the picture is parallel on the screen. We wanted to minimize any sort of geometric correction needed from the software so we spent extra time on this.
We eventually got there, but I'm definitely not looking forward to doing it again once our final cabinet arrives. On paper I was a bit unsure of the throw distance in terms of how far it would push the project out into the room, in practice though it turned out to not be a big deal at all for us and is just a few inches further than our previous cabinet.
Experience:
Once things were successfully installed, we started off by getting the Android TV configured with our regularly used apps. This is where one of the system's current drawbacks creeps out. If you're used to Android TV via the newer Chromecast, there's some discrepancies in available apps. Most notably, as others have pointed out there's no native Netflix app currently, though there seems to be some crumbs in the settings section that suggest it may be coming soon and Hisense's other UST offering does feature Netflix so it may just be a matter of time. In the meantime we're using a separate Chromecast for Netflix and the F1TV apps that are missing from the native system.
From there we gave things their first real test with an IMAX enhanced movie from Disney+. Everything was stunning. Even in the energy saving picture mode the brightness and colors looked great. The image was crisp and clear all the way to the corners and the playback was smooth. We tried various levels of ambient lighting throughout the viewing and the ALR screen performed well, with only a minor bit of wash out when the full room lights were on 100%. Next up was to try out some sports, we switched the picture mode over to sports and threw on an NBA game. Same experience, things looked great.
The playback in the fast action was crisp and clear and the overall image quality was superb. The last test was some gaming. I had always heard horror stories of the input lag of projectors making gaming a frustrating endeavor, especially anything requiring a fast reaction response. While the Hisense didn't have the input lag performance of the Epson offering it seemed reasonable for the level of gaming we do (4-5 hrs/week of mostly casual games). To test things we connected up the xbox, set things to game mode, and decided to throw two of the potentially worst games for input lag at it. Starting with some Halo online MP. Surprisingly I didn't notice any increase in input lag from the panel TV we'd been playing on and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
Next we loaded up Cuphead which is full of boss battles requiring fast reaction and input. Again, it played great with no perceivable increase in input time. All the while both games looked incredible and the massive screen created a really immersive play experience. All in all everything we've thrown at this projector it has handled with ease, if the Android app offering catches up with other systems this thing will be perfect.
ProjectorScreen.com:
I wanted to add one last note regarding ProjectorScreen.com. This was the first time I had ordered anything from them, everything shipped quickly and it was a very smooth experience. I specifically want to shout out whichever rep frequents the r/Projectors sub-reddit though. While doing research on USTs I found the information and insight they provided on different offerings really insightful and helpful and is largely was led me to the Hisense and the reason I ordered specifically from ProjectorScreen.com
Overall Rating: 5