Title: You won’t believe how affordable this 50-inch 4K HDR TV is – our jaw-dropping review of the Hisense 50H8F will shock you!

If you’re in the market for a budget-friendly 4K HDR TV, the Hisense 50H8F is worth checking out. With its stunning picture quality and wallet-friendly pricing, this TV surely deserves a spot on your shortlist. In this review, we’ll dive into the features that make this TV so great and why it’s worth purchasing.

Design and Build Quality: The 50H8F looks sleek and modern, and its slim bezels give you a cinematic viewing experience. It has a sturdy stand, and the TV feels solid overall. Although the TV doesn’t come with a wall mount, it’s VESA compatible, so you can quickly mount it on the wall.

Picture quality: The Hisense 50H8F comes with a 4K UHD resolution, which means you get 3840 x 2160 pixels on the screen. This high resolution produces sharp and detailed images. The TV also supports HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision, making it suitable for displaying high-quality HDR content. The TV’s peak brightness isn’t as high as some more expensive models we’ve tested, but it’s still good enough for most users. Also, the TV’s color accuracy and contrast ratio are impressive for this price range.

Performance: The TV’s performance is excellent for its price range. It has a decent response time, making it suitable for showing fast-moving objects. The input lag is also low, which is great for gamers. The TV has a 60Hz refresh rate, which is expected at this price point.

Smart TV features: The Hisense 50H8F comes with Android TV as its operating system. The TV comes with Google Assistant built-in and works with Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit. The TV’s interface is user-friendly, and you can quickly access your favorite apps and streaming services. The TV doesn’t have an extensive app store, but it has all the essential apps you’d need.

Audio quality: The TV’s audio quality is average. The built-in speakers lack bass, and the soundstage is narrow. However, this is a common issue among TVs, and we recommend buying a soundbar or a surround sound system to enhance your viewing experience.

Price: The Hisense 50H8F is a budget-friendly TV, and at its price point, you won’t find many TVs with the same specs and features. The TV offers tremendous value for the price, and if you’re on a tight budget, this TV is a great option.

Conclusion: Overall, the Hisense 50H8F is an exceptional TV for its price. It offers 4K UHD resolution, HDR support, low input lag, and a user-friendly interface. While the TV’s audio quality is average, this is a common issue among TVs. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly TV that offers impressive picture quality and a great set of features, the Hisense 50H8F is a great choice. We highly recommend it.

Hisense 50H8F 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Android Smart LED TV

  • Affordably priced

  • Sleek design seems high-end

  • Android TV has many apps and features

  • Local dimming for darker blacks

  • Apps frequently freeze or crash

  • Motion blur is common

  • Uneven backlighting in corners

  • Underpowered speakers

The Hisense 50H8F is a budget 4K TV with a surprisingly nice display, Google Assistant, and Chromecast built-in, making for a user-friendly interface.

  • Design
  • Setup Process
  • Image Quality
  • Audio Quality
  • Operating system
  • Price
  • Competition
  • Final Verdict
  • Specs

With few budget newcomers to the TV market, the competition between brands is making better TVs cheaper than ever. Hisense is one of these new arrivals, offering the 50H8F a 50-inch 4K HDR TV that boasts Android TV functionality and a beautiful entry-level 4K display for under $400. I spent nearly a month testing it, to see how it stacked up against rivals on our best cheap TV list. 

Design: Sleek and modern

With an edge-to-edge glass panel and a super-thin 0.2-inch bezel, the 50H8F has a sleek design practically indistinguishable from the higher end brands. Other than a small red LED and the logo, the whole TV including the legs is a simple black. The stand has thin metal feet with a wide 9-inch footprint that felt perfectly stable in testing. Most of the USB and HDMI connectors on the back of the TV are facing to the left, so they’re easy to get to whether the TV is mounted or not. The 50H8F is well-designed and of decent quality for its price.

Setup Process: Convenient setup with Google Home

The Hisense 50H8F can be set up with the Google Home app or with on-screen prompts. The numerous prompts take several minutes to get through. Location, Google Assistant, automatic content registration, and other permissions are all enabled at the beginning. After various logins, a fairly unnecessary five-step tutorial, and any updates, the TV will finally be ready to use after several minutes. A slow setup is no big deal, but I lean toward the trend of streamlining setup wherever possible.

The 50H8F is well-designed and of decent quality for its price

Image Quality: Great display for a dark room

It’s going to be difficult for most consumers to enjoy the quality difference between 1080p and 4K on a 50-inch television, thanks in part to the relatively small amount of native 4K content available. That said, with an entry-level 4K TV priced as reasonably as the 50H8F, there’s no reason not to be an early adopter of the technology. New releases and old favorites like Jaws are being converted to 4K, and the quality differences are more noticeable if your TV is fairly close.

Local dimming allows the 50H8F to achieve deep, uniform blacks. There is a small amount of blooming, but the only time I noticed it was when stark whites and blacks were on the screen together. Backlighting was inconsistent enough to create a few dim spots on the screen, but it was another problem only noticeable when the screen had large spans of the same color. There was enough contrast that small details in dark scenes weren’t lost, even in a brightly-lit room.

Slow response time does cause problems with motion on screen. A persistent blur trails behind fast-moving objects regardless of which picture settings are used. Long action scenes, like the lightsaber showdown in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, suffer from blur significant enough to be nearly unwatchable. Despite that, the 50H8F has an overall decent display.

Local dimming and a great contrast ratio make this TV perfect for watching movies in bright and dark environments alike.

The 50H8F does offer a picture setting to address some of the motion handling problems, albeit mostly for video games. Game Mode reduces input lag by disabling processor-intensive features like smoothing and motion enhancement. The picture setting doesn’t affect the appearance of games noticeably, but the performance gains are huge. 

Without Game Mode on, a noticeable white blur trailed behind Ori every time I played Ori And The Blind Forest, even without the game’s motion blur enabled. Landing on narrow pillars and avoiding flying spikes is much easier with Game Mode’s reduced input lag. Ori looks much better as well, crisp and smooth as he jumps around the dark forest.

Audio Quality: A soundbar would be ideal

The 50H8F has two 10W speakers, which feel a little underpowered for TV of this size. The sound itself is clear, but soft sounds like characters whispering in movies or ambient noises are usually lost. Because there is no auto-leveling, I had to adjust the volume between commercials and scenes every time I watched anything. As with most TVs, the 50H8F would benefit greatly from a soundbar or dedicated speaker system.

Operating system: Great support makes up for instability issues

Android TV’s home screen brings apps and their content right to the surface. Side-scrolling ribbons showcase new and previously-watched content, with auto-playing previews right from the home screen. The result looks a little cluttered, but it couldn’t be more user-friendly. By eliminating loading screens between apps, Android TV makes browsing much easier. I rarely had to load an app to find something to watch.

Throughout testing, there was one recurring problem: instability. Apps frequently crashed or became unresponsive, especially the Hulu app. The only way to resolve this was to reset the TV, but the problem was so common I usually watched something else instead. Instability issues should be resolved by updates and fixes, but in the three months that the 50H8F was being tested in my home, I noticed no improvement.

Price: Affordable compared to rivals 

At under $400, the Hisense TV is firmly in the budget range for 4K. Competition in this price point is tough, demanding a product that has all the features people value most at a price they’re willing to pay.

By eliminating loading screens between apps, Android TV makes browsing much easier.

Hisense 50H8F vs. LG UM7300

Consumers have a lot of choices in this price range, and the small differences between them can have a big impact. The Hisense 50H8F is a solid choice that offers a little bit more to Android users, like support for Chromecast and several highly-rated remote control apps.

VA panels like the one in the 50H8F suffer a drastic loss of color and contrast when viewed at an angle greater than about 30 degrees, making them unsuitable for large living rooms with sectional sofas or other spread-out seating. With an IPS display, the UM7300 delivers much wider viewing angles. Anyone in the room can enjoy the TV with no significant loss in video quality.

A budget-friendly 4K TV with easy to navigate software. 

Specs

  • Product Name
  • 50H8F 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Android Smart LED TV
  • Product Brand
  • Hisense
  • Price
  • $380.00
  • Weight
  • 24.3 lbs.
  • Product Dimensions
  • 28.1 x 43.8 x 9.2 in.
  • Warranty
  • 1 year limited
  • Compatibility
  • Google Assistant, Alexa
  • Connectivity options
  • HDMI, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio, LAN, Bluetooth, Wi-FI