Hisense HL81V68P LCD television

The Hisense HL81V68P is a 32in (81cm) LCD television aimed at budget buyers. It’s not as advanced as TVs from the big-name brands but it has acceptable picture quality for the casual viewer.

The styling of the Hisense HL81V68P is not anything exceptional, but it’s a step up from the squarish sets of Kogan and Tyagi (the Tyagi 2298 and Kogan 1080P-47 spring to mind). It reminds us of the smooth, piano-black curves of Sharp’s D53X series, which isn’t a bad thing at all. The bundled remote control isn’t exceptional either, but it’s clearly labelled and doesn’t feel too cheap.

The interface is easy to navigate, with all the options for tuning channels and adjusting picture and sound quality laid out intuitively. The in-built hybrid tuner picks up analog and digital television channels, and after a painfully slow initial scan of just under 10 minutes it picked up the entire suite of channels in the area.

The Hisense HL81V68P is a no-frills television; there are none of the fancy content libraries or wireless networking services that televisions from Sony and Samsung possess. Its three HDMI ports are on par with big names, though, and analog inputs range from VGA all the way down to composite.

When viewing free-to-air Freeview digital television content, we found picture quality to be acceptable. A static contrast ratio of 4000:1 (the panel doesn’t have dynamic contrast) is reasonable but not spectacular, with broadcast television displaying well but Blu-ray content exhibiting some black crush and loss of detail.

With no 100Hz mode, the television exhibits some motion blur in fast-moving scenes. A response rate of 6.5ms isn’t very fast when compared to panels from manufacturers like Toshiba and Sharp, so this television isn’t fantastic for watching motor racing, for example.

Hisense’s HL81V68P is a good choice if you intend to watch predominantly free-to-air broadcast television with a little movie watching thrown in on the side. We’ve seen it advertised for under $900 from some bricks-and-mortar stores.

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