I tested a budget RGB TV and equivalent mini-LED TV side by side — and while RGB gets us closer to OLED performance, it still needs to learn a few things from its old-school counterpart | Daily Reports Online
Hisense introduced RGB mini-LED to the world in 2025, and while I was impressed by the 116UX (the first RGB mini-LED model) in many ways, I anticipated it would be a high-end tech for some time, sitting at a premium price and size that kept it from competing with the best TVs.
I didn’t anticipate how quickly the new tech would come to more mid-range options, and how many brands would take on RGB (check out our guide here). As luck would have it, a budget RGB model has landed in TechRadar’s testing lab: the 65-inch Hisense UR8.
I’ve also been testing the Samsung QN80H, which uses standard mini-LED, and the timing means I can put the new school RGB against the traditional mini-LED tech.
You’re probably wondering why I’m testing these two side-by-side: surely the new tech is significantly pricier? Surprisingly no: in fact, it’s nearly identical. A 65-inch Samsung QN80F costs $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,199 at the time of writing, while a 65-inch Hisense UR8 costs $1,799 / AU$2,395 (it’s yet to appear at UK retailers). So, can the new tech surpass the traditional?
A quick note on the photos below: the UR8 appears to have a red tint. This is the result of its matte screen interacting with my camera. In reality, there is no hint of this red tint.
Also, we obviously had different sizes of the TVs in, and that can make a difference to the backlights involved. It’s what Hisense and Samsung sent us, respectively, so bear this in mind during the comparison — but there’s plenty worth talking about by putting them side by side anyway.
Colors
One of RGB mini-LED’s primary sales pitches is how vibrant and bold its colors are and from my experiences so far, its color reproduction is impressive. Samsung on the other hand is known for its own dynamic color reproduction, in both its OLEDs and mini-LEDs.
For this test, I put both TVs in their default HDR Cinema modes and starting with Wicked, I was surprised by what I saw. While the UR8 did deliver some natural colors that appeared accurate (more on that at the end), the QN80H’s colors were much more vibrant.
The pink flowers of a tree and the blue decoration on the walls had much more pop on the QN80H. The UR8’s colors had some nice punch, but fell a little short compared to the QN80H.
There were some instances where the QN80H’s color brightness made things look a little artificial and this is again where the UR8 triumphed, showing some nice richness without going too far. But again, that color pop I was anticipating from the UR8’s RGB tech wasn’t really there.
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Switching to La La Land, the same was true again. At the Spring party, Mia’s yellow dress was much more vibrant on the QN80H, dazzling on screen. The same dress looked natural on the UR8 but didn’t have that wow factor.
Switching the UR8 to Standard, its colors suddenly had more pop, but looked a bit too artificial for my taste, so I reverted back to Cinema.
This is not to say the UR8’s colors looked bad during testing, but they didn’t have that saturation I expected from an RGB TV, even in scenes where they should have it.
Contrast and backlight control
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Switching both TVs to their Filmmaker Modes, I put on The Batman, which has always served as a challenge for some TVs, and while the best OLED TVs can generally handle its low brightness comfortably, mini-LEDs sometimes struggle.
The QN80H demonstrated higher perceived contrast, with deeper dark tones and punchier highlights. Flashbulbs from cameras and lamps on walls in Mayor Mitchell’s house balanced well with shaded walls and corners to create dynamic contrast.
The UR8 still showed good contrast between dark and light tones as well as solid shadow detail, but dark areas took on a more washed-out, gray look. This was evident in the scenes in the Batcave and when Batman stands on the subway platform, where shadowed areas on screen looked too bright.
There was however a way to improve this. In the UR8’s picture settings, I dropped its brightness from the default 50 to 49, and it made a huge difference: the brightness control had been one of the more aggressive I’d seen.
After the tweak, the UR8 had much deeper black tones and stronger contrast. In the interest of fairness, I tried to tweak the QN80H’s settings, but its brightness control was much more subtle. Lowering it took away the impact from the highlights so I left it as is.
A note on the above photos: the QN80H’s clouding was not this bad in-person, but this does illustrate the UR8’s better backlight control (more on the in a second).
The same experiment with a brighter but still contrast-y movie in Dark City had mixed results. Dropping the UR8 down to 49 brightness resulted in deep blacks, but at the expense of detail.
As John speaks to the desk clerk in the opening scenes, the texture in his black hair was difficult to see, but less of an issue on the QN80H. Both TVs showed some black crush, but the UR8’s was slightly more noticeable. The default brightness showed nice contrast and better shadow detail, but again at a sacrifice to the dark tones.
But one thing that was apparent in my dark room testing was the UR8 had better backlight control and better viewing angles. Unless viewed head-on, the QN80H showed a clouding effect on dark backgrounds where the backlight bled through. The UR8 showed no signs of this and demonstrated no signs of clouding or blooming.
This was also evident in black and white content. Watching Sunset Boulevard, the QN80H showed backlight bleed on the edges of the screen. The UR8 did have a subtle brown tone over some blacks, whites and grays, but it was better than the QN80H.
So when it comes to reducing backlight bleed and wider viewing angles, the RGB panel gets us closer to the excellent performance of OLED in these areas — but not necessarily closer when it comes to contrast overall.
Brightness
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Measuring the UR8’s peak HDR brightness in a 10% window, it clocked in at 2,087 nits in Filmmaker Mode and 2,394 nits in Standard. The QN80H registered 1,189 nits in Filmmaker and 1,204 nits in Standard.
Fullscreen HDR numbers are similar between the two, with the UR8 clocking in at 771 nits and 767 nits in Filmmaker and Standard respectively, while the QN80H hit 603 nits and 672 nits in Filmmaker and Standard respectively.
How does the brightness look in practice? That’s where things get interesting. Watching brighter, more colorful scenes, I found that the QN80F seemed to have more impactful highlights. In the end of the ‘Wizard & I’ scene from Wicked, as Elphaba stands over a white cliff, the whites definitely seemed brighter on the QN80H.
In some shots from Spears & Munsil demo footage, brightness seemed to trade off from shot to shot. In the opening snow scenes, whites looked vibrant on both TVs. In a later shot of a lit-up ferris wheel, it seemed brighter on the QN80H. A shot of a white lizard in a darkened studio was far brighter on the UR8 than the QN80H.
This was surprising, considering just how much of a leap there was in measured peak brightness between the two. One shot from Dark City, where John is in the Automat, the overhead lights appeared brighter on the UR8, but it wasn’t as substantial as I’d expected.
One area where the UR8 did succeed was reflection handling, but this was down to its anti-glare layer rather than its brightness.
While the QN80H had its own anti-reflection layer, it wasn’t nearly as effective as the UR8’s, which did a great job at limiting reflections without raising black levels.
Couple this with its excellent viewing angles, and you have a great TV for daytime sports — a timely release with the World Cup arriving. (Unless you’re in the UK — what an own goal by Hisense there…)
A step forward, but…
Between these two TVs, it’s a tough call on which one I prefer. While the QN80H has bolder colors and crisper textures out-of-the-box, the UR8 has better viewing angles and better backlight control, resulting in more uniform pictures.
It shows that the next-gen RGB Hisense tech can definitely still learn from the traditional Samsung mini-LED. While the UR8 is decent out-of-the-box, it requires some adjustment (namely in its brightness), and its color accuracy isn’t great (registering a surprising 7.9 delta-E score in Filmmaker Mode, when we aim for a score of below 3…).
But the UR8 is a step in the right direction towards bringing OLED’s strengths in viewing angles and uniformity to mid-range mini-LED. For that reason, I’d just about recommend the UR8 in this battle, but the QN80H proves there’s still life in the old mini-LED dog yet — it’s a very appealing TV.
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