Following news of Samsung’s new 98-inch 8K Mini-LED TV, Hisense has fired back with a big-screen of its own: The brand-new 100-inch version of the Hisense U8K, one of the best TVs we've seen so far in 2023.
It’s certainly not cheap at the Hisense U8K carries an announced retail price of $10,000, but the U8K offers a ton of great features, including 144hz VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium, ALLM and Dolby Vision Gaming — all for $10,000 less than Samsung’s rival 98-inch 8K model.
So what is Hisense adding besides screen real estate? According to Hisense, the U8K will offer “up to 1500-plus nits of peak brightness” and uses 1600-plus local dimming zones in the 100-inch model. Like its smaller-size brethren, the wall-sized U8K can play IMAX Enhanced and Dolby Vision content, and comes with an ATSC 3.0 tuner for NextGen TV support.
Its exact release date isn’t yet set, but Hisense says you’ll be able to order one from both Amazon and Best Buy starting “later this fall”.
What's behind the push for larger screen sizes?
At this point, Hisense, Sony and TCL have all announced 98-inch or larger screens for 2023 while Samsung has two new 98-inch models. Clearly something is happening behind the scenes to make this wave of behemoth LED-LCD TVs possible.
What’s happening here — as confirmed by an earlier report on TCL’s CSOT panel manufacturing arm — is that there’s now a plethora of 98-inch panels being produced overseas in China. These panels are then bought by the likes of Samsung and, presumably, Hisense, to be used in larger TVs.
As a consequence of all these new panels flooding the market, the price of TVs nearing the 100-inch mark has dropped pretty dramatically.
To put the price drop in perspective, Sony put out a 98-inch 8K TV back in 2019 with a sticker price of $70,000. Now, Samsung is able to put out an even better version of that 98-inch 8K TV that uses Mini-LEDs for around $20,000. While Hisense's new 98-inch TV doesn't have an 8K resolution (something that you'd probably like to have in a screen this size), it's only $10,000. And that's before the shopping holidays such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit.
While some folks will be tempted to go all-in when Hisense's 100-inch TV hits store shelves, don't feel pressured to shell out 10 grand for a 100-inch TV — you’ll probably be able to buy one for half the price in the next four years.
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