Hisense U6NQ, E6NT and S5Q: what they ship with and what comes off

First things first, because it settles everything else: none of these three ranges runs Android. Their sheets declare VIDAA U7.6, VIDAA U9 or HomeOS U9.5, which are one system under three labels. There is no ADB, no pm disable, no package list to go through and no sideloading.

What you can do, and it is not nothing, is spelled out in the VIDAA guide. This page is for the other question: which television you are taking home when you step down from the U7Q.

Three different machines, not three sizes#

The U6NQ is Mini LED with zone dimming, 50 to 75 inches, VA panel and 4K. The E6NT is 4K without Mini LED and without zones: DLED backlight, Tecnología Quantum Dot: No, Wide Color Gamut: No and a declared colour gamut of 0.75 DCI-P3 against the 0.9 of the U6NQ. The S5Q Deco TV is something else again, a decorative set of 32 and 43 inches, and the 32 is not 4K but Full HD 1920x1080.

What all ten sheets share is the refresh rate. 60 Hz on all ten, without a single exception.

The HDMI ports, and where eARC lives#

The U6NQ, the E6NT and the 43S5Q have three ports, not four. The HDMI4 field is empty on the U6NQ, a dash on the E6NT and an NA on the 43S5Q. The three that do exist declare the same thing:

• HDMI 1 and 2: HDMI2.1 compliant( ALLM,VRR,60Hz).
• HDMI 3: HDMI2.1 compliant(eARC,ALLM,VRR,60Hz).

So eARC lives on the third port, and since all three run at 60 Hz it makes no difference where the console goes. That is the quiet advantage of a range that never promised speed.

The 32S5Q is the exception, and a big one. It declares HDMI1.4 and HDMI1.4 (eARC), with No on the third and fourth. Two ports, version 1.4, and eARC moved to HDMI 2. Plug in a soundbar and a player and the set is full.

The sound, and a field that is missing#

The U6NQ declares 2*10W at 50, 55 and 65 inches, with no subwoofer. The E6NT drops to 2*7W on the 43 and stays at 2*10W on the rest. The S5Q puts 2*8W on both its sizes, and the Portuguese sheet adds what the Spanish one omits: Sistema de Som: 2.0 CH. Two channels, in all three cases.

Dolby Atmos is a mess. The U6NQ declares a clean Sí; the E6NT, an equally clean No across its four sheets. On both Spanish S5Q sheets the field does not exist, while the headline on that same page announces "Dolby Atmos" and the Portuguese sheet for the 43S5Q says Sim.

Dolby Vision and HDR10+: two countries, two answers#

The U6NQ declares Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG, all yes. The E6NT declares Dolby Vision and HDR10, puts No on Dolby Vision IQ and leaves HDR10+ at Decoding, which means decoding without showing.

Then there is the 43S5Q, the same machine in both catalogues and not looking like it:

Three fields, three opposite answers, one model. The Portuguese page even carries dolby-vision-atmos in its own address. We do not know which one is right, and we leave it written exactly as published.

VIDAA and HomeOS live inside one range#

Hisense is renaming its system and the S5Q catches the change halfway. On hisense.es the 32S5Q declares VIDAA U9 and the 43S5Q declares HomeOS U9.5. Same range, same catalogue, two systems.

That they are the same thing is confirmed across borders: that very 43S5Q, on hisense.pt, has an "Interface do Utilizador" field reading VIDAA U9.5. The U6NQ and the E6NT stay on VIDAA U7.6 in Spain and Portugal, and on the Italian and French pages the value loses even the number: VIDAA Smart OS.

No RAM, no storage, and a sheet published blank#

None of the ten sheets publishes RAM or storage. That is the figure that decides how many years a connected television lasts, and on VIDAA it hurts twice over: without ADB you cannot check it yourself with a df -h either.

There are more holes, of a kind we have seen before in this brand:

• The 75U6NQ page is published with no specification table at all. Zero fields. The only figures for that size sit on it.hisense.com and hisense.fr, and they do not match its siblings: contrast 2400:1 against 4000:1 and 5000:1, a peak of "Fino a 500 nits" against the 600 of the others, and 2x15 W of sound instead of 2 × 10 W.
• Those same Italian and French pages round the zones to 100+ and 200+ where hisense.es gives 128, 160 and 240.
• PVR and Time Shift on the U6NQ and the E6NT read Refer to Area List + PVR sheet. That is a spreadsheet marker, not an answer.
• The Portuguese sheet for the 55U6NQ puts TBD on the input lag the Spanish one gives as 9.8 ms, and #N/D on the weight of metal in the packaging.
• The 43S5Q declares Puerto Ethernet RJ45: No. The 32S5Q, smaller and cheaper, declares Sí.

The update years exist, just not on their website#

Here there is a figure, and it comes from the regulated sheet. In EPREL the 32S5Q (registration 2406690) and the 43S5Q (registration 2529105) declare 8 years of software updates, 7 of spare parts and 2 of legal guarantee.

Neither hisense.es page publishes that number. What the Spanish sheet does publish is a loose line at the very end, 36 MESES, which is a different thing.

For the U6NQ and the E6NT there is not even that: EPREL returns not one record whose identifier contains "U6NQ" or "E6NT", not even with the search narrowed to Hisense, while it returns 103 Hisense sheets containing "E6" and 209 from other brands containing "U6".

Where both sources can be compared they do not always agree. The 55U7Q page puts TBD on energy class and consumption; its EPREL sheet declares 64 W in SDR, 110 W in HDR and classes E and G. And of the twenty U7Q records in EPREL, sixteen declare frequencyRate 120 and four declare 165, while the website advertises 144 Hz on exactly the sizes EPREL puts at 120.

What you lose stepping down from the U7Q to the U6NQ#

This is the question that brings most people here, and it deserves an answer field by field, with both sheets side by side.

You genuinely lose: the 144 Hz, which become 60. The fourth HDMI. The 20 W subwoofer (the U7Q declares 2*10W(Main)+20W(Subwoofer); the U6NQ, only 2*10W). Three hundred nits of peak, 900 against 600. And Bluetooth, which drops from 5.0 to 4.2.

You do not lose what you would expect. The dimming zones are identical: 128 on the 50-inch and 160 on the 55, figure for figure across both ranges. And at 65 inches the cheap one declares more: 240 zones on the 65U6NQ against 220 on the 65U7Q.

And two things improve. The declared input lag of the U6NQ is 9.5 ms at 50 inches and 9.8 at 55 and 65; the U7Q gives 13.7 and 13.8. And VRR: the U6NQ declares it on all three ports, while the U7Q only lists it on HDMI 3 and 4, because its HDMI 1 and 2 read HDMI2.1 compliant( ALLM, 4K 60Hz) and it is not in there.

What does not change either way: the Wi-Fi is still IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, even though the promotional block on both pages announces "WiFi6"; there is still no memory figure; and there is still no ADB.

What can be cleaned#

The usual on this platform, no more and no less: turn off content recognition in the privacy settings, cut interest-based advertising, delete from the home screen the apps that offer a bin and push the rest to the end, and do not link an account you do not need. It is detailed in the VIDAA guide, and it holds even if your sheet says HomeOS.

Worth going through again after every update, because some of them switch it back on.

If you own one#

What is missing from these three ranges is exactly what Hisense does not publish: how much memory they carry, how much free space is left after setup and which apps let themselves be deleted. And the whole table of the 75U6NQ is missing. If you own one, tell us.