Hisense launched a new product that could change how we view home entertainment in South Africa. The company's latest 'Laser Cinema' TV bundles together a short-throw laser projector and ambient light rejecting screen to offer a true movie theater experience right in your own living room.
This model, the 120L5f, starts at R79,999 and offers a huge viewing area of over 100 inches from just a few feet away. This display uses Hisense's X-FUSION laser light technology to produce 2,700 lumens of brightness and over a billion colours. It also has built-in TV with high dynamic range (HDR) support.
The picture quality is surprisingly good considering this device is meant to be more TV than projector. We deliberately started our tests in a fairly bright living room rather than the dark, fully blacked out conditions usually used for projector testing and found that images were punchy and vivid with surprisingly full blooded colours and eye-catching intensity.
While the HDR Dynamic settings can look a little insipid at times and lose subtle shading information in some situations, the overall performance is pretty good. The Hisense's bright image paired with a wide colour gamut makes for one of the most effective, convincing HDR pictures we've seen on a projector yet and it's certainly up there in terms of picture quality with some of the best flat panel TVs on the market.
Despite it being a projector, the Hisense also works like a regular TV thanks to its Android TV software and built-in digital TV tuner. It supports a range of apps including Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
