During CES 2018, Chinese-manufacturer Hisense announced six 4K smart TV lineups. The options ranged from Hisense’s flagship 75-inch H10E to the 43-inch R7. The R7 lineup comes in at the low-end of their new offerings, but offers 4 sizes with great specifications for the price.
Hisense was founded in 1969 and came to the US in the early 2000s. The company has seen a lot of success and is now valued at over $15 billion. They manufacture many products including appliances, TVs, set-top boxes, tablets, mobile phones and more.
In fact, Hisense has been able to leverage its success to take ownership of many well-known product lines. In 2015, Hisense entered a five-year license to sell TVs using the Sharp brand name in the US. More recently, in 2017 Hisense acquired Toshiba Visual Solutions. Both of which a well-respected brands and many are completely unaware that Hisense is their parent company.
With 4K TVs becoming an expectation for new TV purchases, Hisense has shown that it is prepared to compete at both the high and low-end. As mentioned earlier, the R7 comes in on the low-end with very competitive pricing. Model sizes range from 43-inches all the way up to 65-inches with pricing starting at just $349. While hitting this low price point, the R7 lineup manages to pack in HDR, Motion Rate processing, and built-in Wi-Fi.
“Consumers are looking for two things when they’re in the market for a new TV: a design they can be proud to have in their home and a great user experience,” says Mark Viken, VP of Marketing, Hisense USA. “Hisense is committed to providing TV shoppers with both of these brand promises and they are at the heart of our 2018 lineup. We’re excited to continue to partner with Roku to deliver their exceptional smart TV platform to our customers.”
These TVs also come with Roku software built-in (helping Roku to stay on when it comes to marketshare). Roku TVs offer some great functionalities that are not always seen in standard TVs.
For starters, they offer 5,000 apps (Roku refers to them as channels) that offer access to 500,000 movies and TV episodes, something that you’d typically need to spend $30+ on to buy a Roku Streaming Stick or something similar. Some Roku TVs offer nifty features like booting to a specific input source at startup and custom naming/icon selection for your input sources. Features like this make a Roku TV an obvious choice when shopping for a TV.
The R7 lineup will be available Costco, Sam’s Club, Nebraska Furniture Mart, and Best Buy no later than June 2018.
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