Hisense C1 review: It’s time to embrace cubism

Hisense isn’t new to the projector game. Its so-called Laser TVs, which combine ultra short-throw projectors with ambient light rejecting screens, have been popular for years now. More recently, Hisense has branched out into standalone UST projectors. The Hisense C1 represents the brand’s first attempt to crack the regular long-throw projection market.

Given its debutant status, you might expect the C1 to miss a couple of key performance and/or feature beats. That proves to be the case, but while not quite perfect, the C1 gives plenty of more established rivals a serious run for their money.

Hisense C1 review: What do you get for your money

The Hisense C1 has a list price of £1,999 but was available for closer to £1,599 at the time of writing. This still puts it in reasonably premium territory by the standards of the casual projector market, by which I mean projectors likely to be used for special occasions rather than being permanently installed in a dedicated home theatre room.

Rivals for that sort of money include the BenQ X3100i (£2,099), which is the bigger, brighter sibling of the BenQ X500i and a particularly good pick for gamers. The Epson TW9400 is an excellent dedicated home theatre projector that will set you back £2,299, while the Optoma UHD35ST (£1,299) is well worth a look if you’ve got a smaller budget. Given the quality and variety of the competition, the C1 really is going to have to deliver the goods to make its mark.

It starts this process in spectacular style with a unique roughly cubic design that looks great in any setting. Much of the C1’s 245 x 179 x 216mm (WDH) frame is clad in a fetching blue-silver brushed metal finish. This is only broken by an attractively integrated vertical grille effect over the bottom quarter of the front edge and perforations on each side. Between them, they provide egress for both the projector’s cooling fans and unusually powerful 2 x 10W, Dolby Atmos-capable speaker system.

Build quality is excellent too, giving you confidence in the C1’s ability to survive the odd knock. This quality also raises hopes that it will be able to deliver its claimed 1,600 ANSI Lumens of brightness without churning out too much fan noise.

A 4K logo under the C1’s lens alerts us to its ability to take in and play (via DLP’s pixel frequency-boosting XPR technology) 4K sources, and its optics are illuminated by a triple laser (RGB) lighting system.

There’s no optical digital image shifting or zoom, but the 1.2:1 throw ratio feels appropriate for typical living room use, giving you a 65in image from 1.73m to a 300in image from 7.97m. The C1 also carries an auto install feature that can automatically adjust focus and digital keystone correction, as well as digitally shift the image around objects in your room that might lie in the projection path.

The lifespan of the lasers before they hit a 50% luminance drop is rated at 25,000 hours, and my tests found the C1 capable of applying its picture talents to all four types of high dynamic range: HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

As well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, the Hisense C1’s connectivity includes two HDMIs, two USB-As, an Ethernet port, an optical digital audio output and a 3.5mm audio out. The HDMIs don’t support frame rates (variable or fixed) above 60Hz, but I measured input lag at a reasonably swift 38.8ms in the Game picture preset, which should keep gamers interested.

As with most living room projectors these days, the C1 carries an integrated smart system – in this case, Hisense’s own VIDAA platform. This supports a pretty comprehensive array of video streaming services, including Freeview Play for bringing together all of the UK terrestrial broadcasters’ catch-up apps.

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Hisense C1 review: What does it do well?

The C1 quickly proves that its beauty is much more than skin deep, with the first thing I noticed being how cinematic and full of contrast its pictures are. This comes as quite a surprise given the recent trend of HDR-capable projectors going all out for brightness, usually at the expense of contrast.

The C1 manages to deliver dark scenes and dark picture areas with much more conviction and naturalism than most of those brightness-obsessed rivals, while also retrieving more subtle background shading details and retaining more dark colour saturation.

As well as making dark scenes more involving and immersive (even in HDR, where the higher brightness demands can really challenge projectors’ lack of local light control), the C1’s unusually good delivery of darkness and black colours means you get a more consistent viewing experience as a film or game shifts between light and dark scenes. And the more consistent a viewing experience a display delivers, the easier it is to get fully immersed in what you’re watching.

The depth and richness of the C1’s colours isn’t only notable during dark scenes. It’s a constant feature of the projector across all content – be it dark, bright, HDR, SDR, film, game or streamed TV show. Objective testing using Portrait Displays’ Calman Ultimate Software, G1 signal generator and C6 colorimeter found the C1 covering essentially 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut used when mastering most consumer HDR content, as well as 100% of the Rec709 colour system and 98.1% of the sRGB colour gamut.

What’s more, considering how bold and far-reaching the C1’s colour performance is, it maintains good accuracy in its HDR Night and Filmmaker Modes. My Calman gamut, colour tone mapping, saturation sweep and luminance sweep measurements all recorded Delta E errors of between 3.1 and 3.6 – very close to the three or less error levels considered imperceivable to the human eye.

The C1’s 4K pictures also look impeccably detailed and sharp, reminding us that while consumer DLP projectors might not deliver true 4K in the sense that they have a DLP mirror for every single 4K pixel, the system DLP projectors use to create a 4K effect is remarkably effective.

Motion looks natural and cinematic if you select the ‘Film’ motion processing option, too, without exhibiting either too much judder or fluidity, while fan noise remains subdued even during HDR playback.

Almost as impressive as its pictures is the Hisense C1’s sound. The JBL-designed system has enough power to create a large, room-filling soundstage that spreads way beyond the projector’s physical form without losing cohesion. There’s a good rumble of bass around to give action scenes heft and scale, while treble effects seldom sound harsh or thin.

Voices remain locked in the middle of the action as they should be, while also enjoying just enough elevation to make them sound as if they’re coming from somewhere at least close to the images appearing on your distant screen or wall.

One last big plus for the Hisense C1 is its VIDAA smart system. As well as carrying an highly commendable array of streaming services, including Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, YouTube, Disney+, Paramount+ and even Freeview Play, in a straightforward interface, all these apps are nativised to optimise their playback to the projector’s capabilities. The system runs slickly and stably, too.

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Hisense C1 review: What could it do better?

While the C1 I tested recognised and adapted to the HDR10+ format, its HDR10+ playback was a bit of a mess. Dark scenes could sometimes look too grey, and HDR10+ pictures sometimes dropped out completely for a moment in a way that didn’t happen with any other picture format.

Hisense’s answer when asked about this was, bizarrely, that the C1 doesn’t officially play HDR10+. But this doesn’t change the fact that if you play an HDR10+ source into it, it’s unlikely to play correctly. It would be better if Hisense sent out a firmware update that turned HDR10+ recognition off entirely.

The C1 is not nearly as bright as many of its current peers. This could be an issue if the living room your projector is going into is typically very bright, or you’re not prepared to control ambient light levels. That said, I personally like Hisense’s decision to deliver a keen balance between contrast and brightness, rather than just going all in on brightness.

While colours generally impress with their combination of punch and naturalism, they can lack a little subtlety. Particularly richly coloured areas can look a touch cartoonish, and skin tones can occasionally become plasticky. The C1’s Dynamic preset is a bit silly, too, pushing colours beyond the point where they still look balanced and realistic. Don’t use it.

Motion can look either too smooth or too stuttery with all but the Film motion processing mode, and it’s a slight shame – if not exactly a shock for – that there’s no support for 120Hz gaming.

Finally, while the C1 measures well in its HDR Night and Filmmaker modes for colour accuracy, it’s a bit more out with multipoint and 2-point greyscale tests, delivering DeltaE errors of 4.2 and 6.3 respectively. However, these aren’t huge deviations and, aside from some marginal coarseness in subtle dark scene shading blends, you’ll struggle to spot them causing significant real-world implications.

Hisense C1 review: Should you buy it?

Provided you’re prepared to darken your living room a bit when you want to use it and don’t mind tinkering with a few basic settings, the Hisense C1 is impressive and, more importantly, unique enough to make it a great little home entertainment projector.

Its design is gorgeous, but what really sets it apart from so many of its peers is the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of its VIDAA smart system and the immersive, balanced nature of its picture and sound quality.

The smart system suffers none of the missing apps and performance limitations of so many projector rivals. An unexpected but welcome focus on contrast over pure brightness delivers a cinematic quality to pictures sorely missing from many current HDR projectors. And the sound has both the scale and dynamic range to make your living room’s conversion into a cinema joyously complete. It earns a Recommended badge at its current price of £1,599, though if I were to review it at full price, I’d stick with just four stars.