CES 2025: Hisense goes HUGE with the 136MX Micro LED TV
The trend of increasingly big TVs is showing no signs of slowing if CES is anything to go by, and Hisense is front and centre of the action
Hisense wowed crowds with a 110in Mini LED television at CES 2024 and has outdone itself by revealing an enormous 136in 4K Micro LED display at this year’s show in Las Vegas.
The Chinese brand stressed the importance of Micro LED technology to its future endeavours when I visited its Quingdao HQ in late 2023, but the 136MX is its first “consumer-ready” TV to make use of the panel tech.
This Micro LED monster crams over 24 million tiny LEDs into its panel to deliver astonishing peak brightness levels of over 10,000 nits and cover 95% of the BT.2020 colour space. Unlike LEDs and Mini LEDs, Micro LEDs are self-emissive, meaning each pixel of a TV’s panel can be illuminated independently, just like on an OLED set.
However, Micro LED TVs aren’t susceptible to screen burn, meaning you’re getting infinite contrast ratio, “perfect” blacks and supreme clarity, while avoiding one of the biggest potential drawbacks of OLED models.
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As with just about every new TV being released at the moment, the Hisense 136MX makes use of artificial intelligence. It’s powered by the company’s Hi-View AI Engine X processor – the same chip found in the 110in Hisense UX, which we’ll be publishing a review of soon – and uses AI algorithms to enhance picture quality. Additionally, black nanocrystals in the panel reduce screen reflectivity, boosting performance in environments with lots of ambient light.
Not only is the 136MX extremely bright and capable of exceptional contrast control, but it supports 120Hz refresh rates, variable refresh rate (VRR), Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), and FreeSync Premium Pro to keep gamers happy. If you thought hooking up your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X to a 65in TV delivered an immersive experience, imagine what gaming will be like on a screen this big.
The 136MX runs Hisense’s VIDAA operating system, which supports a wide range of streaming services, including Netflix, YouTube and Disney+, and there’s voice assistant support courtesy of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
Hisense hasn’t confirmed whether the TV will incorporate Freely in the UK, but I expect it will. HDR format support is comprehensive, with both Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ present and correct, and the 136MX also benefits from support for the Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual:X audio formats.
Meet the Hisense 116UX, the first TriChroma LED TV with RGB Local Dimming
Not content with launching one huge 4K TV at CES, Hisense also unveiled a new screen size for the Hisense UX. The 116in UX isn’t just a bigger version of the 110in UX TV, though.
It’s the first TV of its kind to use RGB Local Dimming technology, which Hisense says “offers unparalleled colour precision, vibrancy, and efficiency.” Where other Mini LED TVs use white or blue backlights in combination with a quantum dot filter to create colour, this TV harnesses the power of independent red, green and blue Mini LEDs to generate purer colours and achieve BT.2020 gamut coverage of 97%.
These Mini LEDs are grouped into tens of thousands of optical lenses that can be controlled individually or in clusters. Hisense claims this multi-level dimming results in exceptional colour accuracy, “breathtaking gradients, vibrant contrasts, and unparalleled realism in every scene”. It’s also said to reduce blooming, make the TV more energy efficient and reduce blue light emissions, which can cause eye strain.
Like the 136MX, the 116UX is powered by the Hisense Hi-View AI Engine X chip and has a stated peak brightness of up to 10,000 nits. There’s support for Dolby Vision IQ and IMAX Enhanced, and the TV’s integrated 6.2.2-channel surround sound audio system supports both Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual:X.
What’s unclear is when or whether we’ll see the 116UX in the UK. Although the appetite for giant TVs is growing, it took a while for the 110in model to make its way to these shores and there’s no guarantee that Hisense will bring its bigger brother here.
If it does so, I’d expect it to run VIDAA OS rather than Google TV, which is the operating system confirmed for the model showcased at CES. It was a similar story for other screen sizes in the UX range; in the US, they carried Google, while here they got VIDAA smarts.
