After almost half a year of waiting, Hisense is finally bringing its Android-toting Smart TV to market. But while the Hisense H6 seemed interesting back when it was announced, it might be facing some tough competition from newer, better, and cheaper alternatives.
The Hisense H6 came out late 2013, at a time when the hype around the Chromecast was at a low and Smart TVs, particularly those powered by Android, were starting to reappear. The TV is somewhat modest when it comes to specs. You have a Full HD screen, 1920x1080 to be exact, with a refresh rate of 120 MHz. You have a slew of connectivity options, both wired and wireless, with four HDMI ports, one VGA, three USB, one Ethernet, and WiFi. For input, you can go with the usual USB mouse and keyboard, optional of course, or with Hisense' "Merlin" remote control, which you can wave around like a wand to active gesture-based commands. Going inside, you have a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, which was noted to be a Marvell ARMADA 1500 Plus last we checked and, sadly, only Android 4.2.
Fast forward 5 months, the Hisense H6 is finally in the market, on the shelves of various retailers such as Walmart. It sells for $700, which probably isn't that much as far as Smart TVs go. That's for the 55-inch version only though. During the initial announcement, there was also mention of a 45-inch and 50-inch variant of the H6 model, though there is no word on those just yet.
However, Hisense might have waited a bit too long to bring the H6 to market. The Full HD resolution and the rather low-powered processor might already look a tad outdated when compared with more recent 4K Ultra HD displays and quad and octa core CPUs of more recent models from competing brands. One such example is Xiaomi's newly unveiled Mi TV 2, which boasts of a 4K resolution, a 1.45 GHz quad-core chip, and a price tag of around $640. For now, the only thing going for the Hisense H6 is that the TV is already available for purchase in the US, while the Xiaomi Mi TV 2 might not even be sold outside of China.