In case you missed it, we published our What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 Best Buy winners earlier this week.
This is a big deal as it means, after months of comparative testing, our reviewers have finally crowned the best of the best hi-fi and AV hardware in each of the 29 categories we cover.
And, in that sea of products, there were more than a few upsets where upstart products de-throned long-standing winners. Three of the biggest came from Hisense – here’s what you need to know about them.
The best UST just got better
The Hisense PL2 is the successor to last year’s Hisense PL1, which was 2024’s best UST projector under £2000.
Despite it looking nearly identical to its predecessor, once we plugged it in, we found that the PL2 is a significant step forward when it comes to picture quality.
Though it goes brighter and can display a larger picture than the PL1, when we ran the two units head to head in our viewing rooms, the PL2’s handling of dark scenes is what really helped it shine.
Whether it was the creeping, eerie basement and sewers in IT or a heated nighttime battle scene in Civil War, the PL2 offered surprising levels of dark detail and inkier (albeit still not quite perfect) blacks than the PL1.
This makes it an easy recommendation and this year’s best UST projector for movie fans.
As we said in our review:
“Hisense’s focus on delivering a balanced picture that accepts the shortcomings inherent to a UST lets the PL2 offer a consistent, controlled picture that never distracts from what’s playing on screen.
“This, plus its competitive price and advanced features, helps the PL2 punch well above its weight and make it an easy recommendation for any movie fan on the hunt for a UST projector.”
The only downside is that, unlike the Hisense PX3 Pro, the PL2 can’t run games in 4K/120Hz, but that’s standard for a unit at its price.
A tiny projector that packs a lot of punch
The Hisense M2 Pro was a bigger surprise than the PL2. There are two main reasons for this.
The first is down to its tiny size, with it being one of the smallest projectors in its class. So much so that you may mistake it for a 1080p portable unit, rather than a 4K home cinema in a box.
Second, because it’s surprisingly affordable compared to most of its rivals, retailing for as little as £999 / $999 at the time of writing. That makes its only real rival at the moment the four-star Epson EF-72, which costs £1150 / $1000.
During testing, we found it ticks nearly all the right boxes for a unit its price and is an ideal option for people on the hunt for an easy-to-set-up home cinema in a box that can be discreetly stored in a cupboard when it’s not needed.
As we said in our full review:
“The Hisense M2 Pro isn’t perfect. But by focusing on making all the right compromises and delivering a consistent, balanced home movie experience, it gets more right than it does wrong.
“This adds up to make it one of the best coffee table projectors on the market. Offering solid picture quality, excellent app support and a wonderfully easy set-up process, it ticks all the right boxes for its target market. Unless you’re willing to spend a lot more, you’ll struggle to find a better projector.”
The only downside is that it has very limited connectivity, featuring a single HDMI and USB input on its back. So if you want to connect a Blu-ray player, games console or separate sound system to it, you will have limited options and have to contend with a lot of cable swapping.
A Dolby Atmos soundbar system for how much!?
Speaking of sound systems, finishing off this list is the catchily named Hisense AX5125H, which nabbed our best soundbar system under £500 trophy and is one of the biggest surprises we’ve encountered this year.
Why? Because it’s the first “good” and cheap Dolby Atmos sound system we’ve ever tested. Honestly, if you had told us a few months ago you could get a decent sounding, Dolby Atmos soundbar that comes bundled with a wireless subwoofer and satellite speakers for £249 / $350, we’d have called you a liar. And for good reason.
We’re constantly hunting for great value, affordable AV hardware to recommend, but as with TVs, there’s currently a shortage. That’s why the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) is still the reigning champ at the affordable end of the market in our best soundbars buying guide and a repeat Award-winner despite being multiple years old.
So, finding a good, cheap soundbar with this much additional hardware is like watching pigs fly from an AV reviewer's perspective. We said as much in our review, where we reported:
“The Hisense AX5125H caught us completely off guard. Most solo soundbars that cost this sort of money are seriously deficient in terms of audio quality, so surely sound must have been compromised even further for Hisense to have delivered a complete system with these specs.
“That’s simply not the case, though. This remarkably affordable system delivers Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks with room-filling, sofa-shaking exuberance, and while it of course has its limitations, it’s a vast upgrade on the sound of any TV we’ve tested. If you thought convincing, exciting Dolby Atmos sound was out of your budget, it’s time to think again.”
We don’t dish out praise like that often.
But we’d like one more thing next year
"What about Hisense’s TVs?", I hear you ask.
Sadly, the majority of our reviews for Hisense’s 2025 range are yet to go live. But what we can confirm, based on our published review of the Hisense U8Q and upcoming review of the U7Q, is that while the brand is making progress with its TVs, that progress is not as palpable as what we’ve seen from its soundbars and projectors this year.
Our experience so far suggests that Hisense's current TV focus is on pushing the spec boundaries, particularly where brightness and dimming zone figures are concerned, but perhaps hasn't quite figured out how to harness these specs to deliver truly consistent picture quality. That's something we noted in our hands-on of the next-gen Hisense 116UX, too.
We're not done with Hisense's 2025 TV range, of course, and there's every chance there are gems in there that we've not yet discovered, but on the evidence so far, this is an area that the brand could do with working on next year.
Especially given the great year arch-rival TCL is having with its Mini LED TVs…
MORE:
These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars we’ve tested
We rate the best projectors money can buy
Our picks of the best AV receivers
