Hisense Déco TV review: This white QLED TV is like a heavenly match for my bedroom decor, and it’s cheap.

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As a society, we are down to spend money on a new living room TV every now and then. But small spaces like the kitchen or the bedroom seem to be labeled as not suitable for TV upgrades – even if the current TV is bad, or even if we spend a lot of time in that room. To be honest, there weren’t many interesting options to choose from. I don’t know how the small budget-friendly TV market has gone unused for so long, but Hisense was smart to throw the S5 Déco QLED TV into the mix.

What is special about Hisense Déco TV

The Hisense Déco TV is a 32-inch QLED TV with an “art-inspired design” in chic white. That’s not to be confused with matte art TVs that lie flat against the wall like framed art. So while the Hisense Déco isn’t an exact replica of The Frame or the Hisense CanvasTV, it still speaks to the style-conscious part of your brain that cares about space cohesion. Why should you look for a TV with obvious technology if your room decor needs something funny?

A good looking bedroom TV case

I’ve been meticulously taking care of the condition of my bedroom for years, as most of us do. There are few places more comforting than the personal cave we’ve created for ourselves, few activities that feel better than watching something cozy in bed. Doesn’t it make sense for the TV to blend in with all of your decor?

Aside from expensive art TVs with adjustable frames, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a TV that strays from the traditional black design. Obviously, not all people flooded my DMs when I posted the above photo on my Instagram Story.

“What’s this?!”, “I’ve never seen a white TV before,” “I’m scared to know how much this costs but I need it”, and “This picture means chic omg” were just a few of the responses. You get the point: There was clearly a need for a high-quality small TV that didn’t cost $600, like the smallest Frame TV ever.

The display flows into the center, so you don’t have to fold the legs.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The remote is your average Fire TV remote.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

My current hat was my mother’s when she was a teenager in the ’70s. Eggshell color with swirly gold handles, stocked with various trinkets like vintage jewelry boxes, perfume, a skeleton hand from the Michaels Halloween section that I use as a ring holder… vintage. I always thought the arrangement was great on the old black TVs that used to live there. (The disparity would be less noticeable if I mounted the TV on the wall instead, but I don’t do that all that much.) The Hisense Déco is the seamless addition I’ve been waiting for.

Instead of standing on two sturdy legs, the curved white Déco bezels flow straight into the TV base. The sculptural one-piece build feels avant-garde by TV standards, but it also means no assembly is required.

The picture quality is actually sharp for non-4K

The Hisense Déco screen has a serious pop, especially when compared to the black LED screen. Déco’s full HD resolution isn’t as grainy as the 4K you’ll see on 90 percent of TVs, but I don’t think the average $200 32-inch TV buyer will be that picky about upscaling. The shadows are not as pixelated as they were on my old TV, and there is no complete confusion. I was very impressed with the sharpness of the subtitles, despite such small letters.

The coral reef would not have been so colorful on my old TV.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The quantum dot layer picks up a lot of the slack in 4K’s shortcomings. While LED vs. QLED and FHD vs. 4K refers to two different aspects of the TV (brightness and resolution, respectively), the width of the color palette of the QLED TV. it does create a brighter picture than an LED TV. These tiny nanocrystals can emit more than a billion different colors, deepening black levels and brighter light tones to create a very different image. The colors on Hisense Déco are legitimately amazing. They were rich enough to hold their own against the color-changing lights on my nightstand, which are the only lights in my room at night.

I struggle to wind down at night as it is, so I usually don’t look at anything I need to pay attention to before bed. If I absolutely need some background noise, Planet Earth or Our planet for the 40th time. Déco has really done these living spaces justice. Between the crisp color accuracy and vibrant colors across the board, it’s an immersive experience for such a small TV.

Bright objects in dark scenes sometimes have a glow around them. The Déco screen uses direct backlighting instead of full array local dimming, so it doesn’t benefit from small clusters of shutter bulbs to reduce the halo effect. But the average viewer probably won’t even notice – such a small TV is not meant to have the picture quality of an advanced home theater TV.

I hate it when movies show demons. Still, the dark scenes in “Rosario” look great.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Déco didn’t waste the overnight recording from “Paranormal Activity 3” at all.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The occasional bloom didn’t affect my weekend horror movie viewing, at least. During my time with Déco TV so far, I cut it short The Hallow Road again Rosario off my list and threw in a rewatch the comfort of Unusual Work 3. Black scene detail in all three movies was gray and noticeably more legible from a few feet away from my bed than it was on my old TV.

If you haven’t switched to a smart TV yet, do it

Most small space TVs are such an afterthought that they haven’t moved out of the dumb TV category yet. That’s me using my bedroom TV since high school at age 30. The Ol’ Fire Stick rig has made it possible to access streaming apps on a regular TV for several years. But as I have learned, TV it can be you’re simply too old to handle an external streaming device.

One arrow click on the Fire TV remote was enough to send my old TV into a panic. It got so frustrating that I stopped bothering to watch anything. So not only was that TV an ugly plastic box that didn’t fit my room at all, but it did nothing but collect dust.

After a month or so with the Hisense Déco, I can’t believe I’ve put up with a crappy TV setup for so long. Déco’s Fire TV interface is as responsive and easy to use as Fire TV has always been. You mean I can just click on the streaming app and it will play the content? Besides the possibility of automatic ignition?

Is it access to split TV room reliable as a productivity hack? That’s one sure-fire way to pair other universally hated tasks — like folding laundry or cursing the fitted sheet while you make your bed — with an activity you enjoy, like watching a show. It’s also nice to be able to curl up on the living room couch if I want to watch something live. Now, I can throw a new episode of Abbott Elementary or have an NBA game on in my room without picking up my phone to watch YouTube TV. (That app would have sent my old TV into orbit.)

Things to remember

Hisense Déco TV is a rare non-4K QLED TV. The difference between the resolution of Déco’s FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels) and 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) will be more noticeable if you carefully watch a dark movie in a dark room or play video games. But no one would buy the decor-oriented Déco TV expecting a high-end streaming or gaming experience.

The display of my makeup desk in the upper left corner has been messed up.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

QLED TVs are naturally brighter and easier to see in sunlit rooms than LED TVs. That doesn’t automatically make them immune to light in a bright room. Déco TV really struggles to stop thinking when watching TV during the day. Because it’s designed for general use, I’m not too bothered by the lack of glare reduction – again, there are more expensive QLED TVs that struggle in bright rooms.

The competition

For those in the market for a small budget TV, it makes a lot of sense to compare the Déco TV to other TVs in its price range. Aside from any extra wild discounts that might pop up during an event like Big Day, a solid $200 cutoff will usually have you looking at 32- to 50-inch 4K LED TVs.

Best Buy usually has the TCL 40-inch Q35F QLED FHD Fire TV on sale for $149.99 or the 50-inch Q5 QLED 4K Fire TV on sale for $179.99. Both are obviously bigger screens for less money, but both are plasticky black box designs that we’re trying to avoid. Hisense can’t just make the best little TV you’ve ever seen and then make it the same price as a boring little TV, you know?

Is the Hisense Déco TV worth it?

I would recommend the Hisense Déco TV to anyone looking for a small space TV. You really couldn’t ask for a more seamless TV setup: It’s bright and responsive when you’re watching it, hides in style when it’s off, and costs $400 less than the same size frame.

I’ve been firmly on the living room side of the “bedroom person vs. living room person” conversation forever. Now, I’m sure that some of my living room tendencies are due to the fact that my old living room TV sucked. Switching to Hisense Déco has been a real pleasure, and I find myself making time to stay there instead. It’s bright and bold enough for the full range of my TV viewing needs, but most importantly, the satisfaction of its integration with the rest of the room never wears off.

As hard as the world is, the safe place that is your bedroom deserves more decoration. In this case, that beauty is a TV serving c*nt.