6 Months Later, Hisense U8Q Owners Are Still Waiting For a Bug-Free TV Experience in South Africa

by

It’s been six months since I first wrote about problems with Hisense’s U8Q TVs. I pointed out that the TVs weren’t working as they should when they were released, and unfortunately, not much has been done to fix them.

I bought a Hisense U8Q TV for myself last year to review it, since the company hadn’t offered me one to test. I’ve been reviewing Hisense TVs for years, but something just didn’t feel right with this particular U8Q model.

Okay, so I fired up the game, and immediately noticed a bunch of issues. The menus were super laggy, which was annoying, but the worst part was this weird brightness bug. Whenever something bright happened on screen, my TV would actually dim! It was really distracting and honestly, kind of a pain to deal with.

When I first unboxed this thing, I immediately noticed a few issues – they were pretty obvious, honestly. I was actually surprised Hisense let it leave the factory like that, I don’t know how they didn’t catch it. But yeah, the problem was definitely there right out of the box.

After I posted the video, Hisense contacted me and we collaborated to fix some issues. I assisted them in finding and reproducing the problem with the screen brightness, effectively working as part of their quality assurance team at the time.

The image above shows how dark the display gets at random times due to the bug

Despite the initial problem, there’s good news: the bug has been fixed! Hisense sent me a test version of firmware update P1113, and I confirmed it resolves the issue. They also appear to have fixed a long-standing FreeSync bug that caused the TV settings to repeatedly reset during gameplay, turning the feature on and off. This FreeSync problem has been affecting Hisense TVs since 2022.

Although the software issue has been fixed on my TV, I appear to be the only person in the country with a working Hisense U8Q right now. Hisense hasn’t released the necessary update (P1113) to everyone else yet, and they don’t seem to be in a hurry to do so.

So, I’ve been working with Hisense for a few months now, trying to get this issue fixed. It’s frustrating because the TV launched with a clear problem that they really should have caught before it hit stores.

Many people who own the U8Q TV have contacted me, frustrated about a delay and wanting to know what’s happening. They’ve also been unable to get any helpful information from the company itself. Some customers say that support staff don’t even seem to be aware of the TV’s problem.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any good news to share. I initially planned to publish this article on March 26th, but Hisense requested I delay it because many of their local employees weren’t yet aware of the initial problem.

There’s been a bit of movement on this issue. Hisense says their support team will now help customers with affected TVs install the fixed firmware update by hand. While this seemed like a good solution, many users have reached out to say the process hasn’t gone smoothly at all.

A Hisense customer reported a frustrating experience with their support team. It took three to four days to get an initial response to a request for help with a software update. When a technician finally arrived, they weren’t prepared to address the software issue and mistakenly believed the TV had a hardware problem. The entire process took around two weeks, and ultimately, the customer was left with a TV that still wasn’t working correctly.

Hisense announced the software update will be available to all users in June. However, their poor communication and seeming indifference to the problem don’t inspire much confidence.

The company announced a major platform update is on the way, which has caused a delay in the firmware release. However, they didn’t explain why the TV series launched with problems in South Africa.

You can watch my Hisense U8Q unboxing below. The bug appears at 11:45.

Read More

2026-05-15 09:15