HISENSE 65A7100FTUK Review: 65″ 4K UHD TV with Alexa

I have been using this 50inch Hisense 4K UHD TV for a few days now, and have listed below *some* of my experiences with it (there is a lot more I could say about it but I don’t think I need to).Physical featuresThe rear of this TV is rather ‘plasticky’ and looks cheaply constructed. The HDMI, USB etc connections protrude from the internals of the TV through holes in the plastic rather than being properly integrated into the casing.The feet on this TV are rather slim & pointed. When properly attached, they give the appearance that the TV is standing on Stiletto heels. Given that the feet are so far apart, it leaves the whole thing feeling precariously wobbly.GUIDE, Channel List & RecordingThe GUIDE is way too spaced out. The channel number/logo takes up about 1/3rd of the screen width, leaving only enough horizontal space to show 1 to 3 forthcoming programmes. And the height of the programme bars is so big that you can only see 5 channels at a time without scrolling up/down. When you do start scrolling, the channel updates can’t keep up with the scroll speed, so the GUIDE continually freezes for a few seconds before there is a sudden burst of activity & it jumps on several channels all at once.Using the GUIDE to set a Reminder for an upcoming programme results in  a) a popup where you have to confirm or edit the reminder times  b) when the Reminder appears, you have a few seconds to confirm acceptance, otherwise the default is to Cancel the channel switch over (this is the reverse of what you want, the default should be to execute the reminder channel switch over!)Most TVs when you press the OK button presents an onscreen Now & Next feature, usually with a button to start recording the current programme to attached HDD/USB storage. But this Hisense TV presents a channel list instead!If you have attached storage (HDD or USB memory stick) and you want to record the current programme to the storage device, you have to press the down-arrow button on the remote control (how ignorant is that!?) and then select PVR and then confirm the programme times & then press Save. It’s yet more convoluted menus & button presses to do something my 8yr old LG TV could do in just 1 or 2 button presses!If you are recording something to attached storage (you have to have the TV on the channel being recorded), and you turn off the TV using the remote control, then before it can actually be powered off you are presented with a dialog asking if you want to keep recording after the TV switches off. There is no countdown associated with this dialog, so the TV will *not* turn off until you confirm whether to keep recording or stop recording. Pressing the power button on the remote control a 2nd time still won’t circumvent the keep/stop recording dialog. And worse than this, if you use an Alexa device and order it to “switch off Hisense TV”, because of the ignorant confirmation dialog that appears if the TV is mid-recording, then the TV simply cannot be switched off by Alexa voice control alone, you have to reach for the remote control to confirm the dialog asking whether to keep or stop recording. If the TV is not in the middle of recording, then it’s not a problem.If you press OK to get the Channel List on screen and then add a dozen or so of the listed channels to your FAV1 list (no way to rename FAV1) then they become numbered as Ch1 to Ch12 in the FAV1 list regardless of the Freeview channel number.  If you then press GUIDE, instead of showing every Freeview channel, the GUIDE will now only show the 12 ‘FAV1’ channels. This now leaves you ‘trapped’ in 12 channel Favourites mode. Even if you use the number buttons to select a known non-Favourite channel (eg. Ch99) then it responds by saying “channel not found” because it’s not in your favourite list of 12 channels! The only way to get out of this favourites-trap is to press OK again and use the Antenna Channel List to change the selected channel to a non-FAV1 channel.  So, if like me you tried to add the UKs HD channels (channel 101-106) as favourites to save scrolling all the way through the GUIDE to get to Ch101, then this will result in you effectively having *only* the favourite channels available on the TV and the GUIDE will only show the favourited HD channels, no other channels can be selected.  This is completely ignorant and defeats the purpose of Favourites acting as shortcuts!ScreenIn ‘Standard’ display mode the screen is *FAR* too bright. If you tend to watch TV with the lights down, the screen is so bright it hurts the eyes (it even causes my cats to go out of the room as it must dazzle them). And this is in ‘Standard’ mode! There are only limited ways to reduce the brightness without darkening the image colours so much that the picture becomes indiscernible. Switching the settings into ‘Cinema Night’ mode helps, but it’s still too bright! And it’s such a pain navigating through the settings menus to switch different modes depending on the ambient light in the room. My 8yr old LG TV could reduce the backlight based on light sensor input and make the picture much less dazzling & save energy at the same time. In this Hisense TV, the backlight control (Off/Low/High) seems to have *ZERO* discernible effect whatsoever, so you’re stuck with constantly using the convoluted menus to switch between Standard/Cinema modes (which still doesn’t resolve the excessive screen glare fully). You can be certain the ‘Menu’ button on the Remote Control will be the 1st button to break with all the constant menu selection activities needed to keep this TV usable!Volume buttonsEven something as simple as changing the volume on this TV requires twice as much clicking as any other TV I know!  When you press the volume up/down button, it does NOT initially change the volume, it simply presents the current volume level on screen for 1-2secs. You then have to press the volume button AGAIN to actually change the volume. So every volume change requires TWO presses of the button! Just incredibly irritating.AppsAlmost every pre-installed ‘App’ and the dozen or so available in the ‘AppsNow’ catalogue, can only be described as total garbage.And you cannot uninstall pre-installed Apps such as ‘Kids YouTube’ or ‘YuppTV’ which will forever clutter up the Apps selection screen.AlexaWhen I viewed this TV on Amazon and saw that it was “Alexa enabled” I rather naively assumed it would act as a wireless ‘microphone’ for my existing Echo Dot, thereby allowing me to switch on/off lights by barking at the TV. Wrong! It doesn’t do this at all. What “Alexa enabled” means is that you can bark at your existing Alexa/Echo Dot device to turn the TV on/off (except if it’s mid-recording as detailed above) or change the channel. That’s about it. I feel ‘hoodwinked’.Instruction ManualThe accompanying printed instruction manual is utterly useless except to give a picture of the rear connections on the TV. There is no information whatsoever on the TV functions.The eManual built into the TV is written in appallingly poor English and half the functions aren’t even documented. For example, what exactly does ‘Power On Mode’ actually do? It’s not documented anywhere in the eManual, the only way to find out is to try it. There are a number of undocumented functions (most of which are useless anyway).In conclusionThis may be a decent quality TV picture for 4K videos on YouTube (certainly wouldn’t describe it as anywhere close to outstanding!), but for normal terrestrial TV transmissions it’s mediocre.However, by *FAR* the worst thing about this TV is the utterly dreadfully badly implemented software functions and features for normal TV control & setup. Those that do work are so poorly thought out as to be counter-intuitive & distract enormously from what could’ve been a decent TV for the money.If it wasn’t for the trouble of re-boxing a 50inch TV set & finding a better replacement at a reasonable price, then I would send this Hisense TV back. It’s a decent screen, severely let down by *every* other feature & function in it. I do NOT recommend this Hisense 50inch 4K UHD TV.UPDATE: It was so bad in terms of ‘useability’ that I sent it back for a refund. And I returned to using my 8yr old LGTV which is SO much more useable.