For the back story on this one refer to the 'Free TV' section at the end of this post :
https://www.thebookoforigin.com.au/blog-wexley/its-been-a-while
I came home from work one day, it was a hot day, I was stuffed and very keen to have a cold shower and sit in front of the tv and watch some House M.D (if you haven't seen it, go watch it, NOW). After the shower I came out to the lounge, grabbed the tv remote, hit the power button and BANG, it was very loud, and the place reeked of dead electronics.
I was very annoyed.
The TV is way less than a year old so obviously the first port of call is JB Hifi, and fortunately we now have one in Launceston, so we decided to make a Launny trip on Saturday (Christmas Eve) and try and sort it out, it really sucks not having a TV.
I walk into JB and grabbed the first free sales guy I could find, I tell him I've got a tv warranty issue, my Soniq blew up, he starts laughing, even the guy up the aisle helping a customer turned around and chuckled - he looks at me and says, sorry I shouldn't laugh but this happens alot we'll sort it out.
Moral to the story - NEVER buy a Soniq.
JB were really good, our options were: get another one the same, get another tv of the same value, or put money in for something better. You can guess which one I went for...
I had done a heap of research online prior to going and I was tossing up between a 55" HD Phillips, and a 50" 4k Hitachi, I even took my own thumb drive with a HD and 4K video file to test them both out.
But the guy helping me said I'd much rather see you take home a Hisense. I hadn't been looking at Hisense because to me it wasn't a 'known' brand, but as soon as I looked at the image quality I knew I wanted one. There was a Hisense 50" 4k sitting beside the two I was looking at (Phillips and Hitachi) and the image quality of the Hisense was so far ahead of the other two I couldn't believe it - so to be sure I played the file off my usb drive and I got the same results, the Hisense was hands down the best. It was marginally more expensive than the other two (and the budget I had in mind) but the guy said to me don't worry about the price we can fix you up, and he did. I got it for around $300 below retail.
The picture quality of this TV is amazing, of course you'll never tell in a picture but believe me when I say it is far better than its price implies.
The other thing that pushed me towards the Hisense is they come with a 3 year warranty, not even Samsung & LG offer that! Its also a Smart TV, which I wasn’t fussed about until I got one - this one has Netflix and Youtube buttons on the remote too, which I am finding most useful, but the best part is, if you never press the app button you'd never know it was a Smart TV. So once the 'smarts' become obsolete it'll work fine as a regular TV. Also the build quality of this TV, and even the remote, is far above its price.
So things worked out really well in the end.
Love Long and Prosper.