Setting up a new TV is the worst half hour of owning one, so I paid this more attention than it probably deserves. Google reworked the Google TV out of box flow and handed it to Hisense first, on the 2025 U7 and U8 series, before pushing it to other Google TV devices and some of Walmart's onn. streamers.
The change that matters is not needing the phone app. An Android phone gets a notification when the TV starts setting up, and on iOS you scan a QR code off the screen. Before this you were downloading Google Home on a phone, signing in, and hoping the two devices could see each other on a network that was itself half configured. Anything that removes a link from that chain is worth having. They also changed how apps install during setup, described as getting you watching sooner and using less storage later on, and that second part is the interesting claim on a set with limited internal space.
The rest is what you would expect. Photos screensavers, parental controls, profiles, and pairing Google Home speakers so you can pause from a speaker instead of hunting the remote.
What nobody has told me is whether it actually shortens the clock. My last Hisense took twenty minutes and most of that was firmware updating before it would let me touch anything, which no setup redesign fixes. If you have unboxed a 2025 U7 or U8, how long from power on to a working Netflix tile?
The change that matters is not needing the phone app. An Android phone gets a notification when the TV starts setting up, and on iOS you scan a QR code off the screen. Before this you were downloading Google Home on a phone, signing in, and hoping the two devices could see each other on a network that was itself half configured. Anything that removes a link from that chain is worth having. They also changed how apps install during setup, described as getting you watching sooner and using less storage later on, and that second part is the interesting claim on a set with limited internal space.
The rest is what you would expect. Photos screensavers, parental controls, profiles, and pairing Google Home speakers so you can pause from a speaker instead of hunting the remote.
What nobody has told me is whether it actually shortens the clock. My last Hisense took twenty minutes and most of that was firmware updating before it would let me touch anything, which no setup redesign fixes. If you have unboxed a 2025 U7 or U8, how long from power on to a working Netflix tile?
