TCL QM8 Mini-LED TV hands-on impressions: I’m shook

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Doug Murray/Digital Trends

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I think you are not ready for TCL QM8 TV. I certainly didn’t. And we need to talk about it.

Many of us expected good things from the TCL QM8. Based on some of the DMs, emails and comments I’ve received, there is a lot of interest in this TV. And I think that’s because what came out of CES looked really encouraging. But TCL is also changing its model numbering convention and restructuring its TV lineup a bit, which might have us wondering if the QM8 will be all that and a bag of chips, or perhaps just another iteration of what was once known as the 6 Series.

I’ll discuss the new model numbers and TCL’s 2023 strategy, including what I think is the big news of the NFL partnership, in future articles where I’ll also talk about the Q7 and Q6. But for now I really want to focus on the QM8 because this TV really surprised the hell out of me.

I can’t say I was shocked because I expect TCL to keep me on my toes, but I didn’t know the QM8 would be this good.

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First impression

This is not a full review. I’ll give this TV a full review when it gets here, and I was able to spend over six hours with it. But at the recent TCL event in New York, I was able to collect quite a bit of information about this TV, which I will share with you. Before I do, just a few reminders about this TV:

The QM8 is the only TV in TCL’s lineup to feature a mini-LED backlight — that’s the ‘M’ in the QM8. The sizes go from 65 inches all the way to 98 inches, and exactly in that 98-inch model, the television has an incredible 2300 local dimming zones. The smaller the model, the less zones are needed, but the number of zones is proportional to the panel size. And I can attest to the fact that the 85-inch and 98-inch models I saw had identical backlight behavior. The QM8 has a center stand for the 85-inch models, but the 98-inch model has legs for stability. All sizes have a rear-mounted subwoofer to go with the downward-facing speakers. The TV has two HDMI 2.1 inputs and can handle 4K at 144Hz or 1440p at 240Hz with some game accelerator trickery.

Brightness

The headline here is that the QM8 did achieve 2200 nits using the standard 10% white window (it did the same with smaller windows). As with most TVs, the brightness decreased as the white window became larger. However, the 85-inch model I tested—which apparently arrived in New York City the day before and hadn’t been checked at all—managed to squeeze barely 1,000 nits out of a full-field white window. A thousand threads across the entire screen! There are some caveats involved, but I’m getting there. I’m not done with the shock yet.

TV can be incredibly bright.

While the TV registered those peak brightness measurements using the standard test procedures of placing a white window on the screen and measuring its output in SDR and HDR, there is another test I run where the Calman software I use quickly shoots increasing window sizes from small to large and measures the effect of each from them. The TCL QM8 reached a peak of almost 3200 nits in this test, and settled at 941 nits at 100%.

So… what does this mean? In short, this means that the TV can be incredibly bright. Like, the leading-8K-mini-LED-TV-of-competing-brands-like-Samsung is bright. Don’t bother asking if it’s a good TV for a bright room – you can watch it outside in full sunlight, although I wouldn’t recommend it as it’s not weatherproof.

Doug Murray/Digital Trends

But why, you might ask, did the TV peak at 2200 nits in one test and 3200 nits in another test? How does it beat the performance that TCL promised? If these questions sound familiar, it’s because you’re a loyal reader — thank you — who’s seen me make the same observations about Hisense TVs.

Now, when I asked Hisense why its TVs keep beating its own claims, the reps told me they like to under-promise and over-promise. It’s not a bad business practice to exceed customer expectations, right? But I suspect there is more to it than that. This is just a theory, but I believe that manufacturing variations – variations in the performance of different parts in a TV – mean that not all units of a given model perform the same. So it’s possible that one QM8 might be just a little brighter than the other. Same as, say, Hisense U8K or U7K. They set a baseline that they can guarantee, and then if and when it outperforms that baseline, good for you.

Doug Murray/Digital Trends

But there is another part to this. Why did my readings vary from test to test? Well, it refers to how the processor in the TV perceives what it is displaying. As we’ve seen in the past, sometimes the performance of test samples is not indicative of real-world performance. In cases where the performance of the test sample outperforms the performance of the actual content, this is not good. But when does real content perform better than test samples? It’s frustrating for me, but great for you. I’m guessing the quick test ran fast enough that the TV’s processor behaved as it should with real content and that actual HDR highlights could hit the 3000 nits range on some units. This speaks to the brightness performance at the top level of the TV, which I simply did not expect.

Image quality

Of course, high brightness is only part of the picture (pardon the pun), so we also need to know what the backlight dimming controls look like. What is the blooming and/or fading of the halo? I have great news: what I saw was fantastic. Excellent black levels, truly superb dimming, dark black where it should be. I was amazed at how good the dimming is on this TV. It was light years ahead of the TCL R646 that I regularly use in my daily life. Enough to make me jealous.

I couldn’t get into the finer details like how well it maintains shadow detail or whether it reduced blacks to unacceptable levels — that’s something I’ll dive into when I have more time with the TV for a full review. But I was delighted with what I was able to watch in the time I had.

As for other elements like color accuracy and color volume, I will say that the QM8 definitely needed a bit of grayscale calibration to look its best and most accurate. Not a ton, but it was necessary for accuracy. And it did about 96% of the P3 color space and about 75% of the BT 2020 color space — right up there with some of the best TVs you could buy in years. From what I could see, the movement looked good. Banding was minimal; the processing looks quite solid.

I was already sold on TV. But then TCL hit me with the prices. And then I knew this TV was going to be huge this year.

The price is fair

The 65-inch model will have an MSRP of $1,700. That may seem like a lot for TCL, but not when you consider that this TV is competing against the Samsung QN90C and even the QN95C in terms of performance. It will cost at least $800 less than the competition. Also, there’s only a $500 difference between the 75-inch and 85-inch models, which means I think people will want to go big with the QM8. Of course, the 98-inch model is a real beast, so I would expect a high price. But you might be surprised to learn that the 98-inch QM8 will cost around $10,000. Again, that’s a lot of money, but keep in mind that the 2021 Samsung QN90A 98-inch TV was $15,000, and that ridiculous 98-inch QN100B we saw at CEDIA last year is $40,000.

Without a doubt, TCL is bringing great value this year. It was always his bag. But now we have the QM8, which offers true high-end performance that rivals the best 4K TVs on the market, and comes at a very attractive price. Unless it does something really bad that I didn’t notice at this event, the QM8 will be a must-have TV this year. I just hope TCL makes enough of them.

Here’s an overview of TCL’s 2023 TV lineup, with prices for each model and size.

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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn

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