TCL 8-Series Q825 Review

Mini LED is the ordinary answer now, and in 2019 it was an announcement everybody else was still making. TCL shipped it. The 8-Series packs tens of thousands of tiny LEDs behind the panel and groups them into a dimming zone count in four figures, at a moment when a well regarded full array set counted its zones in the low hundreds, and the result was contrast in a lit room that nothing near the price approached.

Highlights hit hard, black levels in mixed scenes hold rather than grey over, and the quantum dot layer gives it color volume at high brightness that the OLEDs of that year could not match. It cost $1,999 for the 65 inch against an LG C9 at $3,499. The limitations belong to their moment and they are real. The panel is VA, so off axis the image washes out.

Blooming is present and on a starfield it is obvious. And Roku TV, still the most pleasant television interface anyone has built, had no variable refresh and no 4K120 input in 2019, which meant the 120Hz panel inside was something you could never feed from a console. That dated it faster than the picture did. As a piece of history it is the set that opened the era every Mini LED television since has lived in, and while it was on sale it was a bargain.