TCL QM9K Review

TCL closed 2025 in September by building about the brightest television anyone has measured. The QM9K quotes 6,500 nits and carries more than 6,000 dimming zones on the larger panels, and in practice that means specular highlights in an HDR film have a hardness no OLED can reproduce, and a sunlit room does nothing to the picture at all.

Contrast control is better than the zone count alone would predict, with haloing hard to provoke on normal material, and the Bang and Olufsen array with its up firing drivers and twin subwoofers is the best sound built into a television at this price.

Then the familiar limits arrive. Only two of the four HDMI inputs run at full bandwidth, so the 144Hz panel is available to two devices, while Hisense sells 165Hz on four ports for less. Upscaling of poor sources is ordinary, Google TV stutters while loading apps, and the wide angle treatment costs native contrast in a dark room. The 65 inch launched at $2,999, which asked $800 more than the QM8K that had been the value of the year, and discounting started almost at once. Bought at list it is an expensive way to win a brightness argument.