TCL - 85" Class S55LR Series 4K UHD HDR LED Smart TV with Roku TV (2026)

This 85" TLC is my largest flat panel TV I have. For years I've had multiple projectors in my family room (which is 32' x 16') My seating area is 16' from my drop down screen. I decided I wanted to compare this 85" TLC to my projector. My setup has always allowed two display devices so setting up the TLC with my surround sound system was pretty easy. This 85" S55LR does not have local dimming so comparing it to a projector (which cannot have local dimming) should be a fair comparison. I have Roku boxes connected to 4 of my TV's so I'm very familiar with their user interface. I did update the Roku app on my iPhone so my phone can now control all 5 devices. I went through the TLC setup and registration, installing/updating the Roku TV app on the TV.  Setting up the TV with all my streaming services and DirecTV took nearly an hour. I first started a std HD DirecTV baseball game, I attempted to get the color and brightness settings of the TV and my projector to be as similar as possible.  The TLC does not have as many advanced setting as my projector. I set the TLC to it's darkest mode which to me presented blacks and darks areas more realistically. The has four times the number of options.  It allowed me to "tune in" the two pictures to be pretty similar. No matter what I did the TLC's greens were a little brighter than the projector.  The blacks on the TLC were also a little brighter.  Looking at a pure white screen the TLC was slightly whiter but more even than the projector especially in the corners. With solid colors (test pattern) the TLC was 100% consistent.  Both of them displayed red, blue very evenly. Yellows were a different tone but both very even, the TLC was a tad brighter. The projectors blacks were a perfect inky black, the TLCs were brighter maybe offering more shades of black (just not as deep). But onto live TV. A top over bottom (see image) comparison of the two showed the TLC had some additional detail, both had some blurring with very fast motion. The TLC has what they call Motion Rate 240 with MEMC, the projector has a motion flow feature, both claimed to improve full motion clarity. Both struggled with clarity of Baseball's fast action. The resolution of the fine details, the blades of grass were clearer and the lines on the field and numbers on uniforms were sharper. The grass on the projectors image seemed a more natural color.  The more I watched for differences, the more the TLC revealed finer details. Now on to a UHD 4K movie (Blu-ray) with both devices sharing the same signal.  First up: Top Gun Maverick.  I again attempted to get the colors as close to the same, by adjusting the two devices during the Menu Loop; they were close, the TLC still had a slightly brighter overall display; blacks and bright areas were close with the projector being slightly darker.  Both were very detailed in the picture quality, a credit to what UHD 4K can deliver.  After more critical watching of a few scenes a couple of times, it became clear that the TLC struggled with the darkest areas, details were missing from within the shadows. With fast paced full motion scenes the TLC captured the edges more crisply, where the projector seemed to smoothed out some of the details, the edges were not as fine.   I did another comparison watching Dante's Peak and except for very dark scenes I overall preferred the TLC with it's slightly brighter picture (in a fairly dark room). I also compared the sound from the TLC to my home theater, which was not a fair comparison. The TLCs sound when below 15 sounds acceptable. Over 20 (21-99) it get tinny and noisy. Just watching a ball game below 20 is fine for background noise. The TLC can almost fill a big room, but not with high quality sound The down firing stereo speakers are obviously under powered and they distort as the volume level increases. In short get a sound bar or use a good quality surround sound like I do (connected using eARC). The built in Roku for streaming is excellent. But the only remote is a TLC remote that looks just like every Roku remote (minimalist) except that there is no microphone button for voice control. It's fine until you add something with lots of channels (like DirecTV) which then forces you to scroll through pages and pages of channel selections, with no means of keying in a channel number (that I could find). The TLC integrates well with Apple Home, Apple Airplay, Google Home and Alexa.  Voice commands from all worked (as did the Roku voice commands when I swapped out the provided TLC remote for a newer backlit Roku that I happened to have on hand). The installed Roku supports voice commands but the provided remote has a sleep button where the mic button should be (they maybe saved a dollar - Boo). I did run into situations where more than one service tried to respond. I ended up using only Google Home and Roku Voice. With a wide variety of streaming services Roku presents a fairly unified menu across the different services/apps. I looked at my Fandango support and all formats including UHD worked fine, I tested both with a 5G wireless connection and a Ethernet connection both streamed without any problems. So, for now, I can use either my projector or the TLC 85", the difference in screen size is barely noticeable. There are times when I prefer the screen up higher, and times where I like it low (TV sitting on the floor, me on the couch). With both sharing the home theater system it's hard to choose, I no doubt prefer the TLC when the room is very bright (which is unusual). BTW all of my TV's and projectors have their own sound bars or full blown theater systems, so thinking the TLC's sound is weak is not surprising (few flat panel TVs have good enough sound to satisfy me).

I didn't know what I was missing until I upgraded to this TV. Our daughter was in need of a newer TV so we gave her our existing 65 inch and got this 85 inch for ourselves because, well, why not right. . The picture is so much more clear and bright than the old one which was also a TCL, however slightly older.The difference in picture quality from just a few years ago is truly exponential.Installation was an absolute breeze and from unboxing to the time it was hung on the wall & hooked up to my apple tv 4k was less than 30 minutes total. This is also our first Google TV (the old one was ROKU) which I guess has some perks since we use Google with our home automation but I have not looked into this quite yet. Remote worked as soon as you put batteries in and no set up issues to deal with. Sound is your typical good enough if you can not afford an audio system. I wish they would just stop including speakers in the tv's & use that money on better video components because no one uses them these days.Overall I would recommend this TV.

The TCL - 85" Class S55LR Series 4K UHD HDR LED Smart TV with Roku TV (2026) is a lower budget huge screen television that enables me to watch my TV programs, movies, videos and play my video gaming with a decent screen playback. As a Roku device, setting it up and getting to begin using it was easy with its user-friendly format. The TCL can stand alone firmly with no swaying or tilted leaning with its provided legs. The 4K Ultra HD resolution produces bright clear and sharp details desired for enjoyable program watching. There are no soft or blurry visuals, but for professional gaming there can be some bleeding of edges. I do not get the exact same response as if I was playing on a gaming monitor. But the Game Accelerator does help with providing more faster and responsive game playing. The TCL has all of the major paid subscription apps such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney, but also gives me over 500 TV stations for free through the Roku app. The Roku remote has no microphone voice control, so scrolling long pages must be done to find your program. The small speakers do not produce enough room filling volume in certain instances of watching programs or gaming and therefore an external speaker might come in handy. There are three HDMI inputs and a Bluetooth Personal Audio support for private listening. Sometimes I need more than three HDMI ports, which creates a minor problem. The TCL - 85" Class S55LR Series 4K UHD HDR LED Smart TV with Roku TV (2026) is a tradeoff between cost and functionality. It does not operate as a $3000 or more television, but has all of the features necessary to produce an entertaining time watching television programs and playing video games.

This is an excellent entry level TV. The screen at 85” is huge and has a very slim border. The entire TV is thin in depth, as well. The 4K Ultra HD and Motion Rate 240 capability make this a very versatile set at a low price. It has 3 HDMI ports, USB port and ethernet port as well as an external 75 ohm antenna port. The legs provided worked great and held the TV vertical with a fairly solid feel. I would still recommend if your final mounting decision is to use the legs, that you utilize a safety strap in case a pet or child might bump the TV. Another important feature is it does have Bluetooth which sometimes is not included with lower priced sets. I did appreciate that it can run dual-band WiFi, so if you are close enough to your router you can opt for the faster 5 GHz band. The remote works but does not have a mic button, so that is a bit cheap as I would expect all TV’s now have a voice capable remote. TCL apparently figures you can use Alexa to do voice commands, but that interface is slow if not plain cumbersome and inefficient. You can buy an almost identical Roku remote that has the mic-button in place of the sleep-button for less than $20; so you can add the mic easily which I do recommend. Sound is average but is another acceptable price/performance tradeoff. I would recommend a sound bar to ensure your audio is top rate and that would provide far better sounding audio. The picture is quite bright with plenty of color even though it does not feature the top video technology but this tradeoff, of course, ensured the very economical price. The Roku interface is very smooth and the TV IPL’s very fast. I would highly recommend this lower priced TV with a huge colorful screen. You can make it more impressive with just a couple add-ons like the mic-capable remote and a sound bar.

So, lets get to it, why 4 stars? There are two primary reasons for this rating. First, the remote. There is no back light for the buttons and although the smaller size may be appealing for some, it lacks the functionality of my other remotes. Second, I was not able to download the streaming app I rely on for most of our programming. Sure it is not a "main stream" app, but a SMART TV should accommodate anything you can throw at it. That being said, Roku offers many options and I do think most people will be quite satisfied with the programming available. Just check compatibility with any addons you may want to install before you decide. The picture is quite good. I put this in my Livingroom where we entertain and enjoy movies with friends. There are quite a few windows and even without lights on the environment is bright and evenly lit during the day. The picture is plenty bright for use in the daytime under these conditions. Combined with the size and the direct lighting for the screen we are very happy. Setup was easy and straight forward. Connect to WIFI and off you go! We live in a rural area and use over the air reception for local channels. I must say in this regard the tuner is very good and brings in a clear HD picture from our local affiliates. For immersive viewing of any programming this is great "BANG" for the buck!