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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Worthy choice for bright living room

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser

  I was looking for a new TV for the living room. I have been a big fan of OLED and I have an LG C3 in my media room. However, I was concerned that I needed more brightness since our living room is not as light controlled as a media room. I decided on going with a Mini LED TV for this reason. I have been really impressed with the brightness and color on the TCL QM9K. Coming from an OLED I knew the black level and contrast would not be as good. Honestly the boost in brightness and color far exceed any shortfall in black level. I have not been distracted by any blooming at all. So why the QM9K? I really thought I would buy the Sony Bravia 9. However, this TV is $1,000.00 cheaper and "close enough" to the Bravia 9 in my opinion. I also considered the QM8K, but the QM9K was only $500.00 more at the 85" size. The additional dimming zones and brightness were worth it to me. In all, I am pleased with my decision and purchase. Highly recommended value!

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  Jeff Posted 3 months ago

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  95% perfect for my needs!

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  TL:DR - but it’s not OLED! A large part of me wishes it was OLED mainly because of the motion blur/pixel response times. Compared to my gaming monitor which is OLED, I really can tell and see the blur for fast moving game objects. I don’t really notice it during shows, movies, or sports, but it’s a thing during gaming for sure which is my primary use case! But everything else, brightness, HDR, size, snappiness, etc. It’s great! Highly recommended. — Unboxing - This was easily the biggest headache for me. My little wife and 7 year old daughter assisted the best they could but ultimately due to the size, we ended up postponing wall mounting it until a neighbor or friend could come over and assist with the lift. Finding a entertainment center for it was also a challenge. Basically everything about this size and weight of TV is/was a problem for unboxing. Thankfully, TCL did make it so you can add the stand while it’s in the box, so you don’t have to tip it over and install it or hold it up to install it. Setup - I mean it couldn’t have gone any easier. Google TV is snappy on this TV which is a nice change compared to other models. If I had an Android phone though I think it would have gone faster. Sadly for me with budget cuts at my work, I’m only allowed an iPhone now instead of having both. I’ll probably get a Pixel of some sort from Best Buy eventually, but I digress, set up shouldn’t be a problem for anyone! There was a VERY VERY long update though as soon as it connected to WiFi which was kind of annoying. Ports - I have an Apple TV, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X and, a sound bar connected to it. I’m able to 120Hz both consoles, and get great picture out of the Apple TV. Also with CEC it works well for all my devices. The only downside is the latency between Apple TV and the remote press is quite large. I may end up using the native Google TV instead of my Apple TV, time will tell. Interface - I struggled with it, there’s a menu button, settings button, and other things that seem to be shortcuts to things, but also not show everything. Took me forever to figure out how to bring up the gaming overlay. It wasn’t intuitive at all. There’s also a weird quirk whenever I turn on the TV, it’ll pop up saying it needs to set up my sound bar, but when I press it, it’ll just take me to the sound setting and say the sound bar is set up. If I do nothing it’ll go away in less than 15 seconds. So I ignore it, but it’s kind of annoying. Other than that I’d say it’s pretty intuitive if you’ve used Google TV before. I imagine it’ll be a better experience if I had an Android phone. Picture (Shows, Movies, Sports) - Great! Between this and OLED, I honestly don’t think I’d notice the difference if they weren’t side by side. The TV is bright, HDR is punchy and beautiful, and from what I can tell, the motion blur is hard to spot. Picture (Gaming) - All of the above is essentially true, but motion blur is obvious and it’s distracting! It is night and day difference between OLED for sure. Against other VA panels though, I wanna say it’s better. But the TV I can compare it to is unfortunately ‘last gen’ tech so kind of unfair I guess. But it’s 100% better than my other one! After awhile though, I kind of get used to it and forget it is there in shooting games like CoD, BF6, HighGuard, The Finals, etc. In slower games like Cyberpunk, or Arc Raiders, Nioh 3, it’s harder to spot when gaming normally. I have to go looking for it to find it. So overall, I don’t think it’s ‘bad’ just not as good as OLED. Sound - Surprisingly good, not good enough for me to ditch a soundbar, but good enough that I’d use it in a pinch. Remote - It’s pretty good, but I don’t like the layout. It’s for some reason hard to get used to and use without looking at. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll often press the wrong thing if I’m not looking at it. The BAD - There’s this flicker on certain scenes that I’m gonna assume is PWM flicker. I’m sensitive to it, but my wife isn’t. She said she doesn’t notice it. But it drives me nuts during some situations. Not only that, if you are using a Google Streamer, the Google Streamer remote doesn’t recognize the TV because either TCL or Google, regardless it is a bummer. Streamer was moved to another TV in the house. No number display for audio when using an external device (soundbar, etc.) just a negative or positive sign. I don’t know why this happens. I get that maybe there’s no way to tell what the sound bar is capable of and if the say 50 is the same 50 that’s on the sound bar, but give me something instead of it’s getting louder and not louder so I can find the sweet spot for one device and the sweet spot for the other without having to rely on sound/ears alone. Overall - I love it, it’s great! I recommend it. It’s not OLED, so don’t think this will be that, but blooming, HDR, color, brightness, is super good maybe even better than OLED, but for gaming there’s significant motion blur, but not so bad that it’s a deal breaker. Highly recommended.

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  GamingBusinessGuy Posted 1 week ago

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Absolutely Stunning TV - Looks and Sounds GREAT

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  The TCL QM9K Series is a wonderful TV, with an incredible picture, excellent sound, and features that define it as a flagship TV. Delivery of the TV was exactly as expected, with the courier company calling the day before and arranging a time window for us the following morning. They brought the TV, as agreed, as far as into the garage. My wife and I completed its journey into the house and down into the basement. At about 100 pounds, the weight was manageable between the two of us. Unboxing the unit was a bit different from larger TVs we have gotten in the past. Older sets had the box lift straight over top of the TV, which made it challenging in some locations in the house. However, this TV had the front of the box swing out, which is quite more flexible for unpackaging. The unit itself was very well packaged and protected, with the stand, remote, and abbreviated paperwork easily accessible. Even though the TV was eventually going to be wall mounted, we wanted to check the functionality of the TV before taking that effort. The stand took about 10 minutes to install, and is easiest to do with the TV laying flat. We used sofa cushions instead of the box to support the TV as we installed the stand. The stand is a single center stanchion which is very sturdy and unlike twin foot stands, does not require a TV console that is nearly as wide as the TV. Once we got to wall mounting the TV, I was a bit disappointed I could not use my existing wall mount (which was large enough to hang up to a 95” TV) because the VESA mount configuration on this TCL was not compatible with my mount. The TCL’s VESA pattern is 600mm X 500mm and I discovered that this is not a common VESA size, which made finding a compatible wall mount a bit more challenging. There were several options available to buy online, but be sure to check that the mount you buy accommodates this VESA pattern. The power cord is on the left side of the TV, and the A/V connections are on the right side of the TV. They are both located only a few inches in from the side of the TV and in a nicely recessed pocket. The TV also includes four cable management channels. The wall mount I chose (ProMounts brand) was a near-flush mount. Accessing any of the cables after mounting would be impossible, so I wound up putting in a wood spacer between the wall and the mount to create some additional space for access. It’s a good thing I did because one of my HDMI cables went bad and I had to change it out after mounting the TV. Overall, the TV looks absolutely stunning as a piece on its own—with a thin, matte chrome colored bezel and a nearly flat back. The remote is a matching matte chrome and has some heft. The haptics of the remote are excellent, and the backlighting on it was a pleasant surprise and looks great. As one of TCL’s flagship TVs, it has the hardware to back that up. I won’t recant the hardware features in this review, but just because a TV has top of the line hardware and specs does not mean it will automatically be a great TV. The software and algorithms controlling and leveraging that hardware is just as important. At the store, I viewed a few competitor’s flagship TVs in comparison to this TCL, and I was quite impressed with the similarity of TCL to their performance. There were some minor differences that would really not be discernable without having the two units right next to each other. Also note that in the store, the TVs highlight HDR content. Most content (with the exception of some gaming devices and titles) is not HDR, so the software and algorithms for SDR content is probably more important to most of us than for HDR content. As a Google TV, setup was a snap. The unit used my login configurations from Google Home to connect to my wi-fi network and sign into my Google account. In addition, my bluetooth earbuds paired without issue. Out of the box, the picture on this TV is absolutely stunning. I find RTINGS.com does a really nice job of sharing the most accurate picture settings for TVs. Referencing that website, I only made a few small tweaks to the picture settings for further refinement. The brightness is outstanding, the blacks are as deep as can be, the whites are very white, and the other colors are not over-saturated. There is quite a bit of customization that can be done with the picture settings, and I did appreciate that the motion blur could be turned off—as I find that feature creates very fake motion that looks cartoonish--except at the lowest setting. We christened the TV with “Wonder Woman” (on Blu-Ray), using the sound from the TV instead of my sound system. I think “wow” is the best way to describe the experience. There was absolutely no pixel dragging on fast motion scenes, and darker scenes did not obscure details. The sound from the B&O speakers (which are on the back of the TV) provided crisp and rich sound with decent bass. While certainly not a replacement for a theater sound system, it was legitimately a big step above TVs in lower price ranges. The next selection we watched was streaming “Star Trek: Discovery” Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2. It was just as impressive as “Wonder Woman.” The depth of color and contrast are incredible and the sound was impressive. In addition, there was no bleed or blooming between colors, or even between adjacent black and white. I also must comment that the viewing angle without significant loss of picture quality is very large with this screen. Even at nearly 40 degrees from straight-on, I estimated the picture was still at 95%+ for brightness and contrast. This is great for when the whole family is watching the TV from multiple vantage points. Next, my sons connected their PlayStation 5 and loaded up “College Football 25.” We normally have the PS5 connected to another TV that is several years old, but was considered a mid-range TV for that time. The difference between the two TVs is an incredibly large step function up. The improvement in color depth, sound quality, and pixel dragging was immediately noticeable. The TCL does an outstanding job to take advantage of the high refresh rate and local dimming zones for gaming. I often like to watch older programming on TV when I’m on my cycling trainer. An issue I’ve had with older TVs is that when the native resolution of the source is low, larger TVs just “stretch” the image and the results is grainy and almost unwatchable. Watching “Perry Mason” Season 1 from 1957, this TCL made the watching experience quite enjoyable, with a crisp back and white picture without any graininess. The algorithm for resolution upscaling is outstanding. During these cycling sessions, I have my bluetooth earbuds in. Unlike other TVs, I did not have to adjust the "lag" between the picture and the audio. They synced up on their own rather nicely. I will also add that when using VLC Media Player on my computer to cast to the TV, the connection is quick and reliable. I start the selection on my computer and the TV starts playing it almost immediately--no waiting! In general, the response of the TV is very snappy, navigating through menus, app selections, and such. I have not used the AI (Google Gemini) features of the TV that often, but the TV does offer several voice choices and was responsive by just saying “Hey Google” and then asking a question. I mostly asked where I can watch certain programming or movies, and it would give me a summary of that programming and on what streaming services I could find it on (both pay and free). I did like how I could continue the conversation with follow-up questions. The last feature I will talk about is TCL TV+, which is a free streaming app included with the TV. There is a very large selection of shows and movies that are categorized by genre and presented in a guide-like format. The app has a good search function, but I was only able to scroll through the guide about five hours ahead of the current time. You can “book” shows within the guide, which allows the system to provide you reminders that is coming on or set up recording. Overall, the TCL QM9K series TV is unbelievably impressive. The picture is nothing short of stunning in both SDR and HDR. The sound provided by the rear-facing B&O speakers is rich, crisp and with good bass level. The display really takes advantage of the TV’s top tier hardware specifications by maintaining detail in darker scenes, providing outstanding contrast between blacks and whites and eliminating blooming and pixel dragging. The viewing angle is also very wide. A delightful surprise was the backlit remote. This TV has been an incredible step up for our household for TV content and gaming enjoyment.

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  stirfry Posted 1 week ago