TCL - 98" X11L Series 4K UHD HDR SQD-Mini LED Smart TV with Google TV (2026)

I fell in love with this TV the first time I saw it at CES, and now that I have it at home, it has completely exceeded my expectations. The brightness is on another level. With up to 10,000 nits and 20,000 dimming zones in a massive 98” screen, the picture is absolutely stunning. Highlights pop, blacks stay deep, and the color volume is incredible. It’s one of those TVs you truly have to see in person to appreciate. Pictures and videos don’t do it justice. Yes, it’s expensive. But when you compare it to OLED options in this size, it’s nearly half the price and significantly brighter. In a bright room especially, this TV really shines. The size combined with this level of brightness and contrast makes it feel like a true home theater experience. If you’re looking for a flagship 98” TV and want jaw-dropping performance, this is it.

This TCL 98 X11L is a beautiful and massive TV. It’s not only huge but also very heavy, despite being thin at approximately an inch thick. The TV is very well made with a premium look and feel. The frame has a bronze tone, and the screen appears almost bezel-less. The back is practically flat with a checker-style design. It comes with a Bang & Olufsen speaker system for premium sound. On the back, it houses four HDMI 2.1 ports capable of 4K at up to 144Hz, with one supporting eARC. It also includes one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, an optical output (SPDIF), and an Ethernet jack. The TV is powered by Google TV, which I really like because of its simplicity and compatibility. When it comes to technology, it’s packed. The main highlight is the SQD Mini-LED panel, which makes this TV one of the brightest available, reaching up to 10,000 nits. It also supports Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos FlexConnect (DAFC), DTS:X, Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2, Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4. Before taking the TV out of the box, make sure you have a second person and plenty of space. It will definitely take at least two people to set it up, as it weighs almost 150 pounds. Be careful not to cut the tape on the top of the box, just cut the plastic straps. The box opens sideways once you remove the clips holding it together. After that, you simply pull the box from one side to remove it. If you plan to use the TV stand, leave the TV sitting in the bottom styrofoam and remove one side of the bottom foam at a time to install the stand. There is a center foam support that helps keep the TV stable, while the second person holds it to prevent it from rocking. This also makes lifting easier because the TV will already be a few inches off the ground. If you plan to wall mount, leaving the bottom styrofoam in place actually makes the process easier. Once the hard part is done, setup is very simple, especially if you already have an Android device or a Gmail account. All you need to do is scan a QR code, or login with Gmail and follow the prompts. Between the setup process and system updates, it took a little over 20 minutes to complete. The Google TV interface is simple to navigate, fluid, and includes most major streaming apps. Watching Blu-Ray and streaming content on this TV I was impressed. I didn't adjust any video settings aside from using the Film Maker Mode. The image quality is stunning and extremely bright. Colors are vivid and vibrant, with deep blacks that get very close to OLED performance, coming from a person that owns two OLEDs TV. Now I understand why there’s so much hype about SQD Mini-LED technology. I didn’t notice any image banding except briefly during the startup screen when the TCL logo appeared bright white against a black background. While the picture is incredibly sharp on such a massive screen, the panel itself is glossy, which makes it susceptible to light reflections. In my living room, there are about four windows and a door, and I could see some reflections from the window shades. However, when focusing on the content on the screen, the reflections become much less noticeable. They were more visible when viewing from an angle. That said, viewing angles are excellent. Even from the side, the colors remain vibrant and consistent, almost as good as viewing directly from the front. This TV is also excellent for gaming. It supports 4K at 144Hz, VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, HDR, and Dolby Vision for gaming. The panel is natively 120Hz, but to activate 144Hz, you need to access the gaming settings by holding down the settings button (hamburger button) on the remote. I connected my Xbox, gaming laptop and PS5 and they performed incredibly smoothly. One thing I noticed is that games supporting Dolby Vision tend to appear a bit dark by default. I had to manually switch to Bright mode, which in my opinion looked much better. Note that due to the large size of this TV, when playing video games, especially fast-paced shooters, it’s best to sit farther away to minimize head movement. I played my favorite shooter from about 10 feet away and didn’t have to move my head, I only needed to shift my eye focus a few times. When it comes to sound, it’s good but not great, despite having an integrated soundbar with base radiators on the back. While it gets loud and remains clear, it lacks bass for my taste. I tried various sound settings, but they didn’t make much difference. The integrated system is decent for a TV of this size, but I would still recommend pairing it with a dedicated soundbar or TCL DAFC-compatible speakers. I would have loved to test Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, but I don’t own the TCL Z100 speakers. Although I own DAFC speakers, they weren’t compatible since they are from a different brand. It appears DAFC may still be somewhat proprietary within certain ecosystems. Paying attention to details really matters, and a simple feature they added to the remote is something I really appreciated. On the side of the remote, they included a brightness rocker button and an image selector button. It’s a very clever design, there’s no need to dig through the TV settings just to adjust the brightness or change the picture mode. I love it. Overall, this TV lives up to the hype with superb brightness, impressive image quality, and premium build quality. It’s packed with modern technology and, being such a large screen, it’s also excellent for gaming. While it’s definitely not cheap, you do get near-OLED image quality, higher brightness, a massive screen size, and no risk of burn-in. Inside the box you get the TV, remote control, two AA batteries, the stand, warranty card, and manuals.

INSTALL / SETUP This is not an easy setup—this thing is BIG and heavy. Wall mounting was honestly a pain due to the size and shape. If I had to do it again, I’d go professional install without hesitation. Cable management is a weak spot. There are small channels, but nothing substantial—when wall mounted, the TV can actually rest on the cables and sit slightly uneven. That’s something TCL should have solved on a premium set like this. BUILD / FEEL This feels like a premium TV—no question. Solid materials, very little flex, and the screen feels sturdy despite the size. The near bezel-less design gives it that floating picture look, and at 98 inches, it literally feels like a theater in your living room. I used a 3-stud wall mount for stability, and I’d recommend the same—don’t cut corners here. FEATURES / PERFORMANCE Google TV runs fast and smooth overall. Apps load quickly, live TV integration is clean, and it works well as a central media hub. There are some minor bugs—Netflix froze a couple of times—but nothing deal-breaking. Likely something that gets patched over time. The ambient screen saver with rotating artwork is actually a standout feature at this size—it turns the TV into a legit art display when idle. PICTURE QUALITY This is where the TV delivers. Black levels are deep—true black, not gray—and I didn’t notice any blooming around bright objects or subtitles, which is impressive for a Mini LED at this size. Colors are vibrant and controlled, and the brightness is borderline overwhelming—in a good way. HDR content pops hard. Honestly, depending on your room size, you may find yourself turning brightness down. BRIGHT ROOM PERFORMANCE The anti-glare coating does its job. There is some reflection, but it’s minimal considering the size of the screen. Brightness easily overpowers the room, and the Mini LED backlighting keeps colors consistent across the entire panel. Every inch of the screen feels evenly lit. UPSCALING (REALITY CHECK) Here’s the honest part—upscaling isn’t perfect. Non-4K content (especially YouTube) can look a bit soft and grainy. At 98 inches, flaws get exposed. If you mostly watch high-resolution content, it won’t bother you. But if you’re heavy into cable or lower-quality streams, you’ll notice it. MOTION / SPORTS Motion handling is excellent. With motion settings adjusted, I didn’t notice any blur, stutter, or that artificial “soap opera” effect. Fast action and sports stay smooth without looking fake. GAMING This thing is a monster for gaming. Tested on both PS5 and Xbox—144Hz feels incredibly smooth, input lag is minimal, and Game Mode is dialed in. Honestly, it should be called “Beast Mode.” The combination of refresh rate, deep blacks, and bright, saturated colors at 98 inches makes gaming feel next-level immersive. SOUND I run a 5.1 system, so I didn’t rely much on the built-in speakers. I listened to them briefly, they’re decent—but on a TV this size, “decent” isn’t enough. You’re going to want external audio to match the experience. DOWNSIDE One real drawback: design practicality doesn’t fully match the premium feel. • Cable management is lacking • Inputs are placed too far from the edges—hard to access once mounted • No included manual for a TV with this many settings • Remote is solid but not universal (missed opportunity) These aren’t deal-breakers—but they stand out at this price point. OVERALL A massive, theater-level TV with elite brightness, strong Mini LED performance, and top-tier gaming—just be ready to work around a few practical design misses. GREAT THEATER TV.

I have been team OLED for a while now. Once I realized the difference in colors and could clearly see the difference in a true OLED black and a LED greyish black, it was impossible for me to turn back. After the long process of unboxing the TCL X11L (which, makes sense, the packaging keeps the TV very secure) popping up the Netflix app to see it load up with the red with the all black background, I was blown away, and that was just the beginning. With so many things I loved about this TV, I'd like to start with the two small things I didn't. The TCL X11L is as high-end as it comes in regards to the tech that powers it, the features, etc. With that being said, I don't know why we're dealing with a remote that takes batteries. The remote is nice, the buttons are backlit...but we really shouldn't still be dealing with triple a batteries in 2026. Setup of the TV is super easy as it's a Android TV. QR code scan and in no time everything was setup. Now, the Google TV interface is nice...but it has tendency to make sponsored suggestions and attempt to recommend I watch content on it's free apps. Now, maybe, hopefully with abundance of paid subscriptions I have and use, the algorithm will pick up on what I truly like and watch...but man, being advertised to and pushed bloatware isn't a premium experience fitting of the rest of the device. The Gemini AI add-in featues are cool...but not if they're accompanied with ads. Now, the brightness. The sun on my Apple TV screensaver lit up my whole room. Brightness is a space where OLEDs (my previous go to) tend to lack and man was it apparent on the X11L. As blown away by the brightness as I was, when I pushed the brightness increase button on the side of the remote I realized the TV wasn't even at it's brightest. The brightness really helped the colors pop. Speaking of color, when gaming on my PS5 Pro (connected to one of the 4 HDMI 2.1 ports!) the colors were amazing! I'll be honest, I didn't do any calibrating...start the console, get right to gaming. I've watched a few videos regarding this TV that discussed issues with motion in gaming...it's not anything I had an issue with. The HDMI 2.1 allows for 4k/144 hz, using the PS5 Pro I was gaming at 4k 60 max (on console I tend to play quality mode, which is normally 4k 60 or 4k 30) and I didn't have any major issues. I've yet to connect my computer which would allow me to go 4k over 144+. I've played a lot of shooters (Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, Marathon) and it's all looked beautiful and felt smooth. The real winner of this all however was my 4k Blu-ray player. Streaming movies looks great, no doubt...but watching Blade Runner 2049 (and the physical copy isn't Dolby Vision) was amazing! I truly see the value of physical media and having a true 4k Blu-Ray player as opposed to watching movies via my console. I've never seen anything like this. The combination of the colors, the brightness, but, also, the darkness...it's all the positives of LED, with maybe not the benefits of OLED, but good enough to the point you can't tell the difference. Before I got to anyting else I spent a massive amount of time bouncing around through all my movies testing each one out. This is at true home theater experience unlike any other. The Bang & Olufsen speakers (both on the back of the TV, and front facing at the bottom) are great TV speakers...some of the best TV speakers I've experienced...but as someone who has a sound bar, they don't replace a quality sound bar. I tested the audio watching content on the same app with my Apple TV conected to my sound bar, verses the app on the TV itself with the audio setting set to internal speakers and you could hear a clear difference. The TCL X11L is a statement piece. If someone walked in to a room and saw the TV sitting there, it's design alone makes a statement. Cut the TV on and you blow people away. Raising the bar on expectatiosn for (mini) LED TVs, while also minimizing some of the key advantages of OLED..for those who have this TV in consideration for purchase, It's a no-brainer. While it's not without (small) flaws, the X11L is 2026's TV to beat, and a leap forward for ((SQD) Mini LED TVs.

Delivery and Installation: In the box, this TV will not fit through a residential doorway. The delivery people had to remove the display from the box in the front yard just to get the TV to fit through the doorway. Plan your delivery for a nice day if you can. For the install, you will need at least 3 people to lift the TV either onto a stand or wall mount. After adding the mount brackets, one person lifted the TV in the middle so that the other two of us could get our hands underneath to hoist the TV onto the wall mount. My Gear setup: Directly connect to the TV: -Xbox series X -Panasonic DP-UB820-K -Roku 4k streaming stick -a DTV leaf-style antenna -Pioneer VSX-90 receiver (currently the bottleneck since it doesn’t support HDR) on HDMI 1 so I could activate eARC, with a Nintendo Switch and a PS3 still connected through the receiver, since those don’t produce HDR playback. Before talking about the Pros, I wanted to list some cons before I lose any readers…I think TCL could fix some of these or respond to this review to provide instructions on how to fix/resolve some of these issues: 1) Not really anti-reflective. Sunlight, lamps, door lites, windows, etc. ALL reflect off of the display. One review that I have read mentioned that if you turn up the brightness, it ‘would’ eliminate the reflections, which I have tried, but it doesn’t... With the brightest picture setting and the brightness maxed out I still had glare on the display. TCL, please look at putting more anti-glare, light diffusion, anti-reflective coatings on your displays. 2) Apps installed/run directly on the TV do not have a way to activate Dolby Vision. However, these same apps (Fandango, Disney +, youtube…) ARE able to run on Dolby Vision just fine from a Roku stick. 3) App shutter and lip sync issues. I have occasional video shutter/jittering and lip sync issues on various streaming playback on the TV apps. If running dolby vision, I could change some of the motion smoothing settings to reduce shuttering, but otherwise I am not entirely sure how to fix these issues. However, I can confirm I have not had any issues playing anything back from my Panasonic 4k player (DP-UB820-K) 4) Bi-colored captions: when using captions during movies that have letterboxing (black bars on the top & bottom of the display), the part of the caption that would show up in the black area of the screen appears faded white, while the captions in the normal screen appear nice and bright white. It’s a little annoying. See a photo in my review for an example. 5) Could not game with a 144Hz refresh rate. To test gaming in 144Hz refresh rate, I connected my Gigabyte laptop with a GeForce RTX 4050 GPU and attempted to play Rainbow Six Siege from Steam. With the laptop screen open, I had UHD resolution with only a 60Hz refresh rate. With the laptop screen closed, resolution dropped to 1080p but stayed at 60Hz refresh rate. 6) Xbox gaming, while the xbox could run games at 120Hz refresh rate, I still had some tearing and shuttering when playing more graphics intensive games (i.e. Call of Duty & Tomb Raider) but I did not have any issues with Rocket League. While the Bang and Olufsen speakers were plenty loud on the display, when I was running through the initial setup I connected my phone over Bluetooth to play some music. With the volume at 20, it startled me when the music first started playing. However, the stock EQs (Sports, Movie, Speech, Music, Game, & Night) didn’t really help the music sound good, UNTIL I found a setting called Beosonic that when active, gives you a circle slider type of tool to set the EQ to fit your sound needs. Deftones sounded best with a mostly Bright and somewhat Energetic setting mix. I was hoping to leverage both the TV speakers with my 7.1.2 receiver system, but activating the eARC feature disables the TV speakers, EQs and the Beosonic feature on the TV. If I do not activate eARC, then my receiver doesn’t get any sound output from the display. -TCL, any option to fix this in a future firmware release? Onto the Pros: Brightness: This is currently the brightest display on the market! It is so bright that my wife has me turn the brightness down to between 0-5 when we are watching most shows at nighttime. Thankfully there is a brightness slider and picture mode button on the side of the remote for easy access to change both of these settings. When playing the first (remastered) Borderlands game, any elemental effect really pops on the screen. Remote: The remote has backlit buttons. Very helpful for choosing the correct button(s) in a dim room. Sound: If you do not already have a receiver or soundbar to connect to, you will get very decent movie audio out of the box, which is a rarity with TVs on the market. While the front speaker takes up the bottom 1.5” of the display, you don’t really notice this bezel once you start watching a show or movie. HDMI Inputs: All HDMI ports are 2.1 capable. Only HDMI 1 has eARC support but you only need 1 port for this feature anyway. CES control: I configured my Roku remote to turn the TV on/off in about 3 seconds after activating CES on both the TV and Roku remote. Antenna connection & reception: Yes, I still use a digital antenna to get some local stations I had no issues connecting the antenna, and I am able to get even more channels on this TV than I was able to on my prior TV. Multiple HDR formats: unlike Samsung displays, this TV supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10/10+, and HGL. Per a review at CES, TCL will push out a firmware update to support Dolby Vision 2. I fully plan on trying this out when it is available. Blooming: What blooming? I have not run into any blooming or halo effects in all of my various playback testing. Consistent/Wide viewing angles: no matter where you sit in my living room (or even when walking to the kitchen) there was no loss of picture quality with off-axis viewing. After 3 days of use and testing, I still cannot help but smile as we watch content on this display. I will keep testing out different gaming settings to see what can be done to eliminate choppiness and controller/input delays. If you can afford it, you will not be disappointed by the display, but the best place to install would be in a home theater area/windowless environment.