TCL - 98" Class QM8K Series 4K UHD HDR QD-Mini LED Smart TV with Google TV (2025)

I've been on a quest to complete my living room home theater experience for about 4 years now. After covid I had to turn my movie room into a shared office and migrated all of that technology and experience to my living room. So after the successive upgrades first what is LG 65-in OLED then upgrading to a 77 inch LG OLED, everything was okay but it really wasn't quite cinematic and immersive. The problems weren't the OLED because it was large and beautiful. The problem was the size of the room and with open floor plan how many rooms in needed to service. But, for me to get the OLED need it for that size I would have to spend close to a car payment and that's just simply unacceptable. So my Alternatives were to go with the projector or with a 100 in mini led. Now I've had reservations about the picture quality particularly coming from an OLED experience with mini led. I started out looking at projectors, particularly short throw, but because it's a reflective medium your black level is always going to be limited by the screen that it is landing on. Also my living room and bottom floor has lots of windows so I would always have to keep him shut to be able to manage the ambient light even with an ALR screen. So that led me to a self-emissive alternative meaning a large television. So after looking at lg, samsung, hisense, and TCL, all of my research pointed me bang for the book towards the TCL qm8k as the best alternative to an oled. I caught it during the Thanksgiving break so the pricing was great for the 98 inch TCL. Now I have many years of experience mounting televisions, but the sheer size and weight of this TV would really lend me to recommend you having it professionally installed. The second problem I ran into was finding a proper amount because it is a large you need to have a 600 by 500 VESA pattern. I ordered a mount from amazon, but they failed to deliver in time so I wound up buying multiple mounts at Best Buy which luckily they had in stock as many didn't. Beyond the installation, once it was on the wall once it was configured this is a win. Not only is the picture immersive and matches my Dolby Atmos 7.2.2 soundscape, it is brighter than the sun so we can do with the brightness of the room. I no longer have to have my blinds closed doing certain parts of the day to watch television. The colors pop and the blacks which was my concern is close to oled. Why not Pitch Black like an old they are really really Inky black bars disappear against my black wall leaving it a magical experience at this size. I have done zero calibration out of the box and everything looks Bright contrasty Beautiful. Everything from movies to sports to stream content from YouTube looks amazing and almost three-dimensional at times. Even standard definition content looks amazing. And if watching multiview in my case with YouTube TV, each one of those four squares is equivalent to a 48-in television. The Google TV interface is Snappy and intuitive. I will say that I do not like the ads which is not exclusive to TCL, looks like LG and others have imposed that on to the viewer as well. All that said it is seamless it is rich and intuitive. Oh and one more thing, one of the other concerns when moving away from OLED to a mini LED was off axis viewing. I can tell you definitively haven't watch football for many different angles on Thanksgiving day, this was a negligible issue. If you really looking forward you notice it but it is so slight that again it's a non-issue. TCL has done a magnificent job with this w h v a panel that all the colors all the saturation looks fine even at extreme angles. I have not tested the sound because again I have a home theater sound setup and my humble opinion to have a television like this without at least a multi-channel soundbar is a bit of a waste. With that said I'm offering no judgment this is my own humble opinion, and my understanding is that the sound from the television audio is pretty good.

After checking many reviews and comparing TV’s in stores we decided TCL was the Best Buy for the money. The ease of setup and the on screen guide made it simple. While a printed guide may have been easier, there were no issues in the setup phase. The picture clarity and sound are excellent and once you navigate the remote controls the rest is easy. We are very happy with this purchase.

I purchased this TV based on the review from https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/qm8k I recently spent about 3 months completely remodeling my basement to include a theater room and made the choice to go with a large TV over a projector for this space. I'm also a bit of a TV snob having both LG Signature OLEDs and Sony XBR OLED tvs throughout my home. Since this size of tv isn't made in an OLED panel, I knew I'd have to compromise on the overall picture quality that I'm used too. I even use an Alienware OLED ultrawide for work and PC gaming. That being said, this tv has some of the best looking inky blacks and contrast of any non-OLED tv I've ever seen. I also really appreciate that the two 2.1 HDMI ports are there and that the eARC HDMI port is not one of them. So many of these large format tvs that I looked at had the eARC taking over one of the two 2.1 HDMI ports and when paired with my Sonos Arc Ultra, which doesn't have HDMI passthrough, you basically loose the use of a 2.1 capable port. I have an Xbox X and a PS5 on this and I am using the other 2.0 HDMI port for the Nintendo Switch 2 - by using the built in Google TV for the streaming apps, I am able to use the soundbar and all my devices associated with the best signal/fidelity they can output. It's an impressive tv, and if you are looking for an alternative to a projector, I'd recommend it over any of it's peers at this size.

Coming from an OLED LG G4, I was nervous this TV wouldn't get to the level of that TV but I wanted to get a bigger TV. Did purchase the G5 but for the price, decided to go with the 98" QM8K and I'm glad I did. The picture quality is very close to the OLED in black/white levels and color. You will have to play with the settings to get the best picture but once you do, it's game on and WOW! Source does play a role but so much material is high quality so not a big deal. Some people have mentioned the "hum" which I do not have. The only thing I have is the TV is so big and gets so bright, it does get warm. You will not be disappointed in this TV; it's incredible for gaming, sports and TV/movies. For sound, I'd didn't even try bc I use a Sonos Arc.

Ciming from high end TV's like LG OLED and Samsung NEO qled, i must say im impressed. The size alone of the 98 inch is immersing when sitting about 10 feet away. Th epicture is great with vibrant colors. Not OLED black levels but very close. I was debating this tv or the Hisense U8 and after reviews i went with the TCL. I guess it has a better local dimming zone algorithm that makes it look closer to OLED. It does make a buzzing sound when pushed to the brightest setting, im thinking it might be a power issue from what I've read. It only does it in vibrant and sports mode though.