TCL - 55” Class 5 Series QLED 4K UHD Smart Roku TV

After owning a higher-end Sony X90J in the living room and a mixed experience with an older Hisense and Vizio, I went looking for a nice bedroom TV that wouldn’t break the bank and integrated into an Apple ecosystem well. I didn’t want to spend oodles of money on a secondary TV but also wanted something with eARC to take advantage of my Sonos Beam 2. Enter the TCL 55 5 Series Roku TV. I’m honestly shocked how good this TV looks in most content and after fiddling with it a bit I’m pretty impressed by the value on offer. For one, the TV is fairly color accurate out of the box — not quite a Sony but relatively decent. However, TCL offers a mobile calibration app called IPQ and after two runs in a pitch black room with my iPhone I was able to achieve a color delta error of 1.02, which even beats my Sony. After calibration, the TV looks phenomenal and exhibits that nearly 3D effect typical of OLEDs thanks to its absurdly good contrast. In SDR, it’s plenty bright enough to do well with some natural light and RGB lighting, and HDR looks equally good in the room with the curtains shut and the lights off. The FALD does a pretty good job of mitigating blooming, although the black level raises a bit in star field scenarios which is one of the few times it doesn’t look like a $2K TV. In most mixed-contrast scenes the TV is stunning. I will say I advise against RTINGS.com recommendation to turn sharpness to 0, it made SDR look a bit grainy and caused some gradation errors to occur. At default, the picture is sharp and the gradation handling is just as good as the Sony. Do turn off noise reduction since it causes some scenes to be blurry. Otherwise, RTINGS.com calibration in tandem with IPQ looks great. Colors are perfect, and even high quality Dolby Vision content like Our Planet manage to mesmerize. What the TV lacks as a light cannon it makes up for in impressive color accuracy, gamut and volume. Roku is really awesome. I have used basically every TV OS out there and customizability, lack of intrusiveness, simple and fairly quick navigation are all really awesome. Private listening with my AirPods Pro works well and happens automatically, and it feels nigh Apple TV with its ability to recognize when my phone is close enough to the TV to automatically AirPlay content too. No streaming stick needed here. One downside is the TV comes with a pared down Roku remote without voice control. Since I have my Beam, this isn’t too much of an issue, and those looking to use the TV speakers can pick up the Roku Voice Remote Pro for fairly cheap. The TV is a bit thick, although the silver accents look sharp and really match my aesthetic. The input lag on my Switch is negligible, this TV is probably suitable for a newer console provided 120HZ isn’t priority. Speaking of, motion looks good with Natural Cinema and full 24p judder removal. I haven’t tried the TV speakers, I anticipate that they will not be all that good but that’s basically every TV on the market outside of Sony OLEDs. Brightness might be an issue in bright rooms, but in my bedroom it’s about as feasibly bright as I’d want it to be on the brightest setting, can be a little too bright in SDR in all honesty. I mainly use it for anime, Switch, occasional movies. Couldn’t be happier with the little guy, and that’s as a TV aficionado and a bit of cinephile when it comes to accuracy. I have not experienced a bug yet, and the eARC implements with the Beam is actually quite snappy. This TV would achieve a 4 star rating if it was double the price, but at $450, the only competition is a U6GR. It’s a stellar budget TV with a couple of very manageable downsides and a far more premium experience than I’d ever expected to have.

Wow, this tv is stunning for the price point. Everything from the colors to the Roku software to the device connectivity just works. This tv is absolutely perfect as a bedroom tv. Pros: Price Color Contrast (seriously, can be mistaken for an OLED at times with the dimming zones) Simple & fast Roku software FOUR Hdmi ports Easy to mount Cons; Remote is kinda meh but works fine. Just has very few buttons on it. Peak brightness won't blow you away (not an issue as this tv is in a bedroom). Still should be bright enough for any use case, just don't expect the HDR to be astounding. Viewing angles leave a bit to be desired, I might think twice before using this tv in a home theater or something like that with a wide range of seating. Again, totally fine as a bedroom piece. That's it! Overall, I've had this tv for a month and a half and every day I turn this tv on and feel like I got an absolute steal. With a $500 budget for a 55 inch bedroom tv, I would have expected some massive compromise in picture quality, or ease of use, connectivity, or something else. Just a heads up that I have not tested the built-in speakers. But there are no compromises here. I recommend this tv heavily to anyone who is not sure!

The Class 5 Series TCL exceeded my expectation. A lot of TV for the price. I used to be a color analyzer for a professional photo lab. A skill that left me with very little tolerance for the home televisions lack of color range. When I‘m sitting in front Of this 55” TCL, it’s like being back at the analyzer, which is a $25,000 piece of machinery. I finally have the color quality I’ve been looking for

Great picture and easy-to-use setup. Wifi connected quickly. Remote is very responsive. We originally wanted the Vzio, But because of the chip shortage the model we wanted is not available to order. We did a comparison and this TCL was a comparable set. We opted to use a stand instead of a wall mount. I will say that when we got the set in the store, there was a crease in the Box and we thought it may have been damaged during shipping. The packaging was protective and the set was not harmed. However our salesman did advise us if anything was wrong with the set itself they would switch it out. I have always been happy to go to Best Buy for our electronics. And so far have not been disappointed!

Light weight, great size. This tv is mounted above out fireplace and looks and works great. We are Roku tv fans because it’s so easy to use and has every app we need. We have ditched all other kinds of TVs and stick to Roku.

I just love the tv! As use it as a 4 input monitor.

This tv is a nice size for our living room. It is easy to hook up and control with the all in One remote!

So just a little back story pertaining to why I believe this is the best budget QLED for XBSX. Back when the Xbox One X was first released, it was apparent that playing it on any TV that wasn't 4K compatible was pointless. The main premiss of the Xbox One X upgrade was to not only allow for games to potentially run at 60 FPS, but ultimately to allow games to potentially run at a "true" native 4K. So shortly after receiving my new Xbox One X, I knew I would have to bite the bullet and step up from my ole' reliable Samsung 1080p Series 5 TV. Here is the moment my love for TCL TV's began, and my preconceived notion that "only Samsung, Sony, Sharp, LG, etc... TV's are worth buying" was thankfully shattered. I began searching online (Best Buy) for a TV that would allow my new Xbox One X to live up to it's potential, and I quickly realized that at the time (2017), 4K TV's were so darn expensive. It didn't take long for me to see that after scrolling 3 pages of TV's, it was obvious that my old line of thinking towards manufacturers was going to cost me 2-3x the cost of the Xbox One X just to purchase a TV that could capitalize on the advantages of owning a Xbox One X. So after nearly getting frustrated and saying screw it, I suddenly stumbled upon a 4K TV, that was HDR compatible, for $600. The brand and model of that particular TV was: TCL [55S405], but again due to my preconceived notions I mentioned above, I was instantly filled with doubt pertaining to this newly discovered $600 TV. I nearly decided to just ignore finding it, but I hopped on Reddit as well as did a general review search of the TCL TV in question. Needless to say I was floored by how well received this budget TV was, especially within the gaming community. After 3-4 hours of research, I discovered that TCL had developed the TV with such a low response time (milliseconds), it was rivaling some of the more decent gaming monitors on the market at the time. I was sold, and when Best Buy opened later that morning, I was there purchasing the TCL TV. I know that was a very long build up to my review of this budget QLED TV, but I will make sense why I mentioned it all in just a minute. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago (roughly 5 years after initially purchasing the TCL TV), I finally decided to upgrade the TCL TV in order to better utilise my XBSX that I upgraded to roughly a year ago. Don't get me wrong, the prior TCL TV this whole review has been about up until now has been fantastic, but was severely lacking in some ways that held back the true advantages of the XBSX. One of the main drawbacks of my current TCL TV was the "HDR" that was technically there, but it's severe lack of brightest nearly negated the benefits of having HDR enabled (when I purchased that TCL in 2017, the next TV that actually had HDR was $1250. Double the cost of the TCL, so it not being stellar was to be expected). So now that I was set on upgrading TV's again, my first choice was looking at TCL TV's at Best Buy. I quickly found this TV (TCL 55S535), and it took very little time reading reviews on Reddit and RTINGS.com for me to discover even more praise for this particular TV, especially pertaining to the TV's performance in the gaming sphere. I instantly purchased it online and selected in-store pickup for the following morning. Needless to say I was excited to get it home and in the place the previous TCL TV sat, and once that was done, set-up was a breeze (literally less than 5 minutes). After making sure I had the HDMI inputs set up optimally for my XBSX and my Vizio 5.1 Soundbar (using HDMI-ARC), as well as making some personal visual setting tweaks, I was up and gaming and the graphical difference was immense! This TCL TV not only has HDR, but also has HDR10 as well as Dolby Vision, and is capable of a 60hz refresh rate. All of the above statistics were not capable on my previous TCL, and even though it technically had "HDR", its peak brightness was so low it honestly negated the benefits of having it enabled. Now compared to some of the much more pricier TV's out now, this TCL TV isn't the brightest when it comes down to maximum HDR Brightness (Nits), but I have yet to yearn for any more brightness than this TV provides. Honestly I have to change the "HDR Picture Mode" from "Bright" to "Normal" at times due to the brightness being to bright (not a bad problem to have). The only truly negative thing mentioned among professional reviews was the HDR Brightness not being bright enough, but I quite frankly have not even remotely come close to having the same experience. I'm no professional TV reviewer, nor am I some kind of TV visual savant, but to my 30+ years of gaming eyes... This TV visually ROCKS! The only feature this TV does not have that the XBSX can utilize, is 120hz capability. Dont get me wrong, I wouldn't mind having the ability to play the very few games actually capable of outputting 120hz (FPS), but that isn't even remotely a deal breaker for me. Very few (less than 10 currently) games have the ability to be played at 120 FPS, but even if there were more, 60 FPS (while also maintaining true 4K Rendering) is superb and is fantastic (honestly 120 FPS is overkill for probably 95% + of the gaming community). So to wrap up the review, I will give an honorable mention to the sound quality, because it's not half bad. I honestly do not use the built in internal speakers on any of my TV's, due to either having a custom 7.1/5.1 home theater setup and or using my headset while gaming, but I did test them once and was surprised by the audio quality considering they are rear firing and internal. All in all, if your looking for a steal on a TV that includes QLED, 4K, HDR Enabled (especially Dolby Vision HDR) for gaming on either a Xbox Series X, Xbox One X, or even a PS5/PS4, this TV WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. I absolutely love it, and so will you!!! A++++++++