TCL - 65" Class QM8-Series 4K UHD HDR QD-Mini LED Smart Google TV (2024)

I was in search of a 65 inch TV right around the $1,000 price point(with wiggle room) for my living room. Living room has windows and gets bright during the day, but I have shades I can always lower. I spent a lot of time heavily researching TV’s from various brands, various retailers, and went to several stores to see these TV’s in person and compare. I’m big on picture quality, so it was important to me to get the best bang for my buck. I considered Sony, LG, Samsung, TCL, and Hisense TV’s. I have an LG G3 in my basement and prefer OLED picture quality, but budget was making that a challenge for a 65 inch TV. After comparing in store and several Youtube video comparisons, I opted to try out the 65 inch TCL QM851G because the blacks looked nearly OLED like with excellent contrast and colors. I don’t know what the quality of TCL is as this is my first TCL TV, so I did add the 5 year Best Buy protection plan since the TV only comes with a 1 year manufacturers warranty. Ordering/Pickup: Best Buy was great. I ordered online pickup and it was ready for pickup in less than an hour. Went inside and showed my receipt and they had two employees load the TV up for me. Setup: Unboxing the tv, putting the stand on, and placing the TV was all very smooth and easy. Turn the TV on, connect to wifi, log into your Google account, firmware update installed, and several apps I use were already on the home screen ready for me to use. Linked to my phone and iPad very easily. TV OS: The QM851G has Google as the operating system. Very easy to navigate and I haven’t experienced any lags to this point. Nice and fast. Quick to learn. Picture Quality: Picture quality out of the box is excellent. Very bright and vibrant colors that really pop. Probably the brightest TV I’ve ever seen. Blacks are almost OLED like with no black crushing which was a concern of mine prior to purchasing. The black bars while watching movies are actually black and not grey like a lot of other non-OLED TV’s. Stunning contrast that will have you thinking you may be watching an OLED TV. Motion settings needed to get tweaked for fast moving scenes, but once you dial in the picture settings, this TV’s picture really stands out! TCL has really made strides in catching up to Sony for motion processing and they’ve narrowed the gap. Bright room: The brightness of this TV really aids in a bright room setting. Reflections are minimal and really only show on the black bars surrounding the TV when it’s very sunny out. Even dark movies during the day were fine for me to watch. Dark room: You’ll probably want to turn the brightness down in a dark room setting, but this TV is stunning. I’ve seen some details in dark movies I’ve never seen before when watching the same movie in the past. Very happy with the dark room performance of the TCL. I’ve included pictures of both settings for you to see how the TV looks with various content. Sound quality: This TV has impressive sound. TV speakers are always a major step down from a soundbar or sound system, and I think this TV would benefit from at least having a soundbar. But the sound quality is very impressive for a TV. The best I’ve heard from TV speakers. Decent bass and tremble. Depth to the sounds. I tried a Dolby Atmos test video and even though I don’t have surround speakers, when the volume is up around 65-70, I could get some surround sound effects from the speakers. Soundbar or sound system is best if you’re seeking that cinematic experience. If not, the TV speakers will be more than enough for you, so it saves you money from purchasing a sound system. I’ve had this TV for almost a full week now and I’ve watched several of my go-to movies to compare with my LG G3 OLED in the basement and I’m seriously impressed. Batman vs Superman and The Batman are two dark movie tests that passed with flying colors. The Avenger movies and the Rings of Power series all looked amazing on this TV. I don’t feel the need to go in the basement to watch on my OLED TV like I previously felt with having this TV available and now allows me to decide where to watch based on the room atmosphere I prefer. Now for the negatives/con’s that I ran into. Upscaling of low-quality content is not always the best. I watched the first X-Men movie which was made in 2000 and the picture quality seemed rather soft and fuzzy. I pulled up the same movie on my OLED and it looked significantly better. The TV has randomly shut off in the middle of playing a movie twice over the last week and I ran into one instance I couldn’t get content to play for me. I could browse apps an select a movie, but the initial ad screen would pop up and never play no matter what I did. Unplugging the TV and plugging back in resolved this issue and it hasn’t happened since. I’m curious how sports will look when the NFL season starts. The broadcast quality of regular TV isn’t very good, so it will be interesting to see how the TCL handles live TV broadcasts. The YouTube videos I watched of games looked decent, but YouTube quality can sometimes be lacking of live content. I’m not a gamer, so I cannot speak to gaming, but based on my reading, this was a highly recommended TV for gamers. Overall thoughts: I’m blown away by the quality of TV you get at this price point. If you want an OLED TV at the same size, you’re paying nearly double for it. The QM851G is the flagship TV for TCL and it’s a great TV. Very bright, deep blacks, awesome contrast, and the picture just pops off the TV. If you want a TV very close in quality and in some aspects, even surpassing Sony, LG, and Samsung, this would be the TV to look at. Looking at price points and TV sizes, you’ll save a lot of money going with TCL. I highly recommend this TV.

Simply amazing - I enjoyed the 2023 TCL QM8 but noticed black crushing despite the latest firmware update helping somewhat so after watching some early reviews, got the 2024 TCL QM8 and moved the older one into the play room. THIS is an amazing improvement in all counts especially the shadow details - black crushing is gone! Although dark scenes on my Sony A95K OLED still has more shadow detail, this QM8 is way brighter than any TV I've ever seen for watching sports and Netflix. It also comes with a backlight remote like last year. I LOVE IT! Highly recommended.

Easy setup, super bright, and easy remote to use. Comes with all your viewing apps you’ll need. Automatically detects movie features to give you the best sound and picture quality.