TCL 65-inch Smart 4K QLED TV review: Good 4K and 1080p performance with a few HDR caveats

TCL 65 Inch Smart 4K QLED TV Detailed Review

If you think of QLED TVs, the first name that comes to your mind is Samsung and rightly so. The company pioneered the technology as an alternative to OLED TVs. Today we have a QLED TV which is not a Samsung TV. This is the TCL X4, a 65-inch QLED TV that boasts of 4K resolution and HDR technology. The TV is priced at Rs 1,09,990 which makes it an attractive proposition for those who want a big TV with the latest TV technology under the hood. The TV also runs on Android TV OS which gives you access to the Google Play Store to download apps. Is it worth the asking price?

Key Specifications at a Glance

Panel Size: 65-inch
Panel Type: IPS
Panel Resolution: 3840 x 2160 – 4K
Panel Refresh Rate: 60Hz (for 4K content)
HDR 10 Support: Yes
Dolby Vision Support: No
Weight (without stand): 20.4 kg
HDMI Port: 3
USB Port: 2
bluetooth: yes
Wi-Fi: Yes
Ethernet: yes
Speaker: 30W Output (4 Speakers)
Built-in Storage: 16GB
Price: Rs 1,09,990

create and design

we recently review of iFFALCON 75-inch TV on Digit and I’m bringing this up because iFFALCON is not only a sub brand of TCL but hides the logo and you won’t be able to tell which is which TV which looks the same (except the size of course ). The TCL 65-inch X4 sports a single steel frame all around, which makes it not the thinnest TV out there. There’s also no fancy glass border.

Coming to the table top stand, it is a rectangular stand that sits flush with the bottom of the TV. It has a small footprint which means you don’t need a large table for the TV. Overall, the TV is built just like the iFFALCON that we reviewed. It’s sturdy, sits nicely on the stand and overall, well made.

Coming to the connectivity options, they are all placed on the right side of the TV, once again in the same order as seen at iFFALCON. You have 2 USB ports, 3 HDMI ports, a LAN port, antenna port, SPDIF out, AV in and headphone out. Since most flagship TVs at this price have 4 HDMI ports, some of you may not get a fourth port. One of the three HDMI ports is ARC which is nice. The ports are neatly placed, even if they are not in order. The lack of order is helpful because you can have devices like the Fire TV Stick that require more space and can be used with an HDMI port that’s secluded at the bottom.

Display Panel and Picture Quality

Talking about the display panel, it is different from iFFALCON TV. This time we have a QLED panel. For those who don’t know, QLED is a technology mostly found on Samsung TVs. It is said to be superior to traditional LED TVs, which bring with them better color reproduction, better viewing angles and do not have the problems of reflective displays and burn-in like OLEDs. So this must be the right technology for TV? Well, the answer is a simple yes or no, as OLED has its advantages as well.

Let’s look at some picture settings first before moving on to our test ranges. The TCL QLED TV has some of the same picture presets found on the iFalcon. For the most part, the presets change based on the content playing on the screen and should work fine. But if you want to tinker with the settings then know that the standard setting for your set top box should be fine. For movies, the Movie setting works. But if you want to go deeper, there are settings to change the tone from warm to cool and even neutral. Stick with neutral for the most part but some games look better when the setting is warmed up. This essentially helps with skin tones in games like Rise of the Tomb Raider. Let’s move on to the picture display of the TV.

4K and HDR

There are times when we have access to content in 4K that is not HDR and then there is 4K content that is produced in HDR. 4K content on this TV looks great right from the start. A good source of 4K content, although compressed, is YouTube. Play a game trailer, a movie trailer, some 4K clip showing nature or wildlife and you will be amazed by the performance of the panel on this TV. Colors look bright and vibrant and deep. Needless to say, 4K content looks great on it.

Turn on HDR, and the story is a bit mixed, reminding me of the 49-inch Xiaomi Mi TV 4A Pro that we review of Some time ago. Let me explain this by taking the example of content seen on TV. Our test bed includes Star Trek Discovery which is in 4K and HDR, Daredevil on Netflix, again in 4K and HDR. The only 4K content we relied on was YouTube. The problem with the Daredevil Season 2 Episode 3 stair fight sequence was that it was a little too dark for my liking. Even after tinkering with the settings where the contrast as well as the backlight were ramped up, I had to tinker with the colors and saturation to get a bright image, and it still looked a bit dull. The details were lost in the dark. Going into Star Trek Discovery S1E1, when Burnham first takes off from the ship, the darkness of space and her suit have nice details. But when she’s first getting up for stage, the sun’s effect falls a bit short of what we’ve seen on other TVs like the Panasonic FX800D (read our review) Here, Switch to watching it in 1080p from the Fire TV Stick, and the image looks brighter overall.

It’s safe to say that the TV’s 4K performance is much better than its HDR performance.

4K HDR gaming

Gaming is plagued with similar issues, with one difference. In games like Forza Horizon 4 (read our review Here) which is in 4K and HDR, the game has the same sluggish performance issue we talked about earlier. Shifting to game mode doesn’t help the picture performance either. However, when we switched to a game like Doom which is in 4K and doesn’t support HDR, the result was quite different. The picture is bright and vibrant and just for comparison, we didn’t face saturation issues like we did on the iFalcon TV. The game was very visually appealing, from the dusty orange surface of Mars to the tech-filled indoor environment.

One game that works with a middle ground is Rise of the Tomb Raider. Moving between naturally lit outdoor environments to an indoor dark room full of guards, the transition was seamless with lighting and enemies hiding in the dark were easily noticeable, thanks to reflections on their outfits or weapons.

Overall the 4K performance of the TV is good but the HDR performance could have been better.

1080p content

The vibrancy we saw in non-HDR 4K content was present in 1080p content as well. From Spider-Man Homecoming to Wonder Woman and even John Wick, all the movies look bright and vibrant. From the dark scene, Spider-Man leads the Vulture to the bright scene where he stops the elevator from falling. Colors pop out and scenes look nicely detailed.

Even in John Wick, the basement red circle fight sequence is fast paced, full of red and blue colors and really enjoyable.

It’s safe to say that 1080p content looks really good on the TV.

Audio

Like the iFFALCON TV, the TCL X4 has 3 speakers on either side of the soundbar with Harman Kardon branding in one corner below the TV. The performance of the speakers is also almost the same. You have loud, clear and crisp audio that lacks the distinctive punch of bass. The rock soundtrack in Doom might sink you in but when you’re firing a shotgun, you want the sound to be as immersive as the gun itself in the game. There’s good separation of sound when watching movies or playing games, whether it’s between gunfire and conversations in Tomb Raider or the background score and guns in Doom.

The performance of the speaker will come in handy for watching TV, playing games and watching movies. But for a more immersive experience, you need at least one subwoofer.

remote controlled

One good thing about iFFALCON TV… Oops.. Sorry, TCL TV…. This is what you get when the remote is exactly the same for both the TVs. let me redirect you to my Review iFFALCON TV remotes are the same, be it looks or performance.

UI

Even though the iFalcom TV and TCL TV have the same Android 7 TV UI, I found it to be very slow on the TCL TV, especially when HDR content is playing on the screen. Sometimes, either the Netflix app crashes when trying to tweak settings, other times tweaking settings with the Xbox One X causes the OS to crash. The UI is Android TV with TCL settings dumped on top and the experience is mostly disappointing with a sprinkling of the smooth UI coming in at some intervals.

Voice search worked much better than at iFFALCON. You can say things like open Netflix and it works. You can say things like “Haunting on Hill House” and it will bring up the information and also let you know it’s available on Netflix, which is nice. Overall, it works like how Android should work.

ground level

There are a lot of TVs under Rs 1,00,000 from players like Sony, Samsung and LG which we haven’t tested so it’s difficult for us to tell about the alternatives at this price point. So let us tell you this. The TCL QLED TV has some great 4K and 1080p performance. It’s also a great TV for console gaming. However, the UI is quite laggy and the HDR performance could have been better. If you are looking for a good performing 4K TV in a large form factor in a budget of Rs 1,00,000, then you can definitely consider this TV.

About Me: Sameer Mitha lives for gaming and technology is his driving force. When he is not busy playing with gadgets or video games, he delves into the world of fantasy novels.
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