TCL Q85H  Soundbar Review

The soundbar is made of contrasting textured plastics. The top has a faux brushed metal design with vents on the left and right and a glossy black curve cutout for visual interest. The front of the bar is covered in a thin charcoal twill-like fabric. It looks like a step up from the TCL S55H, but it's also a little busy if you prefer soundbars to disappear into the backdrop.

The subwoofer matches the bar's design well. It combines the same materials: plastic that looks like brushed aluminum and glossy black as the focal point at the front. The downside of the gloss finish is that it'll show dust and hair more obviously, but at least you can wipe it clean more easily than if it were covered in cloth.

The wireless box-shaped satellites are wrapped in a similar charcoal birds-eye fabric as the soundbar. They're capped with vented faux brushed metal plastic.

The TCL Q85H soundbar isn't especially wide for the number of drivers in it. It's too wide to fit between the legs of most 65-inch TVs, but it's still considerably narrower than the Sony BRAVIA Theater Bar 9, for example. It's not very tall either, so it's unlikely to block the bottom of the screen.

The subwoofer is mid-sized, upsized from the TCL S55H, and not quite as chunky as subs with other flagships like the Samsung HW-Q990D.

The included wireless satellites are fairly small and don't take up too much space, which makes it easier to place them in your living room.

You can mount the soundbar with the included hardware and brackets. There aren't brackets and screws to mount the satellites, though, and the ones included only fit the soundbar. So, you'll need to get extra mounting gear for the satellites.

The build quality of the TCL Q85H is great. The soundbar and sub have a good amount of heft and a nice finish. The satellites feel lightweight but well-made. Overall the package has a higher-end build than the brand's budget soundbars, and although the fabric covering is a little thin, it feels sturdy.

• Quick start guide
• Wall mounting guide
• Warranty
• Remote control with 2x AAA batteries
• Wall mounting kit (2x brackets and sets of hardware)
• HDMI cable (1.5 m/4.9 ft)
• 4x power cables (1.5 m/4.9 ft each)

The TCL Q85H has a very good-sounding stereo frequency response. Our measured setup used room correction (called 'AI Sonic'), the 'Standard' EQ setting, and firmware version 38. Everything else was left on the default settings.

The low-end is somewhat thumpy and rather boomy. This makes it well-suited to rock, hip-hop, and tense movie soundtracks with boosted low-mids that can veer into slight muddiness with busy tracks but can otherwise add fullness. Higher mid-range frequencies are more even, if a little boxy-sounding on melodic instruments and speech, but are able to cut through the mix. However, the treble range is fairly de-emphasized, which causes vocals and metallic sound effects to sound warm and a little unclear and dull by comparison.

Besides the room correction (called 'AI Sonic') and 'Standard' EQ settings measured out of the box, you can adjust the bass and treble. By default, treble and bass are at the medium setting, and you can choose to boost or cut by one increment for low and high settings. We found that leaving the bass at the default medium setting and boosting the treble to the high setting helped to add more sparkle to the top end. However, the dip in the low-treble isn't affected, so vocals still sound somewhat warm.

The stereo soundstage performance is good. The Ray Danz angled side-firing drivers at either end of the bar help to widen the soundstage a bit wider than the bar itself. The focus is good for separating the instruments within the field from the center and the left and right. However, it gets a bit muddled and less precise towards the farthest edges of the soundstage, particularly with the satellites. The soundbar uses all of the speakers for stereo content, including the rear satellites, to create a more immersive soundstage, but stereo content isn't mixed for surrounds, so it can seem a little unfocused at the left and right extremes.

The soundbar's dynamics performance is excellent. It gets plenty loud at max volume, and there's not too much compression that will noticeably affect the quality of the audio signal.

The discrete center channel's performance is good. It certainly trends towards boomy (partly because it uses the sub for center channel audio), but the mids are well-represented where dialogue resides. The dip in the treble can make it more difficult to perfectly parse speech, as it affects the clarity of articulation in dialogue, particularly during busy scenes. However, you can also use the bass and treble to adjust the sound.

The TCL Q85H surround performance is decent. The 7.1.4 configuration has discrete channels, so surround audio isn't downmixed. It's rather boomy and a bit boxy, emphasizing high-bass frequencies and high-mids. The low-end steeply rolls off, and the treble is under-emphasized, too, resulting in a sound that lacks the full rumble of action scenes during explosions and the brightness of metallic sound effects.

It's worth noting that after a subsequent retest prompted by user reports, we can confirm our unit exhibits artifact noise that sounds similar to wind coming from the satellite's forward-facing speakers as of firmware 40.19.19.35. This noise is more obvious in quiet scenes, while action-packed scenes tend to mask the noise.

The TCL Q85H height performance is alright for object-based formats like Dolby Atmos. If you watch a lot of content in this format, the four up-firing drivers in the bar and satellites sound pretty balanced, with clarity and detail in the mids and treble ranges. There's enough punch to add the element of immersiveness to the low frequencies too. The sound can come across as a bit artificially exaggerated when bright sounds cut through a little too loudly from the satellites' up-firing drivers, but the upside is that voices and effects don't get lost in a busy mix. You can track moving sounds across the diagonal axis well, but the vertical dimension isn't notably tall.

If you own a compatible TCL TV, you can use the brand's 'Tutti Choral' feature to use your TV's speakers as additional height channels. This means that the sound quality achieved with 'Tutti Choral' depends on how good those TV speakers sound.

The soundbar offers a decent selection of sound enhancements to tailor the performance to your needs. There's 'AI Sonic,' which is the brand's room correction tool, and, interestingly, you can create three different settings for it if you have different seating arrangements in your space. While there's no graphic equalizer, you can choose between several EQ presets: 'Music,' 'Movie,' 'Voice,' 'Sports,' 'Standard,' and 'Game.' You can tune these further with the bass and treble adjustments, although you can't adjust the subwoofer level independently. If that's important to you, consider the Vizio Elevate SE SL512X-0806.

'Night' is helpful if you want to compress the audio so you get fewer loud and quiet sounds that can bother household members. The 'Voice Enhance' feature is meant to help improve speech clarity. 'Surround Enhance' simulates 3D audio, and it's probably most useful for content that hasn't already received a surround master.

You can use the soundbar as a hub for your home theater, thanks to the eARC, HDMI In, Optical, and USB ports. While the eARC port is HDMI 2.1 compatible, the HDMI In port is 2.0, which is worth keeping in mind for video passthrough and gaming. The USB port allows you to play MP3, WMA, WAV, and FLAC files.

The soundbar's eARC connection supports most popular audio formats, allowing you to stream the latest blockbusters and dust off your Blu-ray collection.

The TCL Q85H supports a large array of audio formats via HDMI In, including popular formats like Dolby Digital, Dolby Atmos, DTS, and DTS:X, and up to 7.1 PCM channels for surround.

The soundbar supports Dolby Digital, DTS, and 2.0 PCM content via its Optical port.

The TCL Q85H soundbar's eARC latency is amazing. Across every audio format tested, the latency is very low. Your video and audio will match up well. If you notice a mismatch, you'll need to use the TV's audio settings to adjust the AV sync.

The soundbar's latency performance over the HDMI In port is excellent. Virtually every audio format exhibits low enough latency that voices ought to match the person speaking. If you notice latency anyway, the TCL Home app doesn't include an AV sync control, so you'll need to rely on your TV's audio settings to make adjustments.

Audio latency via the Optical port is poor. You're likely to experience a significant lip-sync mismatch between your audio and visuals. The soundbar's companion app doesn't have an AV sync function, so your TV's settings will have to handle that if you notice high latency.

The HDMI In port's video passthrough capabilities are excellent on the TCL Q85H. There's a good balance of fast refresh rate formats and high-resolution video format compatibility. We were able to reach 4k at 120Hz (4:2:0) both to a compatible TV and an Xbox Series S console. However, we were unable passthrough 4k at 120Hz to a PlayStation 5. So, it's not fully kitted out with HDMI 2.1, but if you're not a competitive gamer with a FreeSync or G-SYNC screen, you can still use the soundbar as an entertainment hub and get most of what you want from it without venturing into more premium bars.

Despite the advertising stating the soundbar is Wi-Fi capable, in testing and according to the soundbar's manual, its wireless connectivity is limited to Bluetooth and Apple AirPlay 2.

The soundbar's interface is visible through the fabric covering the front of the TCL Q85H. It displays information like preset listening modes, inputs, and 'Voice' and 'Night' modes. Words that are longer than the digital display's character limit will scroll, though this can be a little painstaking as the scroll speed is slow.

The top of the bar has raised controls for basics: power, input selection, Bluetooth pairing, and volume up/down.

The remote control handles virtually all of the same features you'll find in the TCL Home companion app. The remote grants you immediate access to essentials like the ability to calibrate the soundbar, bass and treble adjustments, alongside helpful features like 'Voice Enhance' and 'Night' mode, so you don't have to interrupt your viewing to open the app.