TCL 5 Series/S546 2021 QLED TV Review

The TCL 5 Series is a newer model of the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED, although the 2020 model is still available because it uses a different smart platform. It sits below the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED in the 2021 TCL lineup. It competes with other entry-level quantum dot TVs like the Samsung Q60/Q60A QLED, Hisense U6G, and Vizio M7 Series Quantum 2021.

The TCL 5 Series looks like a simple yet stylish TV. It has thin borders on three sides, and you can place the stand in two different positions. There's a Google speaker underneath the bottom bezel. Overall, it looks like a nice TV and should look good in any setup.

The plastic feet do a good job at holding the screen in place, and there's minimal wobble. They don't raise the TV much off the table as there are 1.77 inches from the table to the speaker and 2.71 inches to the bottom of the screen. However, the remote functions still work if you place a soundbar in front. You can put the feet in two different positions.

Footprint of the 65 inch TV:

• Narrow position (Pictured above): 26.5" x 12.7"
• Wide position (Pictured here): 50.7" x 12.7"

The back of the TCL 5 Series consists of a smooth metal top portion and a textured plastic bottom portion. There are clips on the legs and on the back for cable management.

The TV itself isn't too thick, but it's not the thinnest either. There are clips on the back that you can remove when wall-mounting it, so it doesn't stick out too much.

The TCL S546 has a decent build quality. It's a mix of metal and plastic, and it feels solid overall. The plastic feet are sturdy, but they don't feel as premium as metal feet. The bottom bezel is brushed plastic meant to mimic aluminum, but it feels a bit cheap. The back panel has a bit of flex on the metal part, and there's more on the plastic, but it's not that concerning.

The TCL 5 Series has a VA panel with a remarkable contrast ratio. It displays deep blacks, and the local dimming feature further improves the contrast with our checkerboard pattern, but it seems to raise the black levels in real content. Keep in mind that contrast can vary between units.

Note: Our unit has bad out-of-the-box accuracy, giving it a warm color tone. We couldn't fix the color temperature in calibration without introducing other inaccuracies, which explains the red tint in the photo.

The SDR peak brightness is great and it's a significant improvement over the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most rooms, but small highlights aren't as bright due to aggressive frame dimming.

We tested it after calibration in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the Local Contrast set to 'High', Color Temperature on 'Warm -5', Gamma on '2.2', and Contrast and Brightness at their max. We reached the highest luminance with these settings as other picture modes weren't brighter.

The full-array local dimming feature on the TCL 5 Series isn't bad, but it's not anything special either. It performs similarly to the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED as it seems to raise the black level in real content, causing scenes like a star field to look more gray than black. There's more blooming around bright objects and around subtitles, which could bleed into the black borders at the top and bottom of the screen. As it raises the black levels, there isn't much black crush, and the screen looks fairly uniform. Sadly, it doesn't handle fast-moving objects well, and there are trails when an object transitions between the dimming zones because the zones are slow to turn on and off.

We tested it with Local Contrast on 'High'. The 65 inch model has 45 dimming zones, and TCL advertises the 75 inch model to have 60 zones, but they don't specify how many the 50 and 55 inch models have.

Note: Our unit has bad out-of-the-box accuracy, giving it a warm color tone. We couldn't fix the color temperature in calibration without introducing other inaccuracies. You notice this the most with the test pattern, but not as much in the real content videos.

The local dimming feature performs the same in Game Mode as outside of it.

The HDR brightness is alright. It's an improvement from the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED, but it may still not be enough to make highlights pop in HDR. Like in SDR, it doesn't maintain its brightness consistent across different scenes, and small highlights are the most dim. The EOTF follows the target PQ curve nearly perfectly until the slow roll-off at its peak brightness.

We tested it before calibration in the 'Movie' HDR Picture Mode with the Local Contrast set to 'High', Color Temperature on 'Warm -5', and Contrast and Brightness at their max. We got the brightest image with these settings, as seen in the 25% peak window, but if you still find the image too dim, enable Dynamic Tone Mapping and set the Gamma to '1.8'. This makes the image appear brighter, as you can see in this EOTF, but it doesn't change the peak brightness.

The HDR peak brightness is okay, as it's very similar to how it is outside of Game Mode. We tested it using the same settings, and even though there are some minor differences in the testing results, it looks the same in Game Mode.

There are some gray uniformity issues with our unit. There are some minor vertical bands that you can see, and there's dirty screen effect in the center, which could get distracting during sports. You can see the red tint from the warm color temperature here. Uniformity is better in near-dark scenes, but the bands are still there, and there's backlight bleed in the corner. Note that uniformity can vary between units.

The TCL S546 has excellent black uniformity. Without local dimming, the screen looks blue, and there's clouding throughout. The image is a lot more black with local dimming enabled, but there's more blooming around the center cross. Note that uniformity can vary between units.

As with other VA panel TVs, the TCL 5 Series has narrow viewing angles, so the image looks inaccurate when viewing from the sides.

Note: Our unit has bad out-of-the-box accuracy, giving it a warm color tone. We couldn't fix the color temperature in calibration without introducing other inaccuracies, which explains the red tint in the video.

The TCL 5 Series Google TV has decent reflection handling. It handles a moderate amount of light well, but it reflects light directly back, like a mirror, which could get distracting.

The out-of-the-box accuracy is bad. All colors are inaccurate, and the white balance is the worst we've seen on any TV so far, so shades of gray and white look awful. The color temperature is also warm, giving the image a red tint. On the plus side, gamma is great as it follows the 2.2 target well for the most part, but some scenes are either a bit too dark or too bright. Out-of-the-box accuracy can vary between units; let us know if yours performs the same.

The accuracy after calibration is okay, but it's not as accurate as most other TVs after calibration. At first, we aggressively calibrated the TV with much better results with the color temperature and white balance, but it resulted in color fringing. We had to recalibrate it in a less aggressive way, which explains why the colors and white balance are still off. You can see the original results here:

• Final Score: 8.4
• White Balance dE: 2.48
• Color dE: 1.88
• Color Temperature: 6525K

You can see our recommended settings here.

Like the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED, the TCL 5 Series QLED doesn't properly display 480p content. It would scale to 576p instead, and the image looked bad. We tried changing the Aspect Ratio settings, but it didn't fix anything. The photo above is a custom crop, and you can see a 16:9 crop when setting the Aspect Ratio to '4:3' here. All this to say, this TV isn't good for watching 480p content like DVDs.

Note: Our unit has bad out-of-the-box accuracy, giving it a warm color tone. We couldn't fix the color temperature in calibration without introducing other inaccuracies, which explains the red tint in the photo. Also, this made the following upscaling photos appear darker than they normally are when we set the brightness to 100 nits.

Luckily, the TCL S546 doesn't have any trouble upscaling 720p content from cable boxes.

1080p content like from Blu-rays looks almost as good as native 4k content.

There aren't any problems with displaying native 4k content.

This is a 4k TV that can't display an 8k signal.

The TCL 5 Series 2021 uses a BGR subpixel layout, which can affect the way text is displayed when using the TV as a PC monitor. You can read about it here.

The TCL 5 Series QLED has an excellent color gamut. It's very similar to the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED because it has fantastic coverage of the DCI P3 color space, and even though its Rec. 2020 is more limited, it's still decent.

The color volume is good. Thanks to its wide color gamut and fantastic contrast, it displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels.

The gradient handling is good, but it's a downgrade compared to the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED. There's banding with most dark colors, especially with the grays. The Gradation Clear setting helps clean up banding in the test pattern and real content, but it's still not the best and causes the loss of fine details.

Note: Our unit has bad out-of-the-box accuracy, giving it a warm color tone. We couldn't fix the color temperature in calibration without introducing other inaccuracies, which explains the red tint in the photo.

This TV shows no signs of temporary image retention, but this may vary between units. You can see the vertical bands that we talk about in the Gray Uniformity section.

We don't expect VA panels to experience permanent image retention, as the VA panel in our long-term test appears immune.

The TCL 5 Series Google TV has a quick response time. Motion looks great for the most part, but the response time in dark transitions is slow, leading to black smearing in dark scenes, which is typical of VA panels.

The TCL S546 uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. It flickers at 960Hz with all settings and backlight levels. Luckily, it's such a higher frequency that most people shouldn't notice it.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. It flickers at 60Hz, but the timing is off, leading to image duplication. Keep in mind that the scoring is based on the flicker frequency and not the actual performance.

The TCL 5 Series has a motion interpolation feature to interpolate 30 fps content up to 60 fps. It looks okay with slow scenes, like when there's dialogue, but there are noticeable artifacts with fast-moving objects that could get distracting.

Due to the quick response time, lower-frame rate content may appear to stutter as each frame is held on longer. Enabling the motion interpolation feature can help reduce this issue.

The TCL 5 Series TV removes 24p judder from native sources like apps or Blu-ray players, but it can't properly remove judder from 60Hz sources. It can't do it at all from 60i sources, and from 60p when we set the Judder Reduction setting between '5-10', it can't properly remove judder as you can see in this photo.

The TCL 5 Series supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing, which is a nice addition compared to the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED. The VRR range is limited because it has HDMI 2.0 inputs and a 60Hz panel. TCL doesn't advertise which formats it supports, but we confirmed it has native FreeSync support with our Radeon RX 580 graphics card. Since the Xbox Series X supports both FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR, we don't know which one is actively working, so there's no way to tell if it supports HDMI Forum VRR.

The TCL 5 Series has low input lag for a responsive gaming experience. The amount of lag is inconsistent depending on the signal because it's surprisingly lower with VRR enabled than not, but most people won't notice any difference.

The TCL 5 Series 2021 displays most common signals up to 60Hz, including 1440p if you create a custom resolution through your PC. It displays chroma 4:4:4 in either 'PC' or 'Game' Picture Mode with 1080p and 4k signals, and text looks a bit sharper in PC Mode.

The TCL 5 Series supports 60Hz signals from the Xbox Series X and PS5, but since it's a 60Hz panel, it can't do any 120 fps games. Like with the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED, no prompt pops up on the TV when VRR is active, but we confirmed that VRR works without any tearing. However, Dolby Vision isn't available with VRR enabled.

Unlike the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED, this TV supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. It's because Google TVs support both, but Roku doesn't support HDR10+.

The TCL 5 Series has eARC support for Dolby Atmos via TrueHD signals, but we ran into some issues during testing. When we tried playing a Dolby Atmos signal, the Dolby Atmos logo would pop up on the TV, but the receiver said it was playing Dolby Audio surround sound. We experienced the same thing with the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED, so it's likely an issue with our testing, and we're leaving the test result as 'Yes' since it should support it. If you experience the same issue, let us know.

Similarly, the DTS via ARC and Optical signals had the same problem where the TV said the signal was DTS, but the receiver didn't. We're leaving the DTS support as 'Yes' for both ARC and Optical.

Despite having a dedicated speaker below the bottom bezel, the frequency response is mediocre. It gets fairly loud and has a somewhat well-balanced sound profile, but it doesn't produce much bass, if any at all.

The distortion performance is mediocre. There's distortion even when listening at a moderate level, and it gets much worse at the max volume. However, this depends on the content, and not everyone may hear.

The TCL 5 Series is part of TCL's new Google TVs, which has a fairly user-friendly interface, and menu navigation is great. Google TVs are advertised to support the new Basic Mode, which strips the TV of all its smart features, so you can focus on just using the inputs and antenna.

As with other Google TVs, there are ads and suggested content on the home page, and there's no way to disable them.

The Google Play Store has a wide selection of apps available to download.

The included remote is simple and has a few shortcut buttons to popular streaming services. The circular pad functions as the navigation buttons. There's a built-in mic that you can ask to change inputs, open apps, and search for content, but you can't ask it to change settings like the backlight. There's also a mic in the TV itself, which you can use with the Google Assistant feature; the TV has to be on for it to work.

The power button is on the back of the TV on the right, and you can change inputs with it too. There's a switch next to it to disable the built-in mic.

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Power cable
• Manual