TCL 6 Series/R635 2020 QLED TV Review

The TCL R635 has a great design that's very similar to the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. The main frame holding the panel is made out of metal and plastic, and it looks like glass, giving the TV a more premium feel. It has new feet compared to the 2019 model, as they're set at an angle instead of being straight.

The TV's brightness has fluctuated a bit but has remained roughly the same after 12 months, and there has been no noticeable shift in the uniformity of the panel.

The stand is fairly wide, so you need a large table to place the TV on.

Footprint of the 55-inch stand: 42.1" x 13.6"

Note: You can move the position of the feet towards the center on the 65 and 75-inch TVs, but you can't do that with the 55-inch model.

The back of the TCL 55R635 looks a bit different from that of the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. The top half is made from a shiny, glossy plastic that feels solid. The bottom half, where the inputs are, is made from matte plastic that feels a bit cheap. Cable management is serviced through the feet.

The TCL 6 Series Mini LED QLED is a bit thick, mainly because of the bottom part where the inputs stick out, which can be an issue if you wall-mount it.

The TCL 6 Series Mini LED has good build quality. The stand is solid, and the TV doesn't wobble all that much. The TV is mainly plastic, which feels a bit cheap on the back. However, it's well-built overall, and there aren't any obvious issues.

The TCL 55R635 has a fantastic contrast ratio, even better than the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. It produces deep blacks, which is expected from a VA panel, and the local dimming feature significantly improves the contrast.

This TV has excellent SDR peak brightness. It gets bright enough to combat glare, but it's not the most consistent across varied content, as extremely small and extremely large areas aren't as bright, as seen in the 2% and 100% window tests. These are caused by frame dimming and the Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL).

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Backlight: Max
• Local Dimming: High
• Gamma: 2.2

The TV has mediocre local dimming. There's visible blooming around bright objects, and due to that blooming, if there are light sources near people's faces, it causes bright spots near or on faces. Lights pop a bit, but when the light sources are extremely small, they don't pop as much, and there's some black crush.

Subtitles don't get very bright either, and there's blooming around them too, as you can see in this photo. Fast-moving objects have visible transitions between the dimming zones, which is distracting. Overall, the local dimming improves the contrast because it helps the TV deepen blacks, but it also causes bright highlights to be more dim.

We tested local dimming with Local Contrast set to 'High'.

The local dimming feature looks the same in Game Mode as outside of it. There's still too much black crush and blooming.

The TV has impressive peak brightness in HDR. It gets bright in most scenes, but really small highlights are dimmer due to the black crush. Even large areas of bright colors are dimmer than the rest, but other scenes are more consistent. The EOTF follows the target curve fairly well, but some dark scenes are a bit too dark.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Dark HDR
• Brightness: Max
• Contrast: Max
• Local Dimming: High

If you want the brightest image possible, use these same settings but with the Picture Mode set to 'Bright HDR'.

There is no noticeable difference with HDR peak brightness when the TV is set to Game Mode.

The TV has decent gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are slightly darker, and there's some dirty screen effect in the center that can be distracting during sports or when using the TV as a PC monitor. The uniformity is a bit better in near-dark scenes, but there's backlight bleed along the edges.

The black uniformity on the TCL 6 Series 2020 is just okay. There's noticeable backlight bleed near the corners that creates a strange halo effect. However, local dimming improves the contrast and removes the halo but also causes blooming around bright objects.

The TV has a poor viewing angle, which is expected from a VA panel. The image looks washed out when viewing off-center, so it's not suggested for wide seating arrangements.

The TCL R635 has decent reflection handling. It performs well in moderately lit rooms, but reflections are distracting in rooms with direct sunlight. The replacement model, the TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED, has much better reflection handling and looks better in a bright room.

The TV has mediocre color accuracy pre-calibration. Most colors are inaccurate, and the white balance is off. The color temperature is slightly warm, giving the image a red/yellow tint. Lastly, the gamma doesn't follow the curve well, so most scenes are darker than they should be.

After calibration, color accuracy is exceptional. The light blues are still a bit off, but any remaining inaccuracies are very difficult to spot. Gamma is perfect, and the color temperature is very close to the 6500K target.

See our recommended settings here.

480p content looks great, with no obvious issues.

The TV has no trouble upscaling 720p content from cable boxes or streaming services.

1080p content looks excellent and is almost as good as native 4k content.

The TV displays 4k content perfectly, and unlike the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019, there aren't any issues with dithering or crosshatching.

The TCL 55R635 is a 4k TV that doesn't display an 8k image. The replacement to this TV, the TCL 6 Series/R648 2021 8k QLED, supports an 8k resolution.

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

The TV has an impressive color gamut. It supports a wide color gamut and has outstanding coverage of the commonly used DCI P3 color space used in most HDR content. It also has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space that is increasing in popularity with content creators.

The TV's color volume is very good. This TV displays dark, saturated colors well due to the fantastic contrast ratio, but like most LED TVs, it can't display extremely bright blues.

The TCL R635 has mediocre gradient handling. There's banding with most colors, especially darker shades. It's most noticeable with dark grays and blues. The Noise Reduction setting doesn't improve the gradient handling. It has much worse gradient handling than the lower-end TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED.

The TCL R635 shows no signs of temporary image retention.

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

The TV has a great response time. Most fast-moving content has minimal motion blur, but there's noticeable overshoot with dark transitions, which causes motion artifacts in dark scenes.

The TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight at all brightness levels. It flickers no matter which picture mode or backlight level, but the high flicker frequency shouldn't bother most people.

The TV has a backlight strobing feature, known as black frame insertion (BFI), to help reduce motion blur. It only flickers at 60Hz, even for 120Hz content, and it doesn't dim the screen like the BFI feature on most other TVs does. However, the timing is off, resulting in noticeable crosstalk that creates the image duplication you see with the letter R in the photo. The BFI score is based on the flicker frequency and not the actual performance.

The TV can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120 fps. It works well but doesn't stop interpolating in busy scenes, so there are noticeable artifacts.

Due to the TV's quick response time, there's visible stutter with lower-frame rate content because each frame is held on longer.

This TV automatically removes judder from any source, which helps with the appearance of motion in movies, and you don't need to turn on any setting for it to work.

The TCL R635 supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. The manufacturer doesn't advertise it as supporting FreeSync, but strangely, when connected to a PC with a Radeon graphics card, FreeSync is enabled in the Radeon settings. However, FreeSync doesn't work because there's still screen tearing.

The TCL R635 has low input lag in Game Mode, although it's not as low as the lag on the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019, and it's a bit higher than many other TVs on the market.

The TV displays proper chroma 4:4:4, which is important for reading text if you use it as a PC monitor. However, it only displays 4:4:4 with a 4k resolution, so text doesn't look clear if you use the TV with a 1080p or 1440p resolution.

The TV supports up to 4k @ 60Hz from the Xbox Series X and PS5. Since it lacks HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, 4k @ 120Hz isn't possible, but because it has a 120Hz panel, it also supports up to 1440p @ 120Hz on both the Xbox Series X and the PS5. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when launching a game from a compatible device.

Unfortunately, the TV is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

The Composite In input needs an adapter. Unlike the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019, the TV doesn't come with one.

This TV has eARC support, which allows you to send high-quality Dolby Atmos via TrueHD or DTS:X via DTS-HD MA through an HDMI connection.

The built-in speakers have a good frequency response. The bass gets fairly low, but like most TVs, it doesn't get low enough for any rumble or thump. The sound profile is well-balanced overall, resulting in clear dialogue. It also gets loud, which is great if you want to place it in a noisy environment.

This TV has great distortion performance. There's minimal harmonic distortion at moderate listening levels, and even though there's a bit at its max volume, most people won't hear it.

This TV has built-in Roku OS, which is user-friendly and runs very smoothly. If you're not a fan of Roku and prefer Google TV, check out the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED.

Unfortunately, like all Roku TVs we've tested, there are large ads on the home screen, and you can't disable them.

Roku's app store has a great selection of apps you can download.

This TV has the same Roku remote as the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. It's small and simple, with shortcut buttons to popular streaming services. The voice control can be a hit or miss at times, as we could search for specific content in apps, but when we asked it to change the backlight setting, it changed the volume instead.

The TV has a single button located on the right back side. It allows you to turn the unit on/off and change inputs.

• User guide
• Remote control (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Power cord