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 stand is fairly wide, so you may 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 inch 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.

This TV is a bit thick, mainly because of the bottom part where the inputs are sticks out, which may 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 sadly 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. Note that contrast may vary between units.

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).

We measured the peak brightness after calibration, in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with Local Contrast set to 'High', Gamma set to '2.2', and Backlight at its max. The TV got the brightest possible in these settings, as seen in the 25% peak window test.

Update 08/16/2021: We rechecked the TV on the latest firmware, 10.0.0 Build 4209, to see if it was still crushing blacks. Unfortunately, it's still aggressively crushing blacks in HDR and SDR.

Update 07/12/2021: Uploaded the real content local dimming videos.

The TCL 55R635 has a mediocre full-array local dimming feature. This TV uses Mini LED backlighting, with about 220 local dimming zones, and there's visible blooming around bright objects. Due to the 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. It's noticeable with a star field, as the stars appear bright at first, but as they become smaller, the local dimming fails to light them up, causing intense black crush. It's worse than the local dimming on the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED because that TV has less black crush and less blooming.

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 may be distracting. Overall, the local dimming improves the contrast because it helps the TV deeper blacks, but it also causes bright highlights to be more dim.

We tested local dimming with Local Contrast set to 'High'. The larger models, the 65R635 and the 75R635 are advertised to have up to 240 zones, which isn't much more than the 220 on this TV.

Update 07/12/2021: Uploaded the real content local dimming videos.

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

The TCL 55R635 has impressive peak brightness in HDR, which is a nice improvement over the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. It gets bright in most scenes, including real content, 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, and this is the best EOTF we measured. If you want something even brighter, then look into the TCL R745 QLED.

We measured the peak brightness in the 'Dark HDR' Picture Mode with Local Contrast to 'High' and Contrast and Backlight at their max. If you want the brightest image possible, use these same settings but with the Picture Mode set to 'Bright HDR'.

The HDR peak brightness in Game Mode is the same as outside of it. Any difference in testing results is within the margin of error.

Our unit has decent gray uniformity, but this may vary between units. The edges of the screen are slightly darker, and there's some dirty screen effect in the center, which may be distracting during sports. 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, but this may vary between units. There's a noticeable backlight bleed near the corners that creates a strange halo effect. If you experience the same thing, let us know in the comments below. However, local dimming improves the contrast and removes the halo, but also causes blooming around bright objects.

The TCL 55R635 has poor viewing angles, 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, which is an improvement over the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. It performs fairly well in moderately-lit rooms, but the reflections may be a bit too 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 TCL R635 has mediocre out-of-the-box color accuracy, but this may vary between units. 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.

A few people have mentioned that the 'Normal' Picture Mode appeared more accurate on their TV than 'Movie'. On our unit, 'Normal' isn't as accurate; we measured a color dE of 6.45 and a white balance dE of 5.36.

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 TCL 55R635 doesn't have any trouble upscaling 720p content from cable boxes.

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

The TCL 55R635 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 TCL R635 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 TCL 55R635 has an impressive color gamut. It uses quantum dot technology with outstanding coverage of the commonly-used DCI P3 color space used in HDR content. It also has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space.

The 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, but this may vary between units.

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

The TCL 55R635 has a great response time, which is an improvement over the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. Most fast-moving content has minimal motion blur, but there's noticeable overshoot with dark transitions, which causes motion artifacts in dark scenes.

The TCL 55R635 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 TCL 55R635 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 other TV 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 TCL 55R635 can interpolate lower frame rate content up to 120 fps. It works well, but it 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 6 Series Mini LED supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing. It isn't advertised to support 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. By connecting our Xbox One S, we were also able to confirm it supports VRR.

We set HDMI Forum VRR as 'Unknown' because there currently isn't an accurate way to test for HDMI Forum VRR compatibility. The Xbox Series X shows there's VRR, but since it supports both HDMI Forum VRR and FreeSync, there's no way to know which is actively working.

The TCL R635 has a 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 some other TVs, including the newer TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED.

The TCL 55R635 displays proper chroma 4:4:4, which is important for reading text if you use it as a computer monitor. However, it only displays 4:4:4 with a 4k resolution. With a 1080p or 1440p resolution, text doesn't look clear because it doesn't display proper 4:4:4.

The TCL 55R635 supports 4k games from the Xbox Series X and PS5 up to 60 fps as it lacks HDMI 2.1 support, but because it has a 120Hz panel, it also supports 1080p @ 120Hz games. It has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the TV into Game Mode when launching a game from a compatible device.

Unlike the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED, it's limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth instead of HDMI 2.1.

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 not low enough for any rumble or thump. The sound profile is well-balanced overall, resulting in clear dialogue. It also gets loud, great if you want to place it in a noisy environment.

This TV has great distortion performance. There's minimal total harmonic distortion at moderate listening levels, and even though there's a bit at its max volume, most people won't hear it. The amount of distortion also depends on the content.

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 instead, then 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 they can't be disabled.

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 very simple, and it comes with shortcut buttons to popular streaming services. The voice control can be a hit or miss at times, as we were able to search for specific content in apps, but when we asked it to change the backlight setting, it changed the volume instead.

The TV's control consists of a single button located on the right back side of the TV. It allows you to turn the TV On/Off and change the input source.

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