TCL 8 Series 2019/Q825 QLED TV Review

The TCL 8 Series is the flagship of TCL's 2019 lineup, right above the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019. Its main competitors are the more premium models of other brands, like the Vizio P Series Quantum X 2019, the LG SM9500, and the Samsung Q80/Q80R QLED.

The TCL 8 Series has an excellent overall design. It looks sleek and premium with thin bezels and a large, heavy stand. The back is simple with a premium-looking glossy finish over the top half.

The TV's stand is made of metal. It's very heavy, feels solid, and supports the TV well, preventing most wobble.

Footprint of the 65 inch model: 33.9"x13.8"

The back of the TV is plastic. It resembles the TCL 6 Series/R625 2019's back, thanks to the glossy upper half, which gives the TV a more premium look. Similar to other TCL TVs we've tested, the TCL 8 Series has no cable management.

The borders are made of metal and are fairly thin. They feel solid, which adds to the TV's premium look.

This TV is relatively thin overall. The upper half is really thin, while the bottom half is thicker as it houses the electronics. It won't stick out much if you wall-mount it.

The TCL 8 Series has very good build quality. It feels sturdy and solidly built with no obvious gaps. It's rather heavy but has a premium feel.

The TCL 8 Series has an outstanding contrast ratio, so blacks look deep in a dark room. When local dimming is enabled, this TV delivers the deepest blacks we've measured so far on an LED TV.

This TV has okay local dimming. The backlight consists of a large array of Mini LEDs that create a large number of local dimming zones. This is good, as it allows the TV to minimize blooming around bright objects. At the same time, due to the large number of zones, it's very noticeable when they turn on and off, and this creates a checkered/golfball effect. To activate local dimming, you must set the Local Contrast setting to 'High' as the 'Medium' or 'Low' settings didn't seem to do much on our unit in real content.

The local dimming works well, and the image looks very good when watching medium-to-high brightness scenes. However, the local dimming algorithm is very aggressive and crushes details in very dark scenes, like the intro scene of Netflix's Our Planet, which is displayed with almost no stars. Subtitles don't have much noticeable blooming mainly because they're very bright, and your eyes can't distinguish the blooming.

Finally, the zone transitions can be distracting, depending on the scene. At about 1:06 of the above video, the small ball almost disappears as the slow zone transitions can't keep up with the speed of the fast-moving object. Another example where the transitions and the golfball effect is more visible is in this Earth video from space, shown here.

The TCL 8 Series has outstanding SDR peak brightness. The TV is suitable for very bright rooms as it can fight glare with ease.

We measured the peak brightness after calibration, with the 'Brighter' backlight setting, with the Backlight slider set to '100' (max) in the 'Movie' Picture Mode and the 'Warm' Color Temperature, as these are the most accurate settings. These are also the settings that deliver the highest peak brightness.

This TV has exceptionally high peak brightness in HDR, delivering HDR content with very bright highlights.

We measured the peak brightness in HDR before calibration, with the 'Brighter' backlight setting, and the 'Dark HDR' Picture Mode. These are the most accurate and the brightest settings.

Our TCL 8 Series has okay gray uniformity. Unfortunately, there's some noticeable dirty screen effect both in bright and in dark scenes. Furthermore, the overall uniformity in the darker scenes is one of the worst we've encountered so far. Note that gray uniformity can vary between units.

The TCL 8 Series has disappointing viewing angles. The image quickly loses accuracy as you move off-center. If you want a TV with wide viewing angles, then check out an IPS TV like the LG SM9500 or an OLED TV like the LG B9 OLED.

The TCL 8 Series has fantastic black uniformity. While there's still a bit of blooming around bright objects, on the whole, blacks are very uniform with virtually no clouding. That said, we experienced a bug that raised the overall black level after displaying our test picture with Local Dimming on 'High', leaving only a row of backlights turned off at the top and bottom of the screen. You can see that here.

The TCL 8 Series has good reflection handling. The TV has a semi-gloss finish that diminishes reflections and makes them less distracting. If you place this TV in a bright room, you shouldn't have issues, thanks to its excellent peak brightness.

The TCL 8 Series has poor out-of-the-box accuracy. The color temperature is significantly warmer than the 6500K target, so images have a reddish/yellow tint. Colors and shades of gray are very off, and the gamma doesn't follow the target at all, making scenes appear much darker than they should be.

Changing the Gamma setting from the default '2.2' to '2.0' makes the picture more accurate overall, as you can see in the white balance, gamma curve, and color space.

The TCL 8 Series has outstanding accuracy after calibration. Any remaining inaccuracies require the use of a colorimeter to spot, and the gamma follows the target flawlessly. To achieve these results, we calibrated with Gamma set to '2.0', but we continue to recommend setting Gamma to '2.2' as this is the manufacturer's recommendation.

There's an auto-calibration function that requires the use of an app. Although the app helps improve image accuracy significantly, it's less accurate than a colorimeter.

See our recommended settings for this TV here.

480p content, like DVDs, looks great on the TCL 8 Series, with no obvious issues.

The TV upscales 720p content, like from a cable box, well.

The TCL 8 Series upscales Blu-rays and other 1080p content without issue.

4k is displayed perfectly with no issues.

This TV does not support an 8k signal.

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

The TCL 8 Series has an impressive color gamut, considered wide enough for HDR content. It has excellent coverage of the more common DCI P3 color space and good coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space. Unfortunately, the EOTF doesn't follow the target curve very closely, so most scenes appear darker than they should be. 'Game' mode is nearly identical, as shown here.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to make HDR brighter without messing with picture quality. Changing the Brightness setting from its default value will brighten HDR but also ruin the picture quality, so it isn't recommended.

This TV has a great color volume. It's capable of displaying its color gamut at various luminosities, delivering saturated colors thanks to its high contrast ratio.

The TCL 8 Series has decent gradient handling. Some banding is visible in most colors and unfortunately, the TV doesn't offer any gradient smoothing option.

The TCL 8 Series doesn't show any signs of temporary image retention, even immediately after displaying our high-contrast static test image for ten minutes. Note that this can 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 8 Series has a very good response time. Fast-moving content is displayed with minimal blur.

The TV uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. For the most part, the flicker frequency is very high and very hard to notice. However, in certain bright modes, and when the backlight is above 81/100, the flicker frequency drops to 120Hz. Because this is a very bright TV, we expect most people not to use it at such high brightness levels so flicker shouldn't be an issue for most.

This TV has an optional Black Frame Insertion feature to make motion look crisper. However, this creates duplications that may be distracting to some. To enable BFI, set the LED Motion Clarity to 'On'. Note that our score for BFI takes into account whether BFI is present but doesn't necessarily reflect how well it performs.

Update 11/29/2019: The firmware we initially tested only supported motion interpolation up to 60 fps. We've retested the TCL 8 Series and updated the review.

The TCL 8 Series can interpolate low fps content up to 120 fps. To enable motion interpolation, set the Action Smoothing to 'On'.

There's some stutter with this TV because of its fast response time, especially with lower frame rate content like movies. This is most noticeable in panning shots.

The TCL 8 Series can remove 24p judder from any source. This is done automatically, and there's no special setting that you must enable.

The TCL 8 Series has a native refresh rate of 120Hz and doesn't support any advanced gaming features like FreeSync.

The TCL 8 Series has a decent input lag, as long as you're in 'Game' mode. However, it's not as low as the input lag found on other TCL models and might not be suitable for competitive gaming. On the upside, the TV has an Auto Low Latency Mode, which allows it to detect when you're gaming on a compatible device and automatically switches to 'Game' mode. There are no special settings to do this.