The TCL 98QM8K is a high-end Mini LED TV in TCL's 2025 North American QLED lineup, sitting below the TCL QM9K and replacing the TCL QM851G. This TV is powered by TCL's AIPQ Pro processor and features a brand-new WHVA panel, which is advertised to deliver better viewing angles than traditional VA panels without increasing black levels. The TV is packed with gaming features like HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, high refresh rate support up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz, and VRR support to reduce screen tearing. It features a built-in Bang & Olufsen-tuned speaker system and supports Dolby and DTS advanced audio formats. We bought and tested the 98-inch model (98QM8K), but we also tested the 65-inch model (TCL 65QM8K) separately. It's also available in a 75-inch and 85-inch size.
Our Verdict
The TCL 98QM8K is an excellent TV. It looks great in just about any room thanks to its high peak brightness and fantastic contrast, but its reflection handling is just okay. It's a fantastic choice for gaming thanks to its low input lag, fast refresh rate, and wide selection of gaming features like VRR and HDMI 2.1 bandwidth. It delivers fantastic picture quality, with a wide color gamut, incredible contrast, and high peak brightness. It also has wide format support, including support for Dolby Vision and DTS audio formats, making it a great choice for physical media collectors looking to get the most out of their collection.
Incredibly high contrast.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare in any room.
Image degrades when viewed from the sides.
The TCL 98QM8K is an excellent TV for watching movies in reference conditions like a dark home theater room. Its Mini LED backlight delivers a phenomenal dark room experience, with deep, uniform blacks. This also helps it deliver incredibly bright highlights in HDR with just a bit of haloing around bright highlights. It has great format support, including support for DTS audio formats and Dolby Vision. It has disappointing PQ EOTF tracking, though, which means most HDR content isn't displayed at the correct brightness level.
Incredibly high contrast.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Uniform blacks with very little haloing around bright highlights.
Bright highlights in HDR stand out well.
Crushed shadow details.
Disappointing PQ EOTF tracking.
The TCL 98QM8K is a great TV for use in a bright room, but it's not perfect. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare during the day, and ambient light has almost no noticeable impact on black levels or colors. Unfortunately, the glossy screen coating does very little to reduce the appearance of direct reflections, and there's noticeable rainbow smearing.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare in any room.
Ambient light has no impact on color saturation or black levels.
Noticeable rainbow artifacts from direct reflections.
The TCL 98QM8K is a very good TV for watching sports. It has a good response time for sports, so fast motion is fairly smooth with just a bit of blur. It delivers fantastic picture quality in a bright room, and it's bright enough to easily overcome glare during the day. It has decent uniformity, but there's some noticeable dirty screen effect. Unfortunately, it's not the best choice for a wide seating arrangement as its viewing angle is just okay.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare in any room.
Ambient light has no impact on color saturation or black levels.
Does a great job smoothing out low-quality content with little loss of fine details.
Image degrades when viewed from the sides.
The TCL 98QM8K delivers a great gaming experience. It has an incredibly wide selection of gaming features, including high refresh rate support up to 288Hz at 1080p/1440p or 144Hz at 4k, and it has low input lag with all supported modes. It also supports VRR with all sources to reduce screen tearing, but it's currently not working properly with NVIDIA GPUs when running at 60Hz. It also delivers fantastic picture quality when gaming, and switching to the dedicated Game Master mode has no noticeable impact on brightness or black levels.
Low input lag with all supported formats.
High refresh rate support with VRR, up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz.
Switching to Game Master mode has no impact on picture quality.
Only two HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports.
Sluggish response time when gaming.
VRR doesn't prevent tearing at 60Hz when connected to an NVIDIA GPU.
The TCL 98QM8K is an exceptionally bright TV. HDR content stands out incredibly well, as small specular highlights stand out well. It's bright enough in SDR to easily overcome glare even in a very bright room.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare in any room.
Bright highlights in HDR stand out well.
Thanks to its impressive Mini LED backlight system, the TCL 98QM8K delivers excellent black levels. Blacks are deep and uniform, even in challenging scenes with very bright areas. There's very little haloing around bright spots, but it's not quite as good as OLEDs in that area. Zone transitions are extremely quick overall, but there's some noticeable flicker as objects move between dimming zones.
Incredibly high contrast.
Uniform blacks with very little haloing around bright highlights.
The TCL 98QM8K has great color reproduction. Colors are incredibly bright and vibrant in both SDR and HDR, and it has fantastic SDR accuracy out of the box. HDR accuracy is a bit worse, but still good overall.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Fantastic color volume in HDR.
Note: We're in the process of improving our tests related to image processing, but this score should give you a general idea of how a TV performs overall with its image processing capabilities.
The TCL 98QM8K has decent image processing capabilities. It's great at smoothing out low-quality sources without losing much fine details, and it upscales low-resolution content well. It also has good gradient handling, with just a bit of banding in HDR. It has disappointing EOTF tracking, though, so HDR content isn't displayed at the brightness level intended by the content creator.
Does a great job smoothing out low-quality content with little loss of fine details.
Good upscaling.
Disappointing PQ EOTF tracking.
The TCL 98QM8K delivers a responsive gaming experience overall. It has low input lag in all supported modes for a responsive feel. It also supports a wide range of high refresh rates, up to a maximum of 144Hz at 4k or 288Hz with 1080p/1440p signals. It has just okay motion handling, though, and there's noticeable blur when gaming.
Low input lag with all supported formats.
High refresh rate support with VRR, up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz.
Switching to Game Master mode has no impact on picture quality.
Sluggish response time when gaming.
We're in the process of fixing the way we evaluate a TV's overall motion handling. This section is currently broken, and the score isn't indicative of how well a TV handles motion overall.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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Updated Nov 25, 2025:
Added a link to our new Best 98-100 Inch TVs recommendation article in the Popular TV Comparisons section.
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Updated Nov 25, 2025:
We bought and tested the Samsung 100QN80F, and added a mention in the Contrast section.
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Updated Nov 21, 2025:
Added a link to the side-by-side comparison of the 65-inch and 98-inch models in the Differences Between Sizes And Variants section.
- Updated Nov 20, 2025: Review published.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 98-inch TCL QM8K, and these results are also valid for the 75- and 85-inch models. We bought and tested the 65-inch TCL 65QM8K separately. We also put the 65-inch and 98-inch models together in a head-to-head comparison; you can read our findings here.
In Europe, it's sold as the TCL C8K, but given the significant differences in the software and tuning of the TV, our review isn't valid for that model.
Note: TCL hasn't officially confirmed the dimming zone count for each size, and they only advertise "up to 3,800" for the lineup.
| Size | Model | Dimming Zones |
|---|---|---|
| 65" | TCL 65QM8K | 1,680 |
| 75" | TCL 75QM8K | Unknown |
| 85" | TCL 85QM8K | Unknown |
| 98" | TCL 98QM8K | 3,760 |
Our unit was made in China in June 2025.
Popular TV Comparisons
In the increasingly crowded market of 98-inch TVs, the TCL 98QM8K stands out as one of the best that you can buy at a reasonable price point. While it's comparable to the Hisense 100U8QG overall, it outperforms it in many key areas, especially for gamers. It also delivers significantly better picture quality than most direct competitors, such as the Samsung 100QN80F. It's also incredibly consistent with the smaller size, which is refreshing in a market where much of the competition is choosing cheaper, lower-end panel technology on their larger sizes.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best 98-100 inch TVs, the best gaming TVs, and the best TVs.
The TCL 98QM8K and the Hisense 100U8QG deliver a very similar experience overall, but the TCL is slightly better for most people. The TCL's local dimming feature is better, resulting in a more uniform dark scene experience with less haloing around bright highlights. The TCL also has better colors, and it's more accurate out of the box.
The TCL 98QM8K is nearly identical to its smaller sibling, the 65-inch TCL QM8K. The 98-inch model handles HDR brightness a bit differently, so some scenes are a bit brighter on the smaller size, but the overall experience is pretty similar. The larger model is also far more accurate out of the box, but this can vary between individual units. Check out our in-depth comparison between the 65-inch and 98-inch sizes for more information.
The TCL 98QM8K is better than the Sony BRAVIA 5 98. The TCL delivers much better picture quality, with higher peak brightness, better contrast, and more vibrant colors. The TCL also has a better range of gaming features, including a higher maximum refresh rate. This comes at a cost, though, and the TCL is significantly less accurate than the Sony, especially when it comes to HDR tone mapping.
The Samsung 100QN80F is significantly worse than the TCL 98QM8K. The TCL TV delivers much better picture quality, with higher peak brightness for brighter highlights, much better contrast, and more vibrant colors. It looks better in a dark room thanks to its much better local dimming, and there's significantly less haloing around bright parts of the scene.
We buy and test dozens of TVs yearly, taking an objective, data-driven approach to deliver results you can trust. Our testing process is complex, with hundreds of individual tests that take over a week to complete. Most of our tests use specially designed test patterns that mimic real content, but we also use the same sources you have at home to ensure our results match the real-world experience. We use two main tools for our testing: a Colorimetry Research CR-100 colorimeter and a CR-250 spectroradiometer.
Test Results
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