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.
Check Price
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 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 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 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 TCL 98QM8K and the Hisense 98QD5QG aren't even on the same playing field. The TCL is significantly better across the board, with drastically better black levels, colors, and processing, so it provides a massive leap in overall image quality. Furthermore, the TCL is much brighter, so it's suitable for very bright rooms and provides a superior HDR experience. Finally, the TCL displays much clearer motion, making it better for sports and gaming.
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 are done with 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
The TCL 98QM8K is an incredibly bright TV in HDR. Small, specular highlights are incredibly bright, and even very bright scenes stand out well. There's a noticeable decrease in brightness over time, and the TV can't maintain those high peaks for very long, but this isn't an issue with real content.
Here are measurements with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) set to each of its three settings, all in the 'Movie' HDR Picture Mode:
Results with DTM set to Detail Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 823 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 603 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 572 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Balance:
- Hallway Lights: 868 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 597 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 551 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 985 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 621 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 604 cd/m²
Results in the 'Vivid' Picture Mode with DTM set to Brightness Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 933 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 697 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 638 cd/m²
Switching to Game Master has no noticeable impact on the peak brightness of the TV.
Here are measurements with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) set to each of its three settings, all in Game Master:
Results with DTM set to Detail Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 1032 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 603 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 557 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Balance:
- Hallway Lights: 1069 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 588 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 553 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 1080 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 585 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 605 cd/m²
This TV is incredibly bright in SDR, even in very bright content where most of the screen is bright at once. It can easily overcome glare when you're watching TV in a bright room.
The contrast on the TCL 98QM8K is fantastic. The native contrast of the panel is decent, which helps in more complicated scenes, but the local dimming feature is extremely effective at boosting contrast. It's much better than the Samsung 100QN80F.
This TV has excellent lighting zone precision. There's some very minor haloing around bright highlights or subtitles, but it's not very noticeable.
The zone transitions on this TV are excellent. It keeps up with fast-moving objects well, but there's some noticeable flicker as bright lights move across zones.
There's no noticeable difference in dark scene performance when the TV is set to Game Master.
This TV has excellent black uniformity. There's a slight cloudiness when local dimming is disabled, but it's not noticeable. It's not noticeable at all when local dimming is enabled.
This TV has very good SDR color volume. It displays most of the more common DCI-P3 color space, falling a bit short on greens and reds. It struggles a bit with very light scenes, so there's some loss of saturation, but it's minor.
| Volume ΔE³ | DCI-P3 Coverage |
BT.2020 Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| L10 | 95.10% | 74.75% |
| L20 | 94.47% | 74.37% |
| L30 | 93.05% | 73.34% |
| L40 | 91.81% | 74.39% |
| L50 | 90.68% | 74.30% |
| L60 | 89.50% | 72.97% |
| L70 | 88.99% | 66.98% |
| L80 | 88.26% | 64.72% |
| L90 | 87.75% | 64.16% |
| L100 | 86.48% | 66.69% |
| Total | 89.84% | 69.81% |
The TCL 98QM8K has excellent color volume in HDR. It's mainly limited by its incomplete coverage of either HDR color space; colors are bright and vibrant overall. It also displays darker shades extremely well.
This TV has fantastic SDR accuracy out of the box. Shadow details are crushed a bit, but the overall RGB balance is good and the color temperature is very close to the target. Colors are incredibly accurate, with no noticeable issues at all.
This TV is easy to calibrate and delivers truly fantastic SDR accuracy after calibration. It was already fantastic out of the box, though, so most people wouldn't notice the difference.
See our full calibration settings.
This TV has good accuracy out of the box in HDR. The overall color accuracy is only average, as noticeable mapping errors are present across all colors, and this issue is particularly pronounced in more saturated shades. The white balance is slightly improved, but it still struggles with shadow details. On the positive side of things, the color temperature is nearly perfect.
Calibrating this TV doesn't do much to improve color accuracy in HDR. The white balance benefits the most from calibration, but it barely improves colors.
Unfortunately, the TCL 98QM8K has disappointing PQ EOTF tracking. Near-black shadow details are significantly crushed, and midtones appear a bit too dim. As it approaches the TV's peak brightness, it boosts highlights above the target before hard clipping at the TV's peak brightness.
This TV has great low-quality content smoothing. It does a fantastic job smoothing out artifacts in low-bitrate content with just a slight loss of fine details.
Lower-quality streams are upscaled properly, with no noticeable issues or excessive over-sharpening. Fine details are a bit hard to mark out, but the image is clear.
The TV has good gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding and posterization in darker shades of gray and blue, as well as brighter shades of green.
This TV has extremely low input lag in Game Master mode, ensuring a responsive gaming experience with any supported mode. It also supports low-latency motion interpolation, allowing you to enhance the fluidity of motion without introducing significant lag.
The TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz on two of its four HDMI ports. It also supports up to 288Hz with 1080p and 1440p signals. All supported formats also support proper chroma 4:4:4, which is essential for clear text from a PC.
The TCL 98QM8K supports all three types of variable refresh rate (VRR) technology to reduce screen tearing. It works well with AMD sources, like an AMD GPU or any console across a wide refresh rate range, and it works with Low Framerate Compensation (LFC), ensuring your games remain nearly tear-free even when your frame rate drops very low.
Unfortunately, there's an issue when using it with an NVIDIA GPU. If you set your desktop to a locked 60Hz refresh rate, as some games do, it still tears as if VRR isn't working at all. It works fine if you set your computer to 4k @ 120Hz or higher and let VRR do its thing.
The CAD at the max 4k refresh rate of 144Hz is mediocre. It struggles at both extremes, as transitions to and from both very dark or very bright shades are very slow, causing noticeable blur in fast-paced motion. There's no noticeable overshoot, though, which is great.
Oddly, dropping down to 120Hz actually improves motion handling on this TV when gaming. Transitions are still slow, but there's slightly less blur than at the max 144Hz refresh rate.
When gaming at 60Hz, the CAD is mediocre. It performs very similarly to the max refresh rate, with long blur trails in both very bright and very dark shades.
The TV is fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers, like 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz, as well as HDMI Forum VRR. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to worry about manually switching to Game Master to get the lowest input lag.
The TV is fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers, including 1440p @ 120Hz, 4k @ 120Hz, HDMI Forum VRR, and FreeSync Premium Pro. It also supports Auto Low Latency Mode, so you don't have to manually switch to Game Master to get the lowest input lag.
The TCL 98QM8K has visible response time stutter when watching 24p and 25p content, especially in slow panning shots.
The TCL 98QM8K is able to remove judder from any source.
The TV has a good response time. Most transitions look good, but there's some overshoot, especially coming out of a dark shade. Transitions from a very dark shade to a very bright one are very slow, though.
The TCL 98QM8K has an extremely odd flicker pattern, combining extremely high-frequency PWM with a DC dimming component to adjust the backlight output.
This TV has an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. This feature is meant to reduce persistence blur and improve the appearance of motion. Unlike most TVs on the market in 2025, it works at both 60Hz and 120Hz, but the pulse timing is a bit off, and there's noticeable image duplication.
The optional motion interpolation feature is just okay. There's a noticeable loss of fine detail and there are visual artifacts at higher settings.
The glossy screen coating does very little to reduce the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. You'll still see bright lights or windows that are directly opposite the screen, but you can get around this in SDR by increasing the brightness to compensate.
Ambient light has no noticeable impact on this TV's black levels.
Overall, the amount of total reflected light off the screen is good. Glare from lights or windows is very bright, and there's noticeable rainbow smearing. Indirect reflections aren't nearly as noticeable, though.
Ambient light has almost no noticeable impact on the color saturation of this TV.
The TCL 98QM8K has an okay viewing angle. While there's no noticeable black level raise, colors drop rapidly as you move off-center and there's a noticeable red shift at a wide angle.
The gray uniformity on this TV is decent. There's just a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, but there are noticeable dark bands on the sides of the screen and it's a bit patchy throughout.
The TCL 98QM8K is one of the first TVs on the market to use TCL CSOT's newest panel technology, known as WHVA. This new panel is designed to combine the strengths of VA and IPS, delivering wider viewing angles than traditional VA panels but with the same deep blacks. Unlike traditional VA panels, the subpixels are laid out in an R-G-B layout, which helps with text clarity when used with a PC.
The TV uses quantum dots for both red and green to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between each primary color.
Two of the HDMI inputs support up to 48Gbps bandwidth. The eARC output is on an 18Gbps port, which is good and bad. It doesn't use up one of the high-bandwidth ports on the TV, but this also means you can't pair it with a receiver that supports 48Gbps output to connect more than two high-bandwidth sources.
The TV supports eARC, which lets you pass high-quality, uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver or soundbar through an HDMI cable. It supports all major audio formats, so you don't have to worry about compatibility with external sources.
The TCL 98QM8K TV has a very premium, modern design. The bezels are incredibly thin, and it blends in well despite its impressive size.
The 98-inch version of this TV features two feet at either end, replacing the center-mounted stand. The feet are quite simple, but they support the TV well. The feet only lift the bottom of the screen about 2.3 inches above the table, so most soundbars will block a portion of the screen if you place them directly in front of the TV.
Footprint of the 98-inch stand: 74" x 16.5".
The back of the TV has cutouts and guides to help with cable management. The inputs face to the right when looking at the front of the TV, but they're inset into the back and can be difficult to access if the TV is mounted close to the wall.
This TV has excellent build quality. It's a large TV, so naturally, it wobbles a bit. Be sure to secure it if you're not wall-mounting it. It's well-built, with premium materials and no obvious flaws. Some early owners have reported a buzzing sound coming from the 98-inch version of this TV. Our unit doesn't have this issue, but it could still be an issue on new units.
This TV ships with version 12 of the very popular Google TV smart interface.
Unfortunately, like most TVs, the interface contains ads. You can opt out of personalized ads, but this doesn't change the number of ads you'll see; they just won't be personalized to match your search and viewing history.
You have the option to setup the TV using the 'Basic Google TV' option, which gets rid of ads, but prevents you from using most of the TV's smart features.
The TCL 98QM8K has a poor frequency response. The sound profile isn't very well-balanced, and dialogue is a bit muted even at moderate listening levels. It can't get very loud, either.