The TCL QM5K is an entry-level Mini LED TV released in 2025 that's exclusive to Best Buy. It's meant as a cheaper alternative to the TCL QM6K, with similar picture quality but fewer gaming features. It's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate at the native 4k resolution, but if you drop down to 1080p or 1440p, it goes up to 144Hz, making it a great choice for budget-conscious PC and console gamers alike. It also supports VRR to help reduce screen tearing. It supports both Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10+ formats and runs version 12 of the popular Google TV smart interface. We bought and tested the 75-inch version, but it's also available in 50, 55, 65, and 85-inch options.
Our Verdict
The TCL QM5K is a decent TV for most uses. It's best suited for a moderately lit room, but it can handle some glare if you like to watch TV during the day. It delivers decent picture quality overall, with good contrast and okay color reproduction. Its local dimming feature is effective, but not perfect, so it's not a great choice for watching movies in the dark. It offers a good selection of gaming features, including low input lag, VRR support, and a high refresh rate with 1080p or 1440p resolution. However, it cannot fully utilize the latest game consoles, as it lacks support for 4 K at 120Hz.
Mini LED backlighting delivers deep blacks in simple scenes.
Bright enough in SDR to overcome glare from indirect light sources.
Visible glare when placed directly opposite bright lights or windows.
Image degrades rapidly when viewed from the side.
The TCL QM5K is a decent TV for watching movies under reference conditions. It has good contrast, but its local dimming feature is somewhat limited, as it struggles to dim precisely around small highlights or subtitles, and it struggles to keep up with fast-moving objects. It has decent processing, but most importantly, it has great PQ EOTF tracking, so most HDR content is displayed at the brightness level intended by the content creator. It also offers excellent format support, including Dolby Vision and HDR10+ compatibility. Unfortunately, the TV doesn't remove judder from most sources, and there's visible stutter in slow panning shots.
Mini LED backlighting delivers deep blacks in simple scenes.
Great PQ EOTF tracking follows the content creator's intent.
Noticeable haloing around bright highlights or subtitles set on a dark background.
Bright specular highlights are too dim in HDR to provide a truly impactful viewing experience.
Doesn't remove judder from 24fps content.
Visible stutter in slow panning shots.
The TCL QM5K is a decent choice for a bright room. It has good peak brightness in SDR so it can handle some glare. The glossy coating does little to reduce glare from both direct and indirect reflections, and there's a slight haze that makes things a bit worse overall. Thankfully, ambient light has little impact on its black levels or color saturation.
Bright enough in SDR to overcome glare from indirect light sources.
Visible glare when placed directly opposite bright lights or windows.
The TCL QM5K is a decent TV for watching sports. It's bright enough in SDR to overcome a bit of glare in a bright room, but it struggles with direct reflections. It has okay image processing, but it can't do much to clear up macro-blocking from low-quality streams. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center, which is great, but there are some noticeable uniformity issues on the sides. It has a good enough response time that motion isn't excessively blurry, but there's still some blur artifacts around the edges of players and objects in fast-paced sports. Unfortunately, the image fades rapidly when viewed from the sides, so it's not a good choice for a wide seating arrangement.
Bright enough in SDR to overcome glare from indirect light sources.
Visible glare when placed directly opposite bright lights or windows.
Image degrades rapidly when viewed from the side.
Can't do much to smooth out low-quality content without losing fine details.
The TCL QM5K is an okay gaming TV. It features low input lag for a responsive gaming experience and a comprehensive selection of gaming features, including VRR support to minimize tearing. It's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate at its native 4k resolution, but you can bump that up to 120Hz or 144Hz with a 1080p or 1440p resolution. Unfortunately, switching to its dedicated Game Master mode comes at the expense of picture quality, as it's significantly dimmer in that mode and contrast is a bit worse.
Extremely low input lag.
Supports up to 144Hz with 1080p and 1440p signals.
Noticeable haloing around bright highlights or subtitles set on a dark background.
Significant decrease in brightness when you switch to the Game Master mode.
Sluggish near-black response time.
The TCL QM5K has okay peak brightness. It performs well in SDR, where it's bright enough to overcome some glare in a bright room, even in very bright scenes. In HDR, it's a bit more limited, though, and it struggles to deliver bright specular highlights the way they're meant to be seen.
Bright enough in SDR to overcome glare from indirect light sources.
Bright specular highlights are too dim in HDR to provide a truly impactful viewing experience.
The TCL QM5K has good black levels. Its Mini LED local dimming feature is very effective at boosting contrast, but the algorithms struggle to dim zones precisely around small objects. This leads to noticeable haloing around subtitles or in complicated scenes like star fields. It also struggles to keep up with fast-moving objects, so the edge of a bright object on a background is often darker than it should be, and there's a trailing halo behind it.
Mini LED backlighting delivers deep blacks in simple scenes.
Noticeable haloing around bright highlights or subtitles set on a dark background.
The TCL QM5K has just okay colors. It struggles to display saturated greens and reds in HDR color spaces, and it has just okay accuracy out of the box in both SDR and HDR.
The TCL QM5K has subpar motion handling when watching movies, shows, and sports. It doesn't remove judder from any 24p sources, so most movies and shows look a bit choppy. There's also micro-judder present in scenes with a lot movement on the screen when you're using the internal apps. Furthermore, you might notice some stutter in slow panning shots, and the TV's motion interpolation doesn't do much to smooth out motion. Fortunately, it does a decent job of avoiding severe artifacts in fast-paced scenes and sports.
Doesn't remove judder from 24fps content.
Visible micro-judder when using the internal apps.
Visible stutter in slow panning shots.
The TCL QM5K has decent responsiveness in its dedicated Game Master mode. It has incredibly low input lag, ensuring your actions are in sync with what you see on the screen. It has a good selection of gaming features, including VRR support, but it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate at its native 4k resolution. With its Game Accelerator feature, you can bump that up to 144Hz with a PC or 120Hz with a console, but only at a 1080p or 1440p resolution.
Extremely low input lag.
Supports up to 144Hz with 1080p and 1440p signals.
Significant decrease in brightness when you switch to the Game Master mode.
Sluggish near-black response time.
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 QM5K has decent process. It has great PQ EOTF tracking, so most HDR content is displayed close to the creator's intended brightness. Its upscaling and low-quality content smoothing is just okay, though, and it can't do much to smooth out macro-blocking without losing some fine details. Finally, it has mediocre gradient handling in HDR, and there's noticeable banding in most shades.
Great PQ EOTF tracking follows the content creator's intent.
Can't do much to smooth out low-quality content without losing fine details.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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Updated Mar 19, 2026:
During our retests for TBU 2.2, we noticed that the 'Natural Cinema' setting wasn't properly removing judder and instead caused noticeable artifacts. We updated our scores and the text in the Judder section of our review to reflect that.
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Updated Mar 11, 2026:
We added text to our new Cinematic Motion Handling performance usage and our new Transition Artifacts and Stutter Reduction Via Interpolation test sections after converting the review to TV 2.2.
- Updated Mar 10, 2026: This review has been updated to TV 2.2. We've added new sections for Transition Artifacts and Stutter Reduction Via Interpolation, and updated the way we test Stutter. Additionally, we removed the 'Broken' disclaimer from our Motion Handling usage.
- Updated Feb 05, 2026: We added text to the new Micro-Judder section and refreshed the text in the updated Judder and Response Time Stutter sections after converting the review to TV 2.1.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 75-inch TCL QM5K, and most of these results are also valid for the 50, 55, and 65-inch models. The 50-inch version doesn't support TCL's Game Accelerator feature, so you're limited to 60Hz at all resolutions.
| Size | Model | Game Accelerator |
|---|---|---|
| 50" | TCL 50QM5K | No |
| 55" | TCL 55QM5K | Yes (1080p, 1440p @ 144Hz) |
| 65" | TCL 65QM5K | Yes (1080p, 1440p @ 144Hz) |
| 75" | TCL 75QM5K | Yes (1080p, 1440p @ 144Hz) |
| 85" | TCL 85QM5K | Yes (1080p, 1440p @ 144Hz) |
Our unit was made in China in June 2025.
Popular TV Comparisons
The TCL QM5K is a surprisingly decent TV for the price. It offers a great entry point for gamers seeking better picture quality than most budget options, while still providing a good selection of gaming features, including VRR and a high refresh rate. It delivers significantly better picture quality than similarly priced gaming TVs, such as the Hisense QD7N or TCL Q77K, while limiting the maximum refresh rate to 60Hz with a 4 K resolution. This makes it well-suited for console gamers, but slightly less appealing to PC gamers seeking the fastest refresh rate available.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best Google TVs, the best QLED TVs, and the best gaming TVs.
The TCL QM6K and the TCL QM5K are very similar overall, but the QM6K is slightly better. The QM6K has more advanced gaming features, supporting up to a 288Hz refresh rate with low resolution signals or a 144Hz refresh rate with a 4k signal. The QM6K is also more accurate out of the box.
The TCL QM5K is a lot better than the TCL Q651G. The QM5K is brighter in both SDR and HDR, so it can handle more glare in a bright room, and HDR stands out a bit better. Unlike the Q651G, the QM5K features a Mini LED local dimming feature. Even though it's not perfect, it still delivers much deeper, more uniform blacks, and it looks better in a dark room.
The TCL QM5K is significantly better than the Hisense QD7N. The TCL is a lot brighter, delivering brighter highlights in HDR and a better daytime viewing experience. The TCL also has significantly better contrast, with deep, more uniform blacks and a Mini LED local dimming feature for better dynamic range. The QD7N supports higher refresh rates at the native 4k resolution, so it's slightly better for gamers who care more about a fast refresh rate than overall picture quality.
The Hisense U65QF is slightly better than the TCL QM5K, but the differences are very minor. The Hisense TV is a bit brighter overall in most scenes, allowing bright highlights to stand out better in HDR, but it's also less accurate. It's also better for gaming, as it supports a higher refresh rate with 4k signals, so you can take full advantage of the latest gaming consoles.
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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The TCL QM5K has mediocre peak brightness in HDR. While it's bright enough to bring out most midtones and average scenes in HDR, bright specular highlights don't stand out well. Very bright scenes don't deliver an impactful experience overall.
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: 451 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 312 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 171 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Balance:
- Hallway Lights: 451 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 348 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 197 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 457 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 348 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 219 cd/m²
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Update 12/15/2025: We rechecked this with the latest firmware (v499), and there's no difference.
Unfortunately, this TV is significantly dimmer when you switch to the low-latency Game Master mode. The brightness drops considerably in all scenes, and HDR is significantly less impactful. This is likely a bug, as other TCL TVs released in 2025 haven't had this issue.
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: 378 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 192 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 177 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Balance:
- Hallway Lights: 378 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 213 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 176 cd/m²
Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:
- Hallway Lights: 396 cd/m²
- Yellow Skyscraper: 224 cd/m²
- Landscape Pool: 193 cd/m²
The TV has good peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room, even when more of the screen is bright, like when watching sports.
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The TCL QM5K has good contrast. The native contrast of the panel is pretty good, so in more complicated scenes black levels remain decent.
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The lighting zone precision on this TV is mediocre. It's okay in simple scenes, but it struggles to dim tightly around complex scenes like star fields or even around text in subtitles.
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The zone transitions on the TCL QM5K are mediocre. It's okay in slower motion, but once things pick up it can't keep up with the action, and the zones don't turn on quickly enough. There's also a very noticeable flicker as objects move between zones on a dark background.
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The SDR color volume on this TV is okay. It has decent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, but it struggles with saturated greens and reds. Coverage of the wider BT.2020 color space is poor, and it struggles with lighter shades in that color space.
| Volume ΔE³ | DCI-P3 Coverage |
BT.2020 Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| L10 | 89.99% | 67.46% |
| L20 | 88.62% | 65.02% |
| L30 | 89.82% | 65.94% |
| L40 | 86.45% | 64.59% |
| L50 | 84.29% | 63.16% |
| L60 | 81.93% | 59.86% |
| L70 | 78.77% | 50.76% |
| L80 | 77.53% | 47.80% |
| L90 | 77.11% | 47.77% |
| L100 | 80.98% | 57.85% |
| Total | 81.85% | 56.49% |
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This TV has okay color volume in HDR. It displays low luminance colors well thanks to its fairly high contrast ratio, but it struggles with bright colors and it can't fill out the color space.
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The TCL QM5K has mediocre accuracy out of the box. The white balance is its biggest issue, as there's way too much red and blue, especially in brighter shades. The overall color temperature is slightly cool, but not too noticeable, and color accuracy is generally good, with only a few minor issues in light shades. Gamma is surprisingly good, with just one odd bump in the low end that crushes some shadow details slightly.
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Thankfully, this TV is easy to calibrate and the results are fantastic. The white balance and color temperature are nearly perfect after calibration, and most people won't notice the remaining color inaccuracies. The odd spike in low level gamma is still there, though, and shadow details are crushed a bit.
See our full calibration settings.
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The TCL QM5K Series has okay accuracy in HDR before calibration. The biggest issue in HDR is the color temperature, which is far too cold, resulting in a noticeable blue tint on everything. The white balance is good, and color dE is decent, with a few issues across the board, but nothing too noticeable.
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After calibration, this TV exhibits great accuracy in HDR. The white balance and color dE are both significantly improved after calibration, with only a few minor issues, primarily in brighter shades. The color temperature is improved, but it's still slightly cool.
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The PQ EOTF tracking on this TV is excellent. Shadow details are raised a bit in HDR, but it's very minor, and most midtones are displayed well. It pushes content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits to the maximum brightness possible, resulting in a sharp cutoff at the TV's peak brightness. There's a more gradual roll off with content mastered at 4,000 nits, which preserves brightness gradients but limits how bright those highlights get.
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The TV has decent low-quality content smoothing. It reduces macro-blocking from low-bitrate feeds a bit, but there's some loss of fine detail in the process.
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The TV does an alright job at upscaling low-resolution content like DVDs or lower-resolution streams. Details are somewhat clear, but finer details are noticeably hard to make out.
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The TV's gradient handling in HDR is mediocre. There's noticeable banding in all shades, but it's especially bad in bright shades of green.
The TCL QM5K has incredibly low input lag at all resolutions and refresh rate combinations when set to Game Master.
This TV is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate with 4k signals, but if you drop the resolution to 1080p or 1440p it can go up to 144Hz. It also supports chroma 4:4:4 with all supported signals, ensuring text is displayed properly from a PC.
The TV supports all three types of VRR, which helps reduce tearing from sources that support VRR. When gaming at 4k the VRR range is very narrow, so it doesn't work with sources that support Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) and you'll see tearing if the framerate drops below 48 fps. When gaming at 1080p or 1440p it goes up to 144Hz and works with LFC, so you'll get a much better experience.
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The TCL QM5K's CAD at the maximum refresh rate of 60Hz when gaming in 4k is mediocre. It struggles most when going to or from near-black shades, leading to more motion blur in shadow details. Midtones and bright shades look a lot better, but there's still noticeable blur.
Dropping down to 1440p or 1080p unlocks higher refresh rates up to 144Hz, and the TV's CAD is a bit better. It still struggles with near-black transitions, though.
| 144Hz | Heatmap | Transitions |
| 120Hz | Heatmap | Transitions |
| 100Hz | Heatmap | Transitions |
| 80Hz | Heatmap | Transitions |
| 60Hz | Heatmap | Transitions |
This TV doesn't support a 120Hz refresh rate at the TV's native resolution.
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The TV's CAD at 60Hz when gaming in 4k is mediocre. It struggles most when transitioning to or from near-black shades, resulting in increased motion blur in shadow details. Midtones and bright shades look a lot better, but there's still noticeable blur.
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The TV is nearly fully compatible with everything the PS5 offers. It supports 1440p and 1080p at 120Hz, but when gaming in 4k it's limited to 60Hz. 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.
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The TV is nearly fully compatible with everything the Xbox Series X|S offers. It supports 1440p and 1080p at 120Hz, but when gaming in 4k it's limited to 60Hz. 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, and it supports Dolby Vision gaming.
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The TV does a poor job mitigating stutter in 24fps content when using the motion interpolation setting that's equivalent to 30fps. Although the sample and hold time is decreased, the feature has such bad consistency that motion looks incredibly uneven and jarring.
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Unfortunately, the TCL QM5K has visible judder from most sources. It's only judder-free when watching 25p content through the TV's built-in apps or from 25Hz signals, like an Apple TV with the 'Match Frame Rate' featured enabled. Unfortunately, there's judder with all 24p content regardless of the source, so most movies and shows look a bit choppy.
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Unfortunately, the TV has visible micro-judder in scenes with complex motion if you're using the internal apps or watching 24p content from an older device that outputs a 60Hz signal. However, there's no micro-judder if you're using a device with a 'Match Frame Rate' feature, such as the Apple TV.
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The cinematic pixel response time on this TV is decent. It struggles most when going from a dark scene to a brighter one or transitioning into a near-black scene.
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The TCL QM5K does a decent job of avoiding transition artifacts overall. Color artifacts are kept to a minimum, but there's still some unintended intermediate colors present in fast-paced scenes and sports, such as the hints of yellow that surround blues. It does a satisfactory job of avoiding severe edge artifacts, but there's still some trails of blur behind the edges of fast-moving objects and people.
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This TV uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. Fortunately, it flickers at an incredibly fast rate in all picture modes and at all brightness levels, so it's not noticeable.
This TV doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion (BFI).
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This TV has sub-par direct reflection handling. The glossy coating reflects direct reflections from lamps or windows with very little decrease in intensity, so they're quite distracting. It adds a slight haze to them as well, so they cover more of the screen than they should.
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The total reflected light of this TV is alright. Bright lights and reflections from indirect lighting are both noticeable, and there's some noticeable light banding.
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The ambient color saturation on this TV is decent. Ambient light reduces the intensity of high-luminance colors noticeably, but this TV struggles with those even in a dark room.
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The TV has a mediocre viewing angle. The image shifts noticeably even at a moderate angle, and colors shift to red when viewed from the sides.
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The TCL QM5K has okay gray uniformity. There's relatively little dirty screen effect in the center, which is great for sports fans, but the sides are patchy and uneven. It's even worse in dark scenes.
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The TCL QM5K uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video or gaming content, this doesn't cause any issues, but for PC monitor use, it can be a problem as it impacts the text clarity, although not everyone will notice this.
The TV uses a KSF phosphor coating to produce red light, with high peaks on reds and blues. Greens aren't as pure and it seems to use a lower-quality quantum dot like InP.
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There are three HDMI inputs, two of which are limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth. Port 1 supports up to 48Gbps according to the EDID (FRL 12x4), but there's no way to confirm that as the TV doesn't actually support any signal formats that could take advantage of the extra bandwidth. We don't know why TCL would include a higher bandwidth port on this TV, but it was possibly done to save costs by reusing parts from the TCL QM6K.
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.
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The two feet are made of plastic and can be placed in two distinct positions. In the wider position shown, the footprint of the 75-inch stand is 56" x 13.4", while it's 28.6" x 13.4" in the narrow position.
The feet lift the TV about 3.6 inches above the table, so almost any soundbar fits underneath it without blocking the visible portion of the screen.
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The back of the TCL QM5K has a nice textured pattern that looks surprisingly premium. The inputs face to the side and they're easy to access even if you wall-mount the TV. There are clips on the back of the TV to help with basic cable management.
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The TCL QM5K has decent build quality. It's mostly made of a cheaper-feeling plastic that detracts a bit from the overall experience, but there are no obvious defects or quality issues with our unit. There's some slight flex in the back panel, but this is quite common and shouldn't cause any problems.
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This TV ships with version 12 of the very popular Google TV smart interface.
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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.
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- Setup guide
- Remote
- 2x AAA batteries
- Power cable
- Cable ties
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This TV has a sub-par frequency response. It has a well-balanced sound profile at low and moderate listening levels, but it doesn't sound as good at max volume. It can't get very loud, either, and it has very little bass.