TCL QM8L  TV Review

The TCL QM8L is incredibly bright. Small specular highlight details get extremely bright and stand out well. It struggles to keep the brightness high when more of the screen is bright at once, but it's still bright enough with most content to deliver an impactful viewing experience.

It's even brighter when displaying a window between 2-10%. A 5% window appears to be a bit of a sweet spot for the TV's local dimming feature, and it even exceeds 6,000 nits with a window that size.

The TV's peak brightness varies depending on the settings used. Below are additional measurements showing the impact of some of these settings on real scene brightness measurements.

Dynamic Tone Mapping 'Off':

Peak Brightness 'High':

With most content, there's no difference in peak brightness when you switch to the low-latency Game Master mode. Some scenes are slightly dimmer, but they're still bright enough to deliver an impactful gaming experience.

This TV is incredibly bright in SDR. It's bright enough to easily overcome glare in a bright room. Like most TVs, it struggles to maintain high brightness levels when more of the scene is bright at once, but this isn't an issue with most real content.

The TCL QM8L has excellent contrast. Its Mini LED local dimming system does a fantastic job of improving contrast in dark scenes, and the native contrast ratio is high enough to maintain deep blacks in areas that are too small for the local dimming feature to handle.

The backlight control on this TV is extremely precise. It handles oddly shaped objects like subtitles well, with very minimal haloing around them.

The zone transitions on this TV are excellent. The processor keeps up with fast-moving objects well, so there's no noticeable halo trail behind fast-moving objects. There's a slight flicker effect as fast-moving objects move between zones, though.

Switching to Game Master mode has no noticeable impact on dark details and contrast.

The black uniformity on this TV is amazing. With local dimming on, it's nearly perfect, with almost no variation in black levels across the screen. Even with local dimming off, it's still very good, with no distracting flashlighting or other visible issues.

The TCL QM8L has excellent SDR color volume. Colors are incredibly bright and vibrant even in very light scenes, and it displays most of the DCI-P3 color space. Coverage of the wider BT.2020 color is lower, but still great.

The HDR color volume on the TCL QM8L is fantastic. Colors are incredibly bright and vibrant, with excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by most HDR content. It has much lower coverage of the BT.2020 color space, but it's still very good.

Unfortunately, colors are a bit washed out at high luminance levels, as the TV pushes pure whites higher than the combined luminance of each subpixel when displayed individually. This isn't noticeable with most real content, but in exceptionally bright scenes, colors are a bit washed out.

The TCL QM8L has great accuracy in SDR before calibration. Gamma tracks a bit higher than the target, so most content is a bit too dark, but the white balance and color errors are excellent, with very few noticeable issues. There's a bit too much blue in most midtones, though, and the overall color temperature is a bit cool.

This TV is fairly easy to calibrate, and it delivers superb results after calibration. It has nearly perfect color and white balance accuracy, and gamma is perfect. The color temperature is also nearly perfect.

See our full calibration settings.

Unfortunately, there's a bug with the user interface that makes it slightly more complicated to calibrate. When you switch from one stimulus level to the next, the UI makes it look like the TV has copied the values from the previous level. You have to back out to the previous menu and reselect the stimulus level you want to adjust each time you change levels.

Unfortunately, the TCL QM8L has disappointing accuracy in HDR out of the box. The RGB balance is pretty good, but color accuracy is sub-par, with noticeable mapping and luminance errors across the spectrum. The white balance is a bit better, but there are still noticeable issues in most shades, and the color temperature is too cold.

Unfortunately, this TV has sub-par accuracy in HDR even after a full calibration. Color accuracy and the white balance are slightly better, but it simply doesn't respond well to calibration, and the overall color temperature is still too cold.

Given how bright this TV can get, it can be difficult to get accurate measurements with certain equipment, especially lower-end colorimeters, which are usually only accurate to a brightness level below this TV's peak brightness. These results were checked with a Colorimetry Research CR-100 and double-checked with a CR-250 to rule out any potential measurement issues from the equipment.

Unfortunately, the TCL QM8L has poor PQ EOTF tracking with Peak Brightness set to 'High.' Shadow details are displayed well, but midtones and bright shades are way too bright. The TV also cuts off sharply at its peak brightness, but this isn't too much of an issue since the TV can actually display most bright highlights at their intended brightness level, so it doesn't need to tone map them to preserve gradation.

Dropping the Peak Brightness setting to 'Low' significantly improves the PQ EOTF tracking, but bright highlights are still too bright. This mode also decreases the TV's peak brightness with small highlights by about 1,000 nits. If you care more about accuracy than brightness, 'Low' is the better choice.

The PQ EOTF tracking on this TV also varies depending on the window size used to measure it. The TV is considerably more accurate when sent a 10% window, which is the window size used by most TV reviewers to measure PQ EOTF tracking. We use a different window size, 

This TV has very good low-quality content smoothing. It does a great job reducing macro blocking and pixelization from streaming sources, but there's some slight loss of fine details.

The TCL QM8L has excellent upscaling and sharpness processing.

The TV has decent gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in darker shades of gray and brighter shades of green and blue, but it's not too bad.

The TCL QM8L has excellent input lag once you switch to the Game Master mode. It's incredibly responsive, especially at higher refresh rates. Like other high-end TCL and Samsung TVs, it also has a low-latency motion interpolation feature, which generates intermediate frames when gaming to improve the fluidity of motion. Unlike similar features like AMD's Fluid Motion Frames or NVIDIA's Frame Generation, this feature works with any source, even older consoles.

Adjusting the local dimming setting has no impact on input lag. We measured it with local dimming on 'High' and on 'Off' and found no difference.

The TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz on all four of its 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 QM8L 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, like the TCL QM8K, VRR doesn't work properly with NVIDIA GPUs when the refresh rate is locked at 60Hz. This is only an issue if you have an older GPU and can't handshake above 4k @ 60Hz; it works fine if you set your computer to 4k @ 120Hz or higher.

Unfortunately, the CAD at the max 4k refresh rate of 144Hz is very high. Near-black shadow details are very clear, but longer transitions are slow, resulting in significant motion blur.

The CAD at 120Hz is sub-par, and motion is very blurry and lacks clarity. There's no overshoot or inverse ghosting; it's just slow in most transitions.

The CAD at 60Hz is still very slow, and motion is extremely blurry.

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, Dolby Vision, 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.

This TV has relatively little stutter thanks to its slow response time. There's still some stutter in slow-panning shots.

The motion interpolation feature on this TV does a very good job of reducing stutter. Even with low levels of interpolation, the frame hold time is significantly lower. It's also incredibly consistent, with very little variation between frames.

This TV removes judder from most sources. The TV doesn't entirely remove judder from 25p content being sent via a 60p source like an older cable box, as frame times are slightly inconsistent, so motion is a bit jittery.

There's no micro judder on this TV.

The TCL QM8L has an okay response time when watching content like sports or movies. Transitions are inconsistent, though, and it's especially slow when coming out of a dark shade or transitioning to a very bright one.

Unfortunately, transitions are uneven, leading to noticeable artifacts. There are some unwanted intermediate colors, but they're extremely minor and not very noticeable. Edges are noticeably soft, and there's noticeable ghosting at the sides of moving objects.

This TV uses PWM to adjust the backlight, but it flickers at an extremely high frequency that's not noticeable.

The 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, but the pulse timing is a bit off, and motion is still very blurry. Oddly, it only flickers at 120Hz, even with a 60Hz source, which creates a noticeable double image.

The direct reflections on this TV are just okay. It reduces the intensity of bright lights and windows a bit, but they're still very clear and noticeable.

Ambient light has barely an impact on black levels.

The total amount of reflected light is good. Reflections are still noticeable in a bright room, and there are obvious diffraction artifacts, including a distracting rainbow smear around bright lights.

Ambient light has almost no noticeable impact on perceived color volume on this TV. High-luminance colors are noticeably washed out, but this is an impact of the way the TV boosts pure white at the expense of color saturation in bright scenes. It's not caused by ambient light.

Unfortunately, the TV has a mediocre viewing angle. Colors wash out quickly as you move to the sides, and blues drop off rapidly.

Note: The red tint on this video is an interaction between the camera sensor and the very strong red peak emitted by the TV. It's not noticeable in person.

The TV has okay gray uniformity. There's just a bit of dirty screen effect in the center, but the sides of the screen are noticeably darker. It's a lot better in near-black scenes.

The TCL QM8L uses a combination of new panel technologies, including an improved color filter, a new WHVA 2.0 panel structure, and improved quantum dots, which TCL calls Super Quantum Dots.

All four HDMI inputs support the full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth.

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.

This model will also support Dolby Vision 2 with a future firmware update. TCL hasn't confirmed if it'll support HDR10+ Advanced, though.

The TCL QM8L has a premium style, with incredibly thin bezels on all four sides and a modern, pedestal-style stand that takes up very little space.

The pedestal stand takes up very little space, and it offers a high and low mounting position so you can fit a soundbar in front of the TV without blocking the screen.

Footprint of the 65-inch screen: 15.3" x 14.6" x 3.4" in the high position and 2.2" in the low position.

The back of the TV has the same textured pattern as the TCL X11L. There are cable guides along the back of the TV and a notch in the stand to help with cable management. The inputs are recessed into a cutout on the back of the TV, so they can be difficult to access if the TV is mounted close to the wall.

The TCL QM8L has excellent build quality. It's mostly made of a high-quality plastic, giving it a somewhat premium feel. There are no obvious quality control issues with the unit we bought.

The TCL QM8L ships with Google TV version 14 and includes support for the Google Gemini smart assistant. Running AIDA64 on the TV shows that it's powered by the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, with 2.5GB of RAM and ~48GB of storage space.

Unfortunately, like almost all TVs on the market, the smart interface contains ads, and you can't disable them.

Like the TCL X11L, the remote has a few additional buttons, including a new programmable button. There's also a button on the side of the remote to quickly change picture settings, and a rocker to quickly adjust brightness.

• Setup guide
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable
• Cable management clips
• Wall-mount spacers

This TV was originally tested with firmware version V080, but V082 was released late in the testing process. We spot checked the most important aspects of the TV and confirmed that only the pre-calibration results changed, so that was completely redone.

The TCL QM8L has a decent frequency response. It has a very well-balanced sound profile as long as you're not driving it at max volume, so dialogue is clear and easy to understand. It has okay max volume and a bit more bass than most TVs, but there's noticeable thumping at max volume.