The TCL QM9K is a high-end model in TCL's 2025 North American lineup, sitting above the TCL QM8K. The QM9K features a similar WHVA panel to the TCL QM8K, but TCL advertises a higher peak brightness, up to 6,500 nits, and up to 6,000 dimming zones. It's a feature-packed TV with high refresh rate support up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz, along with HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on two ports and an ATSC 3.0 tuner. It's the first TV on the market to come with built-in support for Google's Gemini AI assistant, which allows you to quickly search for information and get AI-summarized results right on the screen. We bought and tested the 65-inch model, but it's also available in a 75-inch, 85-inch, and 98-inch size.
Our Verdict
The TCL QM9K is a great TV overall. It gets incredibly bright, making it a fantastic choice for a bright living room, as it can easily overcome daytime glare. It looks just as stunning in the dark, thanks to its very effective Mini LED local dimming feature. Colors are bright and vibrant, but there are a few noticeable issues with color accuracy before calibration. It's a great gaming TV thanks to its wide selection of gaming features, like VRR support, low input lag, and support for very high refresh rates.
Incredibly high contrast.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare even in extremely bright rooms.
Some noticeable color mapping issues out of the box.
Noticeable vignetting.
The TCL QM9K delivers an excellent home theater experience. It delivers incredibly deep, uniform blacks thanks to its Mini LED local dimming feature and high zone count. It gets incredibly bright, so even the brightest highlights in HDR stand out well. It doesn't track creative intent very well, though, and there are noticeable issues with both color mapping and brightness, resulting in a loss of fine shadow details and overblown highlights. It has fantastic format support, including DTS audio and Dolby Vision support. Unfortunately, the edges of characters and objects are blurrier than intended due to subpar pixel transitions when the action ramps up. There's also some visible stutter in shots with slower camera movements, but not everyone will be bothered by it
Incredibly high contrast.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Specular highlights stand out incredibly well in HDR.
Very little haloing around bright highlights.
Excellent black uniformity.
Some noticeable color mapping issues out of the box.
Shadow details are crushed in HDR.
Noticeable stutter in slow panning shots.
Fast-paced scenes and sports have visible artifacts.
The TCL QM9K is an excellent choice for a bright room. It gets incredibly bright in both HDR and SDR, so it can easily overcome glare in a bright room. It has mediocre direct reflection handling, though, so you'll need to increase the brightness during the day. It has great colors, and bright ambient light has almost no noticeable impact on color saturation or contrast.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare even in extremely bright rooms.
Ambient light has very little impact on black levels or color saturation.
Glossy coating doesn't do much to reduce direct reflections.
The TCL QM9K is a great TV for watching sports. It gets incredibly bright, so you don't have to worry about glare if you're watching the big game during the day. It has an okay viewing angle, though, so the best seat is reserved for directly in front of the TV. It has a good response time, so most motion looks pretty good, but when the action really gets going, there's some noticeable blur around the edges of players and objects.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare even in extremely bright rooms.
Ambient light has very little impact on black levels or color saturation.
Smooths out low-quality content well, with just a slight loss of fine details.
Noticeable vignetting.
Image looks washed out from the sides.
Fast-paced scenes and sports have visible artifacts.
The TCL QM9K is a great gaming TV. It delivers a responsive gaming experience overall, mainly thanks to its low input lag, but motion is a bit blurry due to its slow response time. It has an impressive array of gaming features, though, including support for 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz for PC gaming, and HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on two of its HDMI inputs. 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. There's also no noticeable change in picture quality when you switch the TV to its dedicated Game Master mode.
Low input lag with all supported formats.
High refresh rate support, up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz.
Switching to Game Master mode for the lowest input lag has no impact on picture quality.
Only two HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports.
Sluggish response time at 60Hz and 120Hz.
The TCL QM9K has fantastic brightness. In SDR, it's bright enough to easily overcome glare, even in a really bright room. In HDR, it gets incredibly bright with all content, so small specular highlights stand out well in average scenes, but big, bright outdoor shots are also incredibly bright.
Bright enough to easily overcome glare even in extremely bright rooms.
Specular highlights stand out incredibly well in HDR.
The black levels on the TCL QM9K are excellent. Its Mini LED local dimming system delivers incredibly deep blacks. It has excellent black uniformity and very little haloing around bright highlights, but the zone controls aren't perfect, either, and there's some flicker as bright highlights move between zones.
Incredibly high contrast.
Very little haloing around bright highlights.
The TCL QM9K has very good colors. Colors are bright and vibrant, and the TV displays a wide range of colors. It has good accuracy out of the box in SDR, with just a few noticeable issues. HDR is a bit worse, with noticeable color mapping issues across the board.
Colors are bright and vibrant.
Fantastic color volume in HDR.
Some noticeable color mapping issues out of the box.
The TCL QM9K has good motion handling, especially when watching movies and shows. The vast majority of sources are free from judder and micro-judder, except for 25p content being sent via a 60p signal, so there are subtle hiccups in motion if you're watching European content from an older device. There's still some subtle stutter in all content, but it's mainly noticeable in slow panning shots. However, not everyone will be bothered by this. The TV does a good job avoiding color artifacts overall, but there's still some unintended intermediate colors in fast-paced scenes. Unfortunately, there's visible blur artifacts behind fast-moving objects and people, which affects motion clarity in fast-paced scenes and sports.
Removes judder from almost all sources.
No micro-judder from most sources.
Excellent lighting zone transitions.
Noticeable stutter in slow panning shots.
Fast-paced scenes and sports have visible artifacts.
The TCL QM9K has good responsiveness when gaming. It has incredibly low input lag, so your actions are always in sync with what you see on the screen. 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 decent motion handling, though, and there's noticeable blur.
Low input lag with all supported formats.
High refresh rate support, up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 288Hz.
Sluggish response time at 60Hz and 120Hz.
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 QM9K has decent processing capabilities. It does a great job of smoothing out macro blocking and pixelization in low-quality content, but there's some loss of fine details. It upscales lower resolution content well, and there's very little banding in gradients. On the other hand, it has just okay PQ EOTF tracking, resulting in crushed blacks in shadow details and overblown highlights in the brightest scenes.
Smooths out low-quality content well, with just a slight loss of fine details.
Good upscaling.
Shadow details are crushed in HDR.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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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.
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Updated Jan 30, 2026:
We retested the TV's Input Lag with firmware V8-0012T03-LF1V033.001777 and ensured that the Game Direct Sync setting was enabled. We updated the 60Hz results in that section since we saw an improvement.
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Updated Jan 21, 2026:
We retested the TV's PQ EOTF Tracking with firmware V8-0012T03-LFV033.001777 and saw an improvement. We updated the results and text in that section.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We bought and tested the 65-inch TCL QM9K, and these results are also valid for the 75, 85, and 98-inch models. The 98" model has two feet instead of a center stand, but otherwise performs about the same. The number of zones and the peak brightness increase slightly with each step up in size, but TCL hasn't provided the exact numbers for each size.
The closest European model is the TCL C9K, but owner reports have shown that it has different internal hardware, so these results don't apply to that model.
| Size | Model |
|---|---|
| 65" | TCL 65QM9K |
| 75" | TCL 75QM9K |
| 85" | TCL 85QM9K |
| 98" | TCL 98QM9K |
Our unit was made in China in June 2025.
Popular TV Comparisons
The TCL QM9K is an impressive TV overall, and it's one of the best performers all-around available in 2025. It's not quite the higher-end version of the TCL QM8K that most people were hoping for, though, and the increase in zone count doesn't quite translate to better dark room performance, so most people are better off sticking with the QM8K. The high-end Mini LED TV market is getting more and more crowded, but this one beats most of them overall, including the Sony BRAVIA 9 and the Samsung QN90F. It's not perfect, though, and its processing and image accuracy fall short of both of those competitors.
For more options, check out our recommendations for the best QLED TVs, the best gaming TVs, and the best TVs.
The TCL QM9K is slightly better than the TCL QM8K, at least in theory. The QM9K gets a bit brighter in both HDR and SDR, and it can sustain that brightness longer. This doesn't actually matter that much, though, as most HDR content won't hit highlights that bright or for that long, so in most real content, it looks about the same as the QM8K. The QM9K does have a more recent smart interface, though, as it runs the Google TV version 14 instead of 12 on the QM8K; it also supports Google's Gemini AI assistant.
The TCL QM9K and the Sony BRAVIA 9 trade blows in a few different ways, and the best one really depends on what matters to you. The TCL gets brighter and can deliver more vibrant colors, but HDR content that actually takes advantage of that is rare. The BRAVIA 9 has much better processing and is far more accurate, so if you care about creative intent, it's the far better choice.
The TCL QM9K is better than the Samsung QN90F for most users. The TCL gets significantly brighter in HDR, and it has a better local dimming system with less haloing around bright highlights. On the other hand, if you're in a really bright room, the Samsung is slightly better, as its matte anti-reflective coating effectively eliminates distracting glare from direct reflections.
The TCL QM9K is better than the Hisense U8QG. The TCL gets a bit brighter in most content, though some real scenes are brighter on the Hisense. The TCL has a better local dimming feature, delivering deeper blacks with 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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