TCL X11L  TV Review

Get your sunglasses ready, as the TCL X11L is one of the brightest TVs ever made. Small highlight details in HDR stand out incredibly well, and real scenes are bright, vibrant, and extremely impactful. 

It struggles a bit more with extremely bright scenes where more of the screen is bright at the same time, but it's still very bright with that content. It also can't maintain very bright highlights for very long, as it throttles the brightness considerably after about 30 seconds. This isn't an issue with real content, however, as very little content stays that bright for that long.

The TV isn't as bright out of the box, as the default Brightness setting for this picture mode is 50/100:

The posted results are with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) disabled. Here are additional measurements with it set to each of its three settings, with Peak Brightness set to either 'Boost' or 'High'.

The peak brightness is slightly lower in most real content when you switch to the low-latency Game Mode, but it's still one of the brightest TVs ever made and games are incredibly bright and vibrant.

The posted results are with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) disabled. Here are additional measurements with it set to each of its three settings, with Peak Brightness set to either 'Boost' or 'High'.

The TCL X11L is incredibly bright in SDR. You really don't have to worry about glare as it's bright enough to overcome any glare in a bright room.

The TV reaches very high peaks over a short time window, but then it dims considerably, especially with dimmer scenes. There's a more noticeable drop in brightness with small highlights, which dim considerably after about 30 seconds. Larger windows aren't as bright to begin with, so the TV maintains them longer and the drop in brightness isn't as noticeable.

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The TCL X11L TV has superb contrast. Blacks are incredibly deep, even when very close to brighter highlights like the cave opening in the test scene. The native contrast of the panel with local dimming disabled is good.

The local dimming zone precision on this TV is outstanding. It's one of the best on the market alongside the Sony BRAVIA 9. The dimming zones offer exceptional control over bright spots, so there's barely any noticeable haloing at all.

The zone transitions on this TV are excellent. There's a very slight flicker effect as bright highlights move across a dark background, but it's minor. The TV keeps up with fast-moving objects well, but there's a slight delay when a bright highlight moves into a new zone, which causes the leading edge to be slightly darker.

Switching to Game Mode has no impact on contrast or dark details. The local dimming feature performs the same.

This TV has fantastic black uniformity. The screen is a bit cloudy when local dimming is disabled, but it's very minor. It's nearly perfect with local dimming on, though, resulting in an incredibly deep, uniform screen in dark scenes.

The TCL X11L has great color volume in SDR. It struggles a bit with bright colors in the DCI-P3 color space, but these are still impressive overall. Content mastered in the BT.2020 color space is where the improved quantum dots on this TV really shines, and it has better coverage of the BT.2020 color space than any other LED TV tested up until now.

The color volume in HDR is superb. It can't quite display the full range of colors in HDR, but those it can display are incredibly bright and vibrant. It displays dark, saturated colors well, and bright highlights aren't washed out by whites at all.

Unfortunately, the TCL X11L has mediocre SDR color accuracy out of the box. The white balance is noticeably off, with a very warm color temperature that gives everything a reddish look. Gamma is noticeably off, and brighter parts of the scene are crushed significantly. Color accuracy is good, though, with just a few noticeable issues in lighter shades that are close to white.

Unfortunately, this TVhas some issues with its calibration system. Blue slider adjustments don't work properly across all stimulus levels, making it impossible to fully calibrate the TV. While the end results are still objectively great, and most people won't notice any issues, it's much worse than most TVs on the market. This is most likely a software issue.

See our full calibration settings.

The TCL X11L has okay accuracy in HDR out of the box. The white balance is decent, with a few issues in midtones, and blues are slightly underrepresented in brighter shades. The color accuracy is worse, with a few mapping errors and significant luminance errors. The color temperature is a bit warm, but it's pretty good overall.

This TV has good accuracy in HDR after a full calibration. The biggest issue after calibration is still color accuracy, which is better but there are still significant luminance errors. The color temperature is nearly perfect and the white balance is great.

The TV has decent PQ EOTF tracking. We had to use our CR-250 spectroradiometer for this test, so the near-black tracking issues in the EOTF are primarily caused by that instrument's limited low-light performance. Nearly everything else is brighter than it should be, and bright highlights are much brighter than they should be.

The posted results are with the same settings as the HDR Peak Brightness test, with Brightness set to 100/100 and Peak Brightness set to 'Boost'. This combination of settings delivers the highest peak brightness, but it's also less accurate than the default settings.

• Brightness 50/100, Peak Brightness 'Boost', FILMMAKER Mode - EOTF
• Brightness 100/100, Peak Brightness 'Low', FILMMAKER Mode - EOTF

The TV has very good low-quality content smoothing. It does a great job reducing macroblocking and pixelization from low-quality streams, but there's some loss of fine details that gives the image a slightly waxy look.

The TCL X11L TV has excellent upscaling. Fine details are easy to make out, and the image is very clear.

The TV has great gradient handling in HDR. There's some slight banding in brighter shades of gray, but it's not too bad. Everything else looks great.

The TCL X11L has great low input lag. It's a few ms higher than most comparable models on the market across all modes, but it's not a significant difference for most people. The posted results are with Local Dimming set to 'Off', but here are the results with it on 'Low' and 'High'.

The TV supports all common resolutions up to 4k @ 144Hz on all 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 needed for clear text from a desktop PC.

The TCL QX11L supports all 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, VRR doesn't work properly when the source is set to output a 60Hz signal, and there's noticeable tearing at any frame rate.

The CAD at the max 4k resolution of 144Hz is mediocre. Midtones are fine, but the TV struggles with more significant transitions, both to and from bright and dark shades. There's no overshoot, though, which is great as this means you won't see any inverse ghosting in dark shades.

Decreasing the refresh rate to 120Hz has no noticeable impact on CAD. The TV still struggles with longer transitions, leading to blurry motion.

The CAD at 60Hz is nearly identical to higher refresh rates. Motion is exceptionally blurry, though, due to the increased persistence blur at this refresh rate.

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, FreeSync Premium Pro, and Dolby Vision gaming. 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 X11L has mediocre stutter performance, but it's a bit better than most high-end TVs. There's some noticeable stutter in slow panning shots.

Adjusting the motion interpolation feature to increase the frame rate of 24p content up to 30p does a great job reducing stutter. The feature significantly reduces the frame hold time, so you won't see nearly as much stutter. it's also very consistent, ensuring an even frame pacing.

The TV is nearly judder-free from all sources. It can't remove 25p judder from 60p sources, though, like an older cable box or a streaming device that can't match the content frame rate.

Unfortunately, there's some micro judder when playing 24p or 25p content from a 60p source. This is only an issue if you have an older cable box or a streaming device that can't match the content frame rate.

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

The TCL X11L has a decent response time. Most midtone transitions are quick and smooth, but it struggles with longer transitions both to and from bright or dark shades.

The TCL X11L has noticeable color artifacts in fast transitions.

The backlight combines DC dimming with a very high-frequency flicker pattern. It's not true PWM and is far less noticeable in person.

There's 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.

The glossy screen coating on the TCL X11L does a decent job of reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. They're still noticeable, but they're significantly dimmer and not as distracting.

Ambient light has no noticeable impact on the TV's black levels.

The total amount of reflected light is great. Indirect reflections aren't very noticeable, and direct reflections are significantly reduced in intensity, so you don't have to worry about glare. There are diffraction artifacts, including a slight rainbow smear around bright lights, but it's not too bad.

Ambient light has no noticeable impact on color saturation.

The TCL X11L has an okay viewing angle. It uses a new type of VA panel known as WHVA 2.0, which is designed to improve viewing angles while maintaining the deep blacks that VA panels are known for. This new panel works well, and the TV looks better than most VA panels when viewed from the sides. There's still a noticeable loss of color saturation and brightness at moderate angles, though, so it's not perfect for a wide seating arrangement.

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 good gray uniformity. There's some dirty screen effect in the center, but it's very minor, and there's little noticeable vignetting.

The TCL X11L 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.

The spectral power distribution shows the impact of the SQD layer. Compared to the TCL QM8K, we can see that there's no change at all to the blue backlight, but the green peak has shifted 10 nm towards blue. The biggest change is with the reds, which are far more powerful and more precise, and the center wavelength has increased by 20 nm. This results in a far greater separation between green and red, resulting in more precise, saturated reds.

The TCL X11L is the first TCL TV on the market to feature four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports. There's also an additional USB port on the side bezel of the TV.

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 X11L has a very premium, modern design. It has a brushed copper look that looks great in any setup.

The stand consists of two feet placed at opposite ends of the TV, with no alternative position, so you'll need a wide table if you're not wall-mounting it. The support the TV well, but like any large TV it wobbles a bit if nudged.

Footprint of the 85-inch stand: 67.6" x 15.0" x 3.7".

The back of the TV has a very nice textured pattern that looks premium. There are cable guides along the back of the TV and a notch in the stand to help with cable management. The copper finish on the speakers gives them a very premium look.

The TCL X11L has great build quality. It's a solid TV overall, with a very premium design that looks well-built. Unfortunately, part of the back panel came unglued during shipping. This is concerning, but it's likely an isolated issue with our unit and it doesn't impact its performance in any way.

The TCL X11L ships with Google TV version 14, and includes support for the Google Gemini smart assistant.

Running the AIDA64 app on the TV confirms that it's powered by the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, with 2.5Gb of RAM and 48Gb of internal memory.

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

The remote has a few additional buttons, including a new programmable button. There's also a new button on the side of the remote to quickly change picture settings, and a separate brightness slider.

There's a single button on the bottom of the TV that you can use to switch inputs and power the TV on/off. There's also a small switch you can use to turn the TV's built-in microphone on or off.

• Setup guide
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Power cable

Unfortunately, the built-in soundbar doesn't sound very good. There's very little bass, it can't get very loud, and the frequency response is unbalanced at moderate listening levels.