TCL 5 Series/S546 2021 QLED TV Review

The TCL 5 Series has a simple design, but it looks more premium than most comparably-priced models. It has thin borders on three sides, and you can place the stand in two different positions. There's a Google speaker underneath the bottom bezel.

The plastic feet do a good job of holding the screen in place, and there's minimal wobble. They don't raise the TV much off the table as there are 1.77 inches from the table to the speaker and 2.71 inches to the bottom of the screen. However, the remote functions still work if you place a soundbar in front. You can put the feet in two different positions.

Footprint of the 65-inch TV:

• Narrow position (Pictured above): 26.5" x 12.7"
• Wide position (Pictured here): 50.7" x 12.7"

The back of the TCL 5 Series consists of a smooth metal top portion and a textured plastic bottom portion. There are clips on the legs and on the back for cable management.

The TCL S546 has a decent build quality. It's a mix of metal and plastic, and it feels solid overall. The plastic feet are sturdy, but they don't feel as premium as metal feet. The bottom bezel is brushed plastic meant to mimic aluminum, but it feels a bit cheap. The back panel has a bit of flex on the metal part, and there's more on the plastic, but it's not that concerning.

The TCL 5 Series has a remarkable contrast ratio. It displays deep blacks, and the local dimming feature is extremely effective at boosting the contrast with real content.

Unfortunately, there's some noticeable blooming around bright objects in dark scenes. Subtitles on a dark background are especially distracting, but even bright lights stand out a bit. If this bothers you, there's no blooming with the local dimming feature disabled, but this also reduces the dynamic range of the TV.

Unfortunately, due to the limited number of dimming zones, the zone transitions are quite noticeable. The processor also can't quite keep up even with slow-moving objects, so the leading edge appears darker than the rest, as it's not turning on the zones in time.

Switching to 'Game' mode has no noticeable impact on dark scene details.

The HDR brightness is alright. It's an improvement from the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED, but it's not enough to make highlights pop in HDR. Like in SDR, it doesn't maintain its brightness consistently across different scenes, and small highlights are the most dim. If you like this level of brightness but would prefer a TV that can consistently maintain it, check out the TCL Q6/Q650G QLED.

These measurements are after calibrating the white point, in the 'Movie' HDR Picture Mode with the Local Contrast set to 'High', Color Temperature on 'Warm -5', and Contrast and Brightness at their max.

The HDR peak brightness is okay, as it's very similar to how it is outside of Game Mode. These measurements are with the 'Game' Picture Mode, but with everything else set the same as outside of Game Mode. There are some slight differences between the two modes, but it's not noticeable.

The TV tracks the content creator's intent in HDR well. Most scenes are slightly darker than they should be, but it's not really noticeable. The TV's tone mapping kicks in pretty late, and there's a sharp cutoff with content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits. It tone maps better with content mastered at 4,000 nits, preserving more fine details in really bright content.

The SDR peak brightness is great and it's a significant improvement over the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED. It gets bright enough to fight glare in most rooms, but small highlights aren't as bright due to aggressive frame dimming.

These measurements are after calibration in the 'Movie' Picture Mode with the Local Contrast set to 'High', Color Temperature on 'Warm -5', Gamma on '2.2', and Contrast and Brightness at their max.

The TCL 5 Series QLED has an excellent color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by the vast majority of current HDR content. It also has excellent tone mapping, so fine details are well preserved.

The color volume is good. Thanks to its wide color gamut and fantastic contrast, it displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels.

Unfortunately, this TV has bad accuracy before calibration. All colors are inaccurate, and the white balance is horrible, so shades of gray and white look awful. The color temperature is also warm, giving the image a significant red tint. On the plus side, gamma is great as it follows the 2.2 target well for the most part, but some scenes are either a bit too dark or too bright.

The accuracy after calibration is okay. Even after calibrating it, the white balance is significantly off and the red tint to the screen is still there.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

Unfortunately, there are some issues with the gray uniformity. There are some minor vertical bands across the entire screen, and there's dirty screen effect in the center, which is noticeable when watching sports. Uniformity is better in near-dark scenes, but the bands are still there, and there's backlight bleed in the corner.

The TCL S546 has excellent black uniformity. Without local dimming, the screen looks a bit blue, and there's clouding throughout. The image is a lot more black with local dimming enabled, but there's more blooming around the center cross.

Unfortunately, the TCL 5 Series has a poor viewing angle, so the image fades and looks washed out when viewed from the side. It's not an ideal TV for a wide seating arrangement or if you like to move around with the TV on.

The TCL 5 Series Google TV has decent reflection handling. It handles a moderate amount of light well, but it reflects light directly back, like a mirror, which is distracting if you have a lot of windows or lights.

Like the TCL 6 Series/R646 2021 QLED, the TCL 5 Series QLED doesn't properly display 480p content. It scales 480p signals to 576p instead, and the image looks bad. Changing the Aspect Ratio setting doesn't fix anything. Overall, although this is a noticeable issue, most players upscale DVDs to at least 1080p, in which case you won't have any issues with it.

The TCL 5 Series 2021 uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout instead of the traditional RGB layout. For video content, it doesn't cause any issues, but if you're planning on using this TV as a PC monitor, it impacts text clarity, and some text will look blurry. You can read about it here.

The TCL 5 Series Google TV has a quick response time. Motion looks great for the most part, but the response time in dark transitions is slow, leading to black smearing in dark scenes.

The TCL S546 uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim its backlight. It flickers at 960Hz with all settings and backlight levels. Luckily, it's such a higher frequency that most people won't notice it.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature, commonly known as black frame insertion. It flickers at 60Hz, but the timing is off, leading to image duplication.

The TCL 5 Series has a motion interpolation feature to interpolate 30 fps content up to 60 fps. It looks okay with slow scenes, like when there's dialogue, but there are noticeable artifacts with fast-moving objects that could get distracting.

Due to the quick response time, lower-frame rate content appears to stutter a bit as each frame is held on longer. Enabling the motion interpolation feature can help reduce this issue.

The TCL 5 Series TV removes 24p judder from native sources like apps or Blu-ray players, but unlike the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED Series 2022, it can't properly remove judder from 60Hz sources. It can't do it at all from 60i sources, and from 60p when the Judder Reduction setting is set between '5-10', it can't properly remove judder as you can see in this photo.

The TCL 5 Series supports variable refresh rate technology to reduce screen tearing, which is a nice addition compared to the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED. It supports both FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR, so you'll enjoy a nearly tear-free gaming experience from almost any source.

The TCL 5 Series has low input lag for a responsive gaming experience.

The TCL 5 Series 2021 displays most common signals up to 60Hz, including 1440p if you create a custom resolution through your PC. It displays chroma 4:4:4 properly in either 'PC' or 'Game' Picture Mode with 1080p and 4k signals, which is essential for clear text from a desktop PC.

This TV can't take full advantage of the PS5 as it's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. It's still great if you prefer to use the "Fidelity" or "Graphics" mode of your favorite games, though.

Like with the PS5, this TV is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate from the Xbox Series S|X. With the Xbox, it also supports Dolby Vision gaming, but only if you disable the variable refresh rate feature entirely.

Unlike the TCL 5 Series/S535 2020 QLED, this TV supports both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

The TCL 5 Series supports eARC, allowing you to pass high-quality uncompressed audio to a compatible receiver. It supports most common audio formats, but not DTS:X, which is a bit disappointing as many UHD Blu-ray discs use DTS:X for the main audio track.

Despite having a dedicated speaker below the bottom bezel, the frequency response is mediocre. It gets fairly loud and has a somewhat well-balanced sound profile, but it doesn't produce much bass, if any at all.

The distortion performance is mediocre. There's distortion even when listening at a moderate level, and it gets much worse at the max volume.

The TCL 5 Series is part of TCL's new Google TVs, which has a fairly user-friendly interface, and menu navigation is great. Google TVs are advertised to support the new Basic Mode, which strips the TV of all its smart features, so you can focus on just using the inputs and antenna.

As with other Google TVs, there are ads and suggested content on the home page, and there's no way to disable them.

The Google Play Store has a wide selection of apps available to download.

The included remote is simple and has a few shortcut buttons to popular streaming services. The circular pad functions as the navigation buttons. There's a built-in mic that you can ask to change inputs, open apps, and search for content, but you can't ask it to change settings like the backlight. There's also a mic in the TV itself, which you can use with the Google Assistant feature; the TV has to be on for it to work.

The power button is on the back of the TV on the right, and you can change inputs with it too. There's a switch next to it to disable the built-in mic.

• Remote (with 2x AAA batteries)
• Power cable
• Manual