TCL QM8/QM850G QLED TV Review

The TV looks quite good, with a design that feels at home in any setting. It uses a center-mounted stand similar to the one used on the TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED, with thin bezels throughout.

The TCL QM8 uses a center-mounted stand nearly identical to the one used on the TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED, although the QM8 sits lower on its stand than its predecessor did. With the stand in the lower position, as shown, there's only about 2" between the table and the first pixels, so most soundbars block the screen a bit. The stand can be fixed in a raised position instead, which raises the TV about 3.5" above the table, which is plenty for most soundbars to fit.

Footprint of the 65" stand: 13.4" x 11.6".

The back of the TV is entirely plastic, with a nice textured feel. The TV's integrated subwoofer is visible and gives the back a unique look. The inputs are on the left side of the TV, and the power cord on the right, and both can be hidden behind included panel covers. The inputs are a bit hard to access when the TV is wall-mounted.

The cables come out of the bottom of the TV, which isn't optimal for cable management as there's nothing to help route the cables.

The TCL QM8 has excellent build quality. It has a plastic body with a metal stand and feels sturdy. The stand holds the TV very well with minimal wobble. Our unit suffered shipping damage during transport, but that's a shipping issue and wasn't caused by a problem with the TV's build quality.

The TCL QM8's contrast is fantastic. Its native contrast is good, but with local dimming enabled, the TV's contrast ratio is spectacular, leading to extremely deep blacks in a dark room even when bright highlights are shown on screen.

The TCL QM8 has very good blooming performance, as the small size of its dimming zones minimizes any blooming around bright objects or subtitles in darker scenes. However, there's still noticeable blooming with bright objects on a black, or near black, background. If you want a TV with no blooming at all, check out the Sharp AQUOS FS1 OLED.

Overall, the TV's processing keeps up very well with fast-moving objects, and lighting zone transitions aren't very noticeable, with minimal haloing.

Switching to Game Mode doesn't result in any noticeable difference in dark scene performance, which is great.

The TCL QM8's HDR peak brightness is outstanding. Even though the TV's brightness is significantly dimmer in large bright scenes, it's still easily bright enough to overcome any number of lights and even severe glare. Highlights are extremely bright and stand out very well.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Movie
• Local Contrast: High
• Brightness: 100

The TV is even brighter in 'Vivid Mode', for those going for maximum brightness:

• Hallway Lights: 1,141 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 642 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 974 cd/m²
• Peak 2% Window: 3,293 cd/m²
• Peak 10% Window: 2,338 cd/m²
• Peak 25% Window: 2,813 cd/m²
• Peak 50% Window: 1,679 cd/m²
• Peak 100% Window: 959 cd/m²
• Sustained 2% Window: 1,990 cd/m²
• Sustained 10% Window: 2,264 cd/m²
• Sustained 25% Window: 1,976 cd/m²
• Sustained 50% Window: 1,668 cd/m²
• Sustained 100% Window: 9,57 cd/m²

Here are real scene brightness numbers in IMAX mode:

• Hallway Lights: 1,140 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 534 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 713 cd/m²

The TV's HDR brightness in Game Mode is fantastic. There's no noticeable difference in peak brightness from 'Movie' mode.

These measurements are after calibrating the HDR white point, with the following settings:

• HDR Picture Mode: Game
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 100
• Local Contrast: High

This TV has decent PQ EOTF tracking. It's too dim at low brightness levels and then is over-brightened for the rest of the curve until it hard clips at the TV's peak brightness, leading to a loss of bright detail. This is true at all mastering levels. Unfortunately, the TV's PQ EOTF tracking is inaccurate no matter the picture setting, and it acts strangely; changing gamma affects brightness accuracy in 'Movie' mode when it shouldn't and is affected significantly by different HDR metadata. For example, this is how changing gamma influences the PQ EOTF curve with a 10000 nit stimulus. In some modes, like in IMAX, the TV ignores HDR metadata, so it doesn't accurately portray the IMAX experience.

In Game Mode, the TV acts the same as in 'Movie' mode, which means that it ignores the HDR Gaming Interest Group (HGiG) best practices and so doesn't look as the game creator intended. Overall, this TV is inaccurate regarding HDR brightness and doesn't follow the creator's intent well.

TCL contacted us after seeing the public early access results for this TV and informed us that they're aware of these issues with the TV's PQ EOTF tracking and are looking into it.

The TCL QM8's SDR brightness is outstanding, so glare isn't an issue even in the brightest rooms. The TV's Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) does dim the TV significantly when bright highlights take up a significant portion of the screen. However, as the TV's peak brightness is so high to start with, the TV is still extremely bright even after being dimmed.

These measurements are after calibration with the following settings:

• Picture Mode: Movie
• Brightness: 100
• Contrast: 96
• Local Contrast: High
• Micro Contrast: Off
• Gamma: 2.2
• Black Level: 50
• Dynamic Contrast: Off
• Black Stretch: Off
• Dynamic Brightness: Off

The TCL QM8 has an excellent HDR color gamut. It has fantastic coverage of the commonly used DCI-P3 color space, with very good tone mapping, although it struggles to portray very saturated greens. The TV also has very good coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, so it's a good TV for those interested in future-proofing, as content will gradually start using the wider color space with time.

Note that these results were done with the TV set to its 'Native' color gamut, as setting it to 'Auto' over-clamps the color space, so colors are undersaturated. Unfortunately, 'Native' inversely ends up oversaturating some colors. Here is what the TV's color space looks like on 'Auto':

• DCI-P3
• Rec. 2020

The TCL QM8's color volume in HDR is fantastic. It does struggle with portraying bright greens, especially when contrasted with how bright its whites, cyans, and yellows are. While overall, its color volume is quite full, it noticeably deviates from the color volume of an ideal TV. Note that this is partly due to the TV being set to its 'Native' color gamut, as the TV over-clamps its color space when set to 'Auto'.

The TV has okay pre-calibration accuracy. Its white balance shows many issues in its brightest tones, with reds being overemphasized as the TV gets closer to pure white. Color accuracy is good, but again, whites are off. The TV's color temperature is very warm pre-calibration, and its gamma is just a tad darker than the reference target of 2.2 for a moderately lit room. If pre-calibration color accuracy matters to you, check out the Hisense U7K or Samsung QN95C QLED instead.

The TV's accuracy after calibration is fantastic. The calibration interface is easy to use, but the brightest whites still show errors, and the TV's gamma is off from the reference target of 2.2 for a moderately lit room.

You can see our full calibration settings here.

The TV has good gray uniformity, especially on a very dark or near-black screen, where its uniformity is great. However, on brighter scenes of uniform color, there are obvious uniformity issues, with a significant amount of dirty screen effect, distracting when watching content with large areas of uniform color, like sports. Note that the black mark at the top right is due to our panel's shipping damage and isn't related to the TV's gray uniformity.

The TCL QM8's black uniformity is incredible. It's great even with local dimming set to off, with some noticeable, but minor, blue clouding. With local dimming enabled, the TV's black uniformity is almost perfect, with some extremely minor blooming around the test cross.

The TV's viewing angle is inadequate. There's significant color and hue shifting as you move off-center, and the image looks increasingly washed out as you move further away to the sides. This isn't a good choice for wide seating arrangements. Although it uses a similar, if not identical panel, the Samsung QN95C QLED offers a much better viewing angle thanks to the inclusion of Samsung's Ultra Viewing Angle technology.

The TV's reflection handling is fantastic. Its finish manages to reduce the impact of reflections enough that this TV can easily handle even very bright rooms. Unlike high-end TVs from competing manufacturers, this TV has outstanding reflection handling without a hint of purple hue, which is great, although there is some rainbow effect.

The TCL QM8 has very good HDR gradient handling. There's noticeable banding in dark gray gradients, as well as in dark reds, but other color gradients have minimal banding.

This TV has very good low-quality content smoothing. It's outstanding at avoiding any macro-blocking in dark scenes, but its ability to preserve fine details is unremarkable.

The TCL QM8 has poor upscaling capabilities. Its sharpness processing is just not up to the task when upscaling low-resolution content, leading to a loss of fine details and hard-to-read text. While this upscaling test uses a 480p signal, its results also apply to higher resolution signals as it tests the TV's sharpening capabilities when trying to smooth out an image after upscaling it. If you're looking for a similar mid-range model with better upscaling and image processing, check out the Sony X90L/X90CL or the Hisense U8/U8K instead.

TCL contacted us after seeing the public early access results for this TV and informed us that they're looking into the TV's sharpness processing performance.

Sharpness processing was calibrated for low-resolution or low-bitrate content, with no over-sharpening, with the following setting:

• Sharpness: 15

Like many TVs on the market, the TCL QM8 uses a BGR (Blue-Green-Red) subpixel layout. For multimedia usage, this doesn't cause any issues, but it causes text clarity issues when this TV is used as a pc monitor. There are easy workarounds for these issues, however, and you can read about it here.

The TCL QM8 has an impressively low response time at 4k @ 60Hz, but its behavior when variable refresh rate (VRR) is enabled is peculiar. Unlike most TVs, the TCL's overdrive tuning seems to be done in 'brackets'. When the TV runs within a certain bracket, like between 45Hz and 75Hz, its response time behavior is consistent. However, the TV's overdrive behavior completely changes as you get near the edge of a bracket or switch brackets. This means that you could have no overshoot when your framerate is averaging 60fps, but if it goes up or down a bracket, you suddenly see a ton of overshoot or black smearing.

For example, there is substantial overshoot at 80Hz, which then stabilizes itself as you get closer to 120Hz, until you get past 144Hz where the overshoot errors again spike up. For this reason, you might want to maintain a stable frame rate around one of the TV's response time bracket 'sweet spots', for example, 60Hz and 120Hz, to ensure a good response time performance.

At 1080p @ 240Hz, the TV does resolution halving, which results in weird artifacting, and more blurring than is expected at such a high refresh rate, as you can see here.

Here are measurements taken at 1080p @ 240Hz:

• Charts
• Tables

Here are measurements taken at 1080p @ 120Hz:

• Charts
• Tables

Unfortunately, the TCL QM8's backlight isn't flicker-free, as TCL uses pulse width modulation (PWM) to dim the backlight. The TV has an interesting flicker pattern, with three simultaneous flickers being measured. The main flicker, which operates at 4000Hz, a secondary frequency measured at 15Khz (~15000Hz), and then a pulsing flicker at 60Hz. As the overall flicker is so fast, it won't be noticed by most people.

The TCL QM8 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. It works well on the TCL at both 60Hz and 120Hz, with no obvious image duplication. Note that enabling this feature reduces the panel's overall brightness.

The TCL QM8 has an optional motion interpolation feature to interpolate content up to 120 fps. It works well with slower content, like slow panning shots, but there's a lot of artifacting the moment the action ramps up, which is jarring.

Due to this TV's quick response time, there's a disappointing amount of stutter with 24 fps content, like movies. This is mostly noticeable in slow panning shots. However, the TV's stutter performance when playing 60 fps content is exceptional.

The TV automatically removes 24p judder from any source, ensuring a smooth movie-watching experience.

The TV supports all three variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies, and its VRR range caps out at 240Hz, 144Hz, or 120Hz, depending on the resolution. It performs well, and while there is some brightness flickering with fast-moving objects when local dimming and VRR are both on at the same time, it still looks great overall.

For 1080p @ 240Hz, however, the TV seems to be doing some resolution halving, which is noticeable. You can notice artifacting with thin edges and small lines, like the blue line in the following video.

The TV isn't capable of doing VRR properly with a refresh rate higher than 120Hz when connected to an NVIDIA graphics card. TCL contacted us after seeing the public early access results for this TV and informed us that they're aware of the TV's issues with NVIDIA graphics cards and are looking into it.

The TCL QM8 has superbly low input lag when running at 1080p @ 120Hz, 1440p @ 120Hz and 4k @ 120Hz. Strangely its input lag is substantially higher when running at 144Hz at any of these resolutions, although it's still low enough for a good gaming experience. At 1080p @ 240Hz, the input lag delay is 13 ms; fast, but again nowhere near as fast as the TV's input lag when running at 120Hz.

All results above 120Hz were done with an AMD Radeon graphics card, as the TV struggles with refresh rates above 120Hz when connected to an NVIDIA card. TCL contacted us after seeing the public early access results for this TV and informed us that they're aware of the TV's issues with NVIDIA graphics cards and are looking into it.

The TCL QM8 supports up to 4k @ 144Hz or 1080p @ 240Hz on HDMI 1, and up to 4k @ 120Hz on HDMI 2. As long as you use the TV with a recent AMD graphics card, you won't have any issues reaching that target, but the TV has issues displaying anything above 120Hz on PCs equipped with an NVIDIA graphics card. Note that TCL contacted us after seeing the public early access results for this TV and informed us that they're aware of the TV's issues with NVIDIA graphics cards and are looking into it. But for now, NVIDIA users can consider this TV as being capped at 4k @ 120Hz to avoid issues.

The TV supports chroma 4:4:4, but only when the picture mode is set to 'PC' mode. As enabling Game Master locks you out of picture mode settings and forces Game Mode on, you can't have both 4:4:4 and the low input lag from Game Mode simultaneously. Furthermore, the TV doesn't output 4:4:4 at 4k @ 120Hz properly, as you can see here, and this is true with both VRR enabled and disabled. Thus, to get chroma 4:4:4, you need to be in 'PC' mode and at a maximum resolution of 4k @ 60Hz.

If you're looking for a TV with similar features that supports 8k, check out the Samsung QN900C 8k QLED.

The TCL 65QM850G can take full advantage of the PS5, with 4k @ 120Hz support on HDMI ports 1 and 2 and variable refresh rate (VRR) support. If the Game Master setting is set to 'Auto', the TV automatically switches to Game Mode when it detects the console.

The TV can take full advantage of the Xbox Series X|S consoles, with 4k @ 120Hz support on HDMI ports 1 and 2 and variable refresh rate (VRR) support with both AMD FreeSync and HDMI Forum VRR. If the Game Master setting is set to 'Auto', the TV automatically switches to Game Mode when it detects the console.

The TCL QM850G has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth on HDMI ports 1 and 2, although HDMI 1 supports 4k @ 144Hz while HDMI 2 is limited to 4k @ 120Hz. HDMI 4 has eARC but is limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth, so consider that if plugging in a soundbar with an HDMI 2.1 passthrough port onboard. The TV supports HDR ULTRA, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, and HLG. It doesn't support ATSC 3.0, so over-the-air broadcasts are limited to 1080p.

The TCL QM8 supports eARC and can pass both advanced DTS and Dolby formats from a connected source to your soundbar or sound system without reducing audio quality. Unlike the TCL 6 Series/R655 2022 QLED, the QM8 also supports DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 over optical connections.

The TCL QM8 has a decent frequency response. Like on almost all TVs, there's very little bass, although it can output higher bass frequencies and is quite good in the lower mid-range. The TV does get quite loud while avoiding significant compression, which is good. Unfortunately, its sound reproduction isn't very accurate, and its dialogue clarity is passable but not crisp.

This TV's handling of sound distortion is alright, although it does a disappointing job with its handling of distortion when excited by multiple frequencies; in practice, this makes the sound coming out of this TV feel muddy and unclear, and this is true at both a moderate listening volume and at max volume.

The TCL QM8 uses version 11 of Google's popular Google TV OS. It's relatively easy to use but especially fast and smooth, with a large selection of apps.

Like most TVs on the market, the TCL QM8 has ads throughout the interface, and you can't disable them.

The TV has a great selection of streaming apps, with every popular streaming app being present. The interface is very smooth and pleasant to use.

The TV's remote is medium-sized and comes with motion-activated backlighting. It has a series of dedicated buttons for the most popular streaming apps. Both the remote and TV have integrated microphones for voice commands, and these work pretty well; you can change inputs, search within apps, and ask for the weather, amongst other things.

The power button is on the bottom bezel of the TV below the TCL branding. Outside of turning the TV on or off, you can also use it to change channels, the volume, or the inputs.

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