TCL QM8K  TV Review

The TCL QM8K is an incredibly bright TV. All HDR content stands out incredibly well, from the smallest specular highlights to large bright scenes; it just pops. It can't sustain specular highlights as long as the TCL QM9K can, but this really isn't an issue with the vast majority of content, since specular highlights aren't normally visible for more than a few seconds.

Firmware V8-0012T02-LF1V321.001899 introduced a new peak brightness setting called 'Boost'. With this setting enabled, there is a difference in brightness with some test windows, but the difference is fairly small in most real scenes. We've updated our results with the setting enabled. You can see our old results below with the 'Boost' setting disabled.

Below are measurements with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) set to each of its three settings, all in the 'Movie' HDR Picture Mode with the 'Boost' setting disabled. 

Results with DTM set to Detail Priority:

• Hallway Lights: 889 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 610 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 496 cd/m²

Results with DTM set to Balance:

• Hallway Lights: 967 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 597 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 510 cd/m²

Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:

• Hallway Lights: 972 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 607 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 556 cd/m²

Overall, switching to Game Master reduces the peak brightness of the TV very slightly, but it's really not noticeable.

Firmware V8-0012T02-LF1V321.001899 introduced a new peak brightness setting called 'Boost'. With this setting enabled, there is a difference in brightness with some test windows, but the difference is fairly small in most real scenes. We've updated our results with the setting enabled. You can see our old results below with the 'Boost' setting disabled.

Below are measurements with Dynamic Tone Mapping (DTM) set to each of its three settings, all in Game Master with the 'Boost' setting disabled.

Results with DTM set to Detail Priority:

• Hallway Lights: 948 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 575 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 470 cd/m²

Results with DTM set to Balance:

• Hallway Lights: 962 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 569 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 512 cd/m²

Results with DTM set to Brightness Priority:

• Hallway Lights: 941 cd/m²
• Yellow Skyscraper: 571 cd/m²
• Landscape Pool: 555 cd/m²

This TV is remarkably bright in SDR. Glare isn't an issue even in an extremely bright room, as you can simply increase the brightness setting to compensate. As with most TVs, large, bright scenes aren't quite as bright as more moderately lit scenes, but they're still bright enough.

Firmware V8-0012T02-LF1V321.001899 introduced a new peak brightness setting called 'Boost'. With this setting enabled, there is a difference in brightness with some test windows, but the difference is fairly small in most real scenes. We've updated our results with the setting enabled. You can see our old results below with the 'Boost' setting disabled.

The contrast on this TV, especially with local dimming, is fantastic. The native contrast is also very high, ensuring blacks remain fairly deep even in more difficult scenes when the local dimming can't keep up.

The precision of the dimming zones is excellent overall. Although it has fewer zones than the step-up TCL QM9K, it delivers very similar overall zone precision. There's a slight halo effect around subtitles or bright lights when viewed at an angle, but it's not nearly as noticeable from straight in front.

The zone transitions on this TV are excellent. There's some noticeable flicker as bright lights move across zones. It does an amazing job keeping up with fast-moving objects, though. You barely notice any trailing halos, but the leading edge is a bit darker.

There's no noticeable difference in dark scene performance when the TV is set to Game Master.

The black uniformity on this TV is nearly perfect. There's a tiny bit of cloudiness to the screen when local dimming is turned off, but otherwise, it looks amazing.

The SDR color volume is great. It has nearly perfect coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and BT.2020 coverage is decent. Colors are slightly washed out in lighter scenes in any color space, but it's not noticeable in real-world use.

The TCL QM8K has fantastic color volume in HDR. Darker shades are displayed well thanks to its incredibly high contrast ratio. Colors are bright and vibrant and stand out well, but aren't quite as bright as pure white. When switching between test slides, the TV briefly boosts brightness, resulting in higher peak brightness for a short time. This is why the red, green, and blue color measurements don't add up to the white measurement.

The TCL QM8K has okay accuracy in SDR before calibration. The white balance is noticeably off in midtones and brighter shades of gray, as blues are significantly underrepresented. This gives the TV an overall warm color temperature. Colors are a lot better, with just a few minor issues that most people won't notice. Gamma tracking is better, but shadow details are crushed a bit.

The TCL QM8K supports FILMMAKER MODE. While this mode is intended to give the most accurate picture quality possible, when we measured it on our unit, we found it to be very slightly less accurate than 'Movie.'

• White Balance dE 2000: 4.57
• Color dE Average: 2.63
• Color Temperature: 6,005K
• Gamma: 2.26
• Full results

This TV is easy to calibrate, and there are no noticeable issues after calibration. Given the significant improvement in accuracy, it's definitely worth getting a full calibration done on this TV if you care about creative intent.

See our full calibration settings.

This TV has okay accuracy in HDR before calibration. It's noticeably off across the board, with issues in the white balance and color accuracy, and the overall color temperature is a bit cool.

The TCL QM8K supports FILMMAKER MODE. While this mode is intended to give the most accurate picture quality possible, when we measured it in HDR, we found it to be slightly less accurate than 'Movie' overall, but colors are a bit better.

• White Balance dE ITP: 17.03
• Color dE ITP: 15.6
• Color Temperature: 7,177K
• Full results

Calibrating the TCL QM8K in HDR helps a bit with overall accuracy, and it looks good after calibration. There are still noticeable issues with the white balance and overall color accuracy, but the color temperature is much better.

The EOTF tracking on the TCL QM8K is good overall. Near-black shadow details are crushed a bit, but midtones are displayed incredibly well. It boosts highlights near the TV's peak brightness, but cuts off sharply. It's so bright that there's no real loss of gradation by doing this, as very little content even reaches such high brightness levels.

This TV has great low-quality content smoothing. It does a fantastic job smoothing out artifacts in low-bitrate content, but there is some loss of detail.

Lower-quality streams are upscaled properly, with no noticeable issues or excessive over-sharpening. Fine details are a bit hard to mark out, but the image is clear.

The TV has good gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding and posterization in darker shades of gray and blue, as well as brighter shades of green.

This TV has excellent input lag in Game Master mode, ensuring a responsive gaming experience with any supported resolution and refresh rate. Unlike previous TCL TVs, it also supports low-latency motion interpolation, so you can improve the fluidity of motion without adding significant lag.

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 two of its four 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 QM8K 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.

There's an issue when using it with NVIDIA sources, though. If you set your desktop to a locked 60Hz refresh rate, it still tears as if VRR isn't working at all. 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 and let VRR do its thing.

The CAD at the max native refresh rate of 144Hz is decent. Shadow details look great overall, with no noticeable overshoot or inverse ghosting. Brighter scenes are much worse, though, with a very slow response time resulting in more motion blur. This mismatch in responsiveness means bright areas of the scene have more noticeable blur than shadow areas.

When you drop down to 120Hz, the CAD is slightly worse overall, but it's not much of a difference. Overall, it behaves almost identically to the 144Hz performance.

When gaming at 60Hz, the CAD is still decent. There's still no noticeable overshoot or inverse ghosting, but the total response time of bright scenes, especially, is slow, so there's a lot of motion blur.

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, 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 visible stutter when watching 24p and 25p content, especially in slow panning shots. It's not quite as bad as TVs with OLED panels, like the Samsung S90F OLED, but it's still noticeable if you're sensitive to it.

The TCL QM8K's motion interpolation feature does a very good job of mitigating stutter. Low frame rate content is smoothed out well when using the interpolation setting that's equivalent to 30fps, resulting in motion that looks mostly fluid and consistent, even in shots with slow camera movements.

The TV removes judder from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p. To remove 24p judder from 60p and 60i sources, like a cable box, Motion Clarity needs to be set to 'On' with sliders set to '0.' However, this setting only works with 24p content. The TV doesn't entirely remove judder from 25p content being sent via 60p, but frame times aren't too inconsistent, so motion is just a bit jittery. Fortunately, the TV removes 25p judder if you're using an external device like an Apple TV that has a 'Match Frame Rate' feature or when using the TV's native apps.

The TCL QM8K only has micro-judder present in scenes with complex motion when watching 25p content via a 60p signal, like when using an older streaming device that doesn't have a feature to match the outputted signal to the frame rate of the content. These micro-judders occur every 5-10 seconds, so they're pretty noticeable. Outside of that, there's no micro-judder in 24p and 25p content.

The cinematic response time on this TV is good overall. Most transitions are crisp and look good overall, with no noticeable overshoot. Transitions to the brightest scenes are oddly slow, though.

The TCL QM8K has subpar color transitions when watching movies and shows. It does a decent job of keeping colors pure during RGB transitions, but there's still some unintended intermediate colors present. For instance, there's some yellow mixed in with blues in fast-paced scenes and sports, which affects color consistency.

Unfortunately, the TV does a bad job keeping the edges of fast-moving objects consistent with the center, leading to excessive blurriness in movies, shows, and sports with a lot of motion.

The TCL QM8K brings back TCL's extremely odd flicker pattern, combining extremely high-frequency PWM with a DC dimming component to adjust the backlight output. TCL has designed this flicker method to ensure it's not noticeable in person.

The TCL QM8K 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. Unlike most TVs on the market in 2025, it works at both 60Hz and 120Hz.

The glossy screen coating does a decent job of reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections. You'll still see bright lights or windows that are directly opposite the screen, but you can always crank up the brightness to compensate.

If you're in a bright room with lots of lights or windows, a TV with a matte anti-reflective coating, like the Samsung QN900F 8K, might be a better choice.

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

Overall, the amount of total reflected light off the screen is great. When it's off, you'll see the mirror-like direct reflections more, but indirect reflections aren't as noticeable. There are noticeable diffraction artifacts, though, like the rainbow smear around the lamp.

Ambient light has almost no noticeable impact on the color saturation of this TV.

The TCL QM8K TV has a mediocre viewing angle. Brightness starts to drop off at a fairly narrow angle, and colors start to look washed out at a moderate angle, but don't shift much.

The WHVA panel in this TV is supposed to improve viewing angles, and despite our scoring, it does. When compared to the TCL QM7K, for example, you can see that although colors start to wash out at approximately the same point, the QM8K maintains a more gradual decrease after that point, whereas the QM7K drops off a cliff. There's also barely any color separation on the QM8K.

The TCL QM8K has decent gray uniformity. The screen isn't too cloudy or dirty overall, which is great for watching sports, but the color uniformity is a bit off, and there are warm spots across the entire screen. The sides are also a bit darker than the rest. Near-black scenes look much better.

The TCL QM8K is one of the first TVs on the market to use TCL CSOT's newest panel technology, known as WHVA. This new panel is designed to combine the strengths of VA and IPS, delivering wider viewing angles than traditional VA panels but with the same deep blacks. Unlike traditional VA panels, the subpixels are laid out in an R-G-B layout, which helps with text clarity when used with a PC.

The TV uses quantum dots for both red and green to achieve high color peaks with excellent separation between each primary color.

The Samsung QN90F also uses a WHVA panel, but it's not the same as the one used here; it has a different subpixel structure, and the SPDs are different, confirming it's a completely different panel.

Two of the HDMI inputs support up to 48Gbps bandwidth. The eARC output is on an 18Gbps port, which is good and bad. It doesn't use up one of the TV's high-bandwidth ports, but it also means you can't pair it with a receiver that supports 48Gbps output to connect more than two high-bandwidth sources.

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.

The TCL QM8K TV has a very premium, modern design. The bezels are incredibly thin, and they blend in well.

The TV comes with a compact, height-adjustable center-mounted stand. At its lowest position, the stand lifts the TV about 2.2 inches above the table and 3.4 inches at its highest, which is high enough for almost any soundbar.

Footprint of the 65-inch stand: 15.3" x 14.5".

The back of the TV is nice, with cutouts and guides for cable management. The inputs face to the right when viewed from the front of the TV, but they're inset on the back and can be difficult to access if the TV is mounted close to the wall.

The TCL QM8K TV has excellent overall build quality. It's mostly made from high-quality plastic, and we didn't notice any significant issues with our unit's build quality. After a few weeks of use, our unit developed a noticeable buzzing sound; it's noticeable at any brightness setting. Other owners have reported the same issue online, and it seems to be worse on the 98" model.

The TCL QM8K TV is powered by a MediaTek Pentonic 700 SoC and ships with Google TV 12. It comes with 52GB of shared storage, with 46GB free out of the box.

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

The remote has quick-access buttons for the most popular streaming services and a built-in microphone for voice commands. It's also backlit. It has a slightly different design from the TCL QM7K, with a silver finish and fewer sponsored buttons.

There's a single button on the bottom middle 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

The TCL QM8K TV has an okay frequency response. Most audio is well-balanced, but, like any TV, there's very little low bass response. Even a basic external soundbar will sound better.