TCL 6-Series: Awesome Picture and Smart TV, Affordable Price

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is the TCL six series Roku TV, brand new for 2022. And yes, it is the best TV that I've tested for the money this year. Speaker 1: Now for the money, I mean the best picture quality for the buck. Now you can spend a lot more to get an OED tv, but if you spend just a little bit more for a non OED television from a brand like Samsung, for example, the picture quality improvement [00:00:30] is not gonna be that much better than you get on this tcl. You can also spend a little bit less for a Visio tv, for example, with Fuller, a local dimming that I compared this to, but it really didn't look quite as good as this. TCL for a little bit more money. The six series is really the best of both worlds. So right now you're looking at the 65 inch size. This is around a thousand dollars, probably a little bit less through the holiday season. There's also a 55, a 75, and an 85 inch size. Speaker 1: That's a medium price point for this tv. What really makes it special though, is for that price, [00:01:00] you get some great picture enhancing features. So mini l e d is the top feature on this television. It really improves the brightness, improves the black levels, excellent. Fuller ray, local dimming with hundreds of zones on all the sizes. So that combination gets you really great, great contrast, really great color, and just an excellent overall picture. I'll get to that in a little bit. But another thing that separates the TCL six series from others is the design. So for a mid-range television, the TCL six series has a really nice design. So one of the real improvements this [00:01:30] year is that TCL added this central pedestal stand. I really like the look at this single stand underneath the tv. It has a nice sleek look. It lowers the panel relative to the furniture that's sitting on really nicely, and it doesn't have those splayed out legs to either side under the panel like most of the other competitors do. Speaker 1: Another improvement in the stand is that you can actually raise it a little bit to support a soundbar, for example, so you can have the soundbar sit in front of the TV on your furniture without blocking the screen. That's a really nice feature. Of course, the stand is a nice metallic [00:02:00] finish here, and it's really flush against the top of the furniture, The edge of the tv really minimalist look, the glass goes almost all the way to the edge, and overall it's a really nice premium look and feel for a television in this price range. Now, TCL really didn't stint on the features. This TV has all the bells and whistles that you'd expect on a mid-range television. First off, it's got that full array, local dimming and mini l e d back, right, which are the main ingredients to its excellent picture quality. It's also got Q L E D, which improves color, especially with high dynamic range sources. Speaker 1: [00:02:30] This is also 120 hertz refresh television, which gives you a smooth look that's really great for gaming. So this TV has all the gaming features I'd expect, including that 4K 120 hertz input from a PlayStation five or Xbox Series X. It also has variable refresh rate capability. TCL touts 144 hertz input, but that's really not that important for consoles. It's really for higher end PC gaming cards. So not a huge deal. I measured an excellent input lag on this television as well. It doesn't have the improved gaming [00:03:00] modes that are found on a lot of its competitors like LG and Samsung, but still the game mode does a pretty good job with image quality and again, has that really good input lag. So solid gaming features and performance on this television. Around back, you'll find four H D M I inputs in the usual compliment of USB as well as an analog input headphone jack. Speaker 1: Unfortunately, there's no ATSC 3.0 tuner on this television like some of its competitors have. But again, not a huge deal because that rollout is happening very slowly right now across the country. So you're not really gonna miss it. And if you really want ATSC 3.0, [00:03:30] you can connect another tuner later. Another thing I like about the TCL six series is the Roku TV operating system. Now, there's plenty of operating systems out there right now, Google tv, Amazon Fire tv, and the proprietary systems used by LG and Samsung. But Roku really is my favorite. It's the simplest looking screen when you first turn on the tv, you get that nice grid of apps. It's also the easiest to customize. You can add and remove apps to your heart's content. You can move around on the screen and you're not stuck looking at an ad or a promo for a TV show or movie [00:04:00] like most of the other competitors have. Speaker 1: Roku moved really quickly on the TCL six series. Really no delays moving around. And of course you can search for uh, apps, you can search for TV shows, you can search for movies really easily, either typing into the screen or using the voice function on their remote control. So that's a nice touch too. I also appreciate like all Roku devices, this thing is compatible with Apple airplay, so you can easily cast from your iPhone or other Apple device right to the TV screen. That's a cool touch. I also prefer really simple remotes, and the one with the TCL six series is [00:04:30] no exception. In addition to that voice control, it's got volume on the side. It's got a couple of keys to navigate the menu, and that's it except for these shortcut keys. So again, none of those number pads or extra features to kind of confuse you. Speaker 1: It's just a very simple remote control. So that's it for the design and features. Let's talk a little bit about picture quality. I took the TCL six series into my lab and compared it to a Visio tv as well as a high Sensee TV side by side. And this TCL really looked the best. Now, the Visio did cost a little bit less, but it wasn't nearly as bright as the other two, and it [00:05:00] didn't have that pop and HDR image quality that I've come to expect from a mini L E D tv. The high sense, on the other hand, really did compete very well with this tcl. It's another mini L e D equipped television and side by side it actually looked brighter than the tcl. It had even more pop. So if you have a really bright room, maybe I'd lean you toward that high sense U eight H television. Speaker 1: But the TCL six series really did look very refined. It had excellent image quality, especially when I turned down the lights. Great accuracy in terms of color and the [00:05:30] shadows brought up plenty of detail, so it looked nice and natural there. So compared to the high sense, the TCL was a step ahead for that theatrical image quality. And of course, the other feature on the TCL that looked really good was its brightness. Yes, the high sense was a little bit brighter, but the TCL was also plenty bright. I measured more than a thousand knits, so this TV can really compete well against ambient lighting. And we turned down the lights, the HDR image quality looked excellent, excellent pop, and there was very little blooming around the edges of bright objects. So overall picture quality and TCL six series [00:06:00] is excellent. Again, not quite as good as an OED television that I've tested, but it's really about half the price. Speaker 1: So if you're talking about picture quality for the money, the TCL six series is really among the best I've ever seen. When you put it all together, this is the complete package for an affordable price. It's got great image quality, step up, design, all the features that you really want. And of course, that simplicity of the Roku interface kind of takes the cake. Of course, you can add a streaming device to any TV to get Roku, but at the end of the day, having it all built in really nice and [00:06:30] convenient and adds the overall appeal of this package. That's a quick look at the TCL six series Roku tv, brand new for 2022. I'm David Kats Meyer for C.