Nothing Else Like It! | TCL 115-inch QM8 TV Review
Guys I think the sheer enormity of this TV is its own introduction so just soak it in for a second I mean what more do you need okay how about this this is the most fun I've had reviewing a TV ever welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and this is the 115 in TCL QM891g QM8 for short and what I just said about this TV is absolutely true I have never had so much fun evaluating a TV and yeah size has everything to do with it I mean for some folks size does matter hey knock it off we're talking about a TV here okay seriously not everyone wants a massive TV or perhaps they don't think they do until they experience one for themselves stop it really though for some folks bringing the movie theater experience home maybe even besting it is a life goal a dream and I'm here to tell you this TV can make that dream a reality if you're willing to spend big too because while this TV's price is sure to go down probably quite precipitously in the months ahead it currently retails for $20,000 wait sorry this just did in it's actually $19,999 before tax of course I mean that being the case let's be honest with ourselves not many of you out there watching right now are going to go buy this TV and that's just fine it's okay to gawk go ahead take a good look and you don't have to just imagine what it would be like to have this TV in your home because I'm going to tell you what it's like but there are some of you out there who are considering buying this TV and for those you who are in that I imagine very small Club stick around because I have some very important information for you to consider before laying down that credit card all right let's get into it so first off let's talk about what you're getting with the 115in TCL QM8 well in a nutshell you're getting TCL's absolute best which probably doesn't come as a surprise but what does that actually mean well because it is such a huge QED TV with an huge and advanced mini LED backlight system it needs a special processor the processor is everything in a TV so we're going to be talking about what it does quite a bit in this review that processor would be the AI PQ Ultra TCL's best processor yet turbocharged to handle the Monumental demands of this equally Monumental TV it's also got the most advanced audio system TCL has ever put into a TV uh you can see some of it via these two Onkyo badge subwoofers on the back but what you can't see so well is the array of drivers that are hidden behind these perforated sections on each side of the back of the TV and along the top Edge firing at the ceiling as well that's right while you do have some up firing drivers primarily it's a rear firing audio system and while we've had mixed results with that kind of design here in this studio the 115in QM8 here fared Pretty stinking well more on that shortly now you might think that because there's so much screen real estate here that you'd be looking at a bulky TV but everyone who's visited to check this TV out has commented that it's not nearly as thick as they'd expected it to be this TV will look awesome mounted on the wall and yes you can wall mount it I'd highly encourage you to hit three studs with a robust wall mount rated to handle at least 200 lb but it can be wall mounted and though you'll need to buy that wall mount yourself with many retailers uh wall mounting will be included with the purchase of this TV TCL's confirmed that it is included if you purchase it at Best Buy for example now if you don't wall mount you have two other options you can use the feet that are included in the box but with an ultrawide stance you're going to need a very large credenza or unusually wide Media Console not even our beloved BDI consoles here are quite wide enough to accommodated which is just part of the reason why I personally prefer the optional legs that you can buy for this TV they are rock solid and they offer some cable management and position the TV at the optimal viewing height thus eliminating even the slightest amount of neck craning the backlight system is comprised of Untold tens of thousands of mini LEDs broken down into roughly 20,000 local dimming zones 20,000 zones y'all now that number is impressive and even boggles my mind but impressive numbers don't always translate into Stellar picture quality so we'll see the TV is claimed to hit 5,000 nits of peak brightness again we'll see and it's got almost all of the other specs that you may want you ready for an onslaught of acronyms no too bad hdr10 hdr10 plus hlg Dolby Vision 120 HZ atsc 3.0 tuner 2 HDMI 2.1 ports two HDMI 2.0 B ports two USB ports Alm VRR with free sync premium Pro and o n Onkyo that's legendary audio brand AIO slapping its badge on the sound system need more you get a backlit Google TV remote with voice control as well as a defeatable voice mic on the TV itself a built-in room sensor for automatic brightness and color temperature control will definitely be talking more about that in a moment and uh yeah I think that's about it uh I mean there's more but that's the important stuff okay so I am going to get into some measurements and talk about the picture quality in a moment but frankly what I'm about to tell you now is the most valuable information I can offer you in this review this TV's size is its most notable asset and its greatest advantage and I understand if you're thinking right now well duh dude obviously but it size is also a liability of sorts and not for the reasons that you might think sure you're going to need some space for this TV but I imagine that most folks considering this TV plan to put it in a dedicated space where there's likely a wall at least 8 ft wide to accommodate it and I imagine a lot of you folks might be thinking well it's so huge you'd have to sit at least 15 ft away from it right no you don't have to while it's true that many optimal viewing distance calculators will suggest a viewing distance of at least 12 ft I'm here to tell you that I've been sitting just 9.5 ft away from this 115in TV
and have loved well almost every minute of it there's a caveat there and I'm getting to that in a moment as well but the key takeaway here is that this TV can be viewed from what a lot of folks would consider a normal viewing distance without it feeling overwhelming and without seeing pixels it is tremendously immersive it can occupy your entire field of view you and really put you in the content without you feeling like you're missing any part of the scene now I know some folks are worried about getting motion sickness and yeah I can see that potentially being an issue from some folks if they are especially sensitive that's just physics and biology but while I've personally gotten a little queasy feeling in the past in some theater scenarios I have not once felt ill at ease with this TV now super shaky camera movement well that's just annoying and there's nothing that you can do about that for the most part this TV screen size is just a huge Advantage but it can be a liability at times and not for the Practical reasons that I just mentioned no the real liability issue here is that a big screen like this just gives you more of everything it gives you more brightness more contrast more color more immersion more just straight up fun and excitement yes but just as an amplifies all those good things it also amplifies the bad things and in this context I'm talking about the amplification of poor quality content now we're kind of crossing over into the picture quality section of this review here but this matter needs its own segment in this video because I think this is something that folks aren't really aware of and thinking about first to be clear high-quality content looks just awesome pull up a 4K or 4K HDR Show on Netflix or Disney Plus or Mac any number of streaming services with high-quality content and it looks outstanding like knock it right out of the park amazing even the high bit rate 1080p stuff you can sometimes get from a YouTube premium subscription looks amazing and well captured 1080p content delivered at a reasonably High bit rate from some streaming services broadcasters and cable TV looks great too but lower quality content and this is less about resolution than it is highly compressed content or content captured by less than Stellar cameras well it's just blatantly obvious that it is lower quality content and before you jump to conclude that means this TV's processing upscaling and digital enhancements are less than let me assure you that is not the culprit even Sony's best XR processor can't hide the artifacts present in low-quality content when it's displayed on a screen this size and is viewed at such close distances that's really what's at play here there's no hiding the failings of the content when your viewing distance to screen size ratio is at this level even an 85 in TV shows it less than what you'll see here allow me to demonstrate we've got the same content playing on the 115in TCL QM8 and a 65 in Sony A95L here the content looks much better on the 65 in A95L in part well because Sony's processing is pretty stellar and it's an ol but really it looks much better on the Sony because the A95L is just 65 in and we're viewing it from the same distance This 115in TV has over four times the screen surface area as a 55in TV that's like zooming in on the content with four times magnification so let's do that with the Sony let's zoom in on the Sony and take a real close look at this content and as you can see here many of those same artifacts the macro blocking and the blurriness that comes from it they're right there you just can't see them as easily on a 65 in TV at a normal viewing distance it's like the photos you take on your phone they can look fantastic on your phone tablet and even laptop screen but put them on a big screen and suddenly you can really see their faults it's not just video content either like if an app developer phoned it in on the resolution of their app tile for Google TV or the graphic from a network isn't up to Snuff anything that wasn't made at a resolution high enough to look good at this scale well you're going to see some Jagged edges for example and that can be true for game Graphics as well if developers decided to skimp here or there not anticipating that their game would ever get played on a screen larger than 85 in well you're going to see it it kind of feels like catching someone slacking to be honest I don't hate it now I imagine that most folks who buy this TV are going to be using it for watching higher quality content but if you plan on using this TV to watch old Seinfeld episodes or YouTube content captured by inexpensive cameras you need to be prepared to see all of what's in the content and some of it is not as good as you think it is from watching it on smaller screens there's no question that Sony and I think we have to toss LG in here now too their best processors are superior to TCL's for image cleanup but guys garbage in garbage out the garbage May stink just a little bit less with a top tier Sony or LG processor but well LG and Sony aren't making 115in TVs so hard to say how much less now that we've covered the big screen experience from several angles I want to talk about the audio system for a minute it's pretty impressive and I expected it to be you make a TV this big I want some of that size to go toward housing great audio and this TV does deliver an audio experience that matches its screen size it can't match a proper surround system with a subwoofer but you will not be disappointed with this onboard speaker system the up firing drivers the rear firing drivers and subwoofer drivers all combined to offer a huge sound and unlike most TVs this one is wide enough to offer some real stereo separation and stereo width the likes of which I've not heard from even the best sounding Sony OLED TVs I still think folks should match this to a killer home theater audio rig the TV deserves that kind of pairing but for anyone who doesn't want to pull out the big guns for everything they watch this TV can put out some damn impressive sound oh by the way quite a few folks expressed curiosity about the amount of heat this TV puts out and I suppose that's a fair concern especially as those of us in the northern hemisphere are headed into the dog days of summer if I spot check this TV with my laser thermometer I don't get any readings higher than say the 65 in TCL QM8 from last year however you do have to take into account the amount of screen area here which makes the TV a bigger radiator essentially I don't have a way to mathematically break things down for you here but anecdotally I can tell you that when I walk by it you can feel some warmth coming off of it any TV mini LED or OLED at this size is going to generate more heat than a comparably equipped 65 or 75 in TV I suppose if it's in a smaller room which kind of seems unlikely you definitely notice it warming up the room if you didn't have climate control but is it likely to jack up your AC build noticeably I can't say conclusively but I kind of doubt it you'd probably heat up your home just as much making a pot of spaghetti as you would watching a movie on this TV now let's get down to some picture quality stuff and that means it's time for Numbers for Nit Nerds and if you don't care about Peak brightness measurements and Delta e numbers for d65 white point and all that other nerdy stuff no problem skip ahead to the next section using the time codes down in the description I'll provide all the picture quality commentary that you need later for my knit nerds however here's the takeaway as it's performing now this unit I'm testing at least I'm going to say that if you want accuracy you're going to need to pay for a calibration I'm going to talk about an update TCL says it will issue soon that may address some accuracy concerns along with one other thing I need to tell you about but for now this is what I got when I pulled out the meters I turned off the room sensor that's under picture than intelligent settings and placed the TV in the movie mode picture preset the default brightness setting for SDR movie mode is 30 and you're going to see a green leaf here but that is not an indication that eco mode is still on it just signals that the TV uses less power and that leaf disappears at 50 end up so default performance for SDR movie mode the 10% white window registered at a blasting 2400 nits that is way too bright for SDR accuracy in a dark room I mean it looks good to the average viewer uh but then if you juice the brightness to the absolute Max you're going to get 3900 nits twoo white balance was not bad under a Delta e of three on both points measured that's pretty great but when we measured the gray scale we see that it's well off the mark in all but the darkest and brightest areas of the grayscale charts I think for the price you pay this needs to be better and I think TCL can remedy this unless I just have a rogue unit here color accuracy it's kind of a similar story the primaries look okay but when we expand to a wider palette of colors we see the errors are well above what we'd want to see in a premium TV it's odd that the primaries are solid but all the other colors are not in HDR Again movie mode I got Peak brightness measurements of about 4,000 nits again this breaks from the measurements I got of the 98 in model that was made available to me for testing at TCL's event in New York where even with test pattern windows I saw readings up near the 6,000 nit territory now I can tell you that specular highlights do appear brighter than even the smallest test pattern Windows which which indicates to me that the TV does deliver on its promise to hit about 5,000 nits quickly for HDR highlights but since the AIP Q processor is in charge of that business it's hard to measure and thus I don't have a chart that shows it HDR color without luminance errors was pretty good but with luminance errors it's pretty out again based on the readings I'm getting here it appears calibration will be essential for ciles who want accuracy out of this TV and honestly I think better out of box accuracy than what I'm getting here is to be expected given the price of the TV now as I'll soon share the lack of accuracy did not get in the way of my thoroughly enjoying this TV but there's something else that did something TCL says it's about to fix with an update that will probably hit in July and actually this bug may be responsible for some of the grayscale errors I saw as well but here it is I'm going to use bright white close caption text to exacerbate this issue but you can see a lower grade version of this just watching normal content in dimmer picture modes we're going to hide the closed captions because if we don't the camera sensor will get thrown off and you won't see the shifts as well but in this scene from Ahsoka on Disney plus you can see the entire screen dim just slightly and then pop back up as the captions come up the screen dims then as they disappear the screen goes back to its original APL now if we go into Vision bright mode which has a much higher APL by force it's so difficult to see the fluctuation that it'll likely go unnoticed and to be fair most folks didn't notice the exacerbated fluctuation I was able to show you still since it's indicative of a software issue or firmware issue and not a hardware problem I was sure to share it with TCL they replicated it got to the bottom of it and will fix it in an update and I'm hopeful that update may change some other aspects of the TV's accuracy as well well that means that we're going to have to revisit this TV post update to see what's changed so with all those measurement results and that one bug discussed here's my key takeaways on the picture quality most of the time it is spectacular and yes a lot of that is due to the sheer scale of the image but this TV can get well brighter than most folks need if you push it to do so the local dimming system is capable of doing a great job mitigating blooming and Halo so you get deep blacks and impressive contrast in most scenes the color is eye popping if not quite as well saturated at the brightest levels as say a QD OLED TV cinematic motion looks great without the aid of motion smoothing though if you get any frame drops due to a slow internet connection that will feel a bit more jarring again because of the screen size I mean the picture quality you get at this screen size is well it's just breathtaking even if it isn't Hollywood grade accurate I grin ear to ear every time I turn this TV on because I know I'm in for a whole lot of fun and the smiles I see on others faces when they see this TV that's worth a lot as well you just can't deny it is literally awesome honestly if cost were no object and you had the space I'd tell you to run don't walk to get one of these things there's no shot you'd be the least bit disappointed it's I mean this TV is just a riot but cost is an object for a lot of folks so the real problem with this TV is that more people won't be able to enjoy it because it is just so expensive I don't think we should be surprised that it costs so much the first 4K TV was extremely expensive the first 8K TV extremely expensive the first 85 and 98 in TVs extremely expensive of course the world's first 115in TV was going to be extremely expensive but I think there's hope because the price is going to come down it'll come down this year still won't be affordable for most folks but it will come down and next year it'll cost a little less and the year after that less still and the fact that this TV exists and that its price is just going to come down that just means that other big screen sizes like 85s and 98s they will become even more affordable than they're already becoming that local dimming bug that I mentioned before needs to get fixed there's no question about that and and I expect better accuracy especially since I've measured better out of the 98 in version of this series obviously TCL can do it you should not spend 20 grand on a TV and have to deal with those issues but like I said if TCL fixes it as promised and I do believe they will I give this TV my wholehearted unreserved recommendation to anyone with the means to own it there's nothing else like it on the market and the experience that you get from it is is simply unmatched thanks so much for watching everyone let me know what you think about this TV down in the comment section I'm sure you will like And subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like I did not KY yes that's how we like to start videos around here
2024-07-09 02:32
