4K TV Reviews

Live Sports
2023 is a great year for TVs and sports. We're seeing a lot more 4K and HDR in the mix, including a 4K HDR (upscaled from 1080p) Super Bowl broadcast that looked amazing on this TCL streamed through YouTube TV. As an Eagles fan, I did not like how the game turned out but watching it was next-level, the quality changed the whole experience and made it a lot more visceral. Sports in 4K is a game-changer, making it look like a movie. You see blades of grass, drops of sweat, and stitches on the ball.

4K baseball is amazing and MLB in true 4K is available streaming on Apple TV+. I didn't anticipate the drama of seeing players' faces, even when the camera isn't zoomed in. The fans' faces in the stands are also clear. Most of all, in 4K on a 144 Hz panel, you can see the ball fly crystal clear, and close plays are easy to make out. 2023 promises to be a revolutionary year for America's Pastime, with the new pitch clock picking up the pace and 4K bringing the action home in unprecedented quality.

The leap from current HD sports broadcasting, which is typically bit-starved standard-definition 720p or 1080i, to 4K—or at least high-bandwidth 1080p with HDR (which was Fox's approach with the NFL) is the visual equivalent of when we went from DVD (SD) to Blu-ray (HD) for movies. It is a massive step forward in fidelity and one of the most rewarding aspects of owning a modern HDR-capable 4K TV like this TCL.

Movies
If you're into movies, this TV is an excellent value. It's not an OLED, but it costs less and still delivers vibrant images. It also has better daytime viewing brightness than OLEDs. I love using Dolby Vision whenever possible, as the TV's picture is highly accurate in this mode. You get faithful-to-source picture quality without having to tweak any settings.

This TV excels at playing SDR HD movies (like standard Blu-rays). Rec.709 is fully covered, it's brighter than you'll ever need, contrast pops, and 4K resolution is overkill for 1080p source material. All of this looks fantastic thanks to accurate color and the proper 24p cadence that is a benefit of 120 Hz-capable panels. If you calibrate it and view head-on, the SDR picture is reference-quality. You can watch DVDs on this TV as well, but there's only so much it can so with a standard definition source, especially at today's screen sizes it's going to look soft.

However these days 4K with HDR is pretty ubiquitous. It is available in streaming and on UHD Blu-ray disc, and is often worth the extra coin if you have a compatible TV. And NextGen TV supports it. Crucially, this TV has the backlight horsepower and quantum dot-enhanced color gamut needed to do HDR right, to really make those highlights shine, shadows look deep, and cover (around 95% of) the DCI/P3 gamut used to master movies for commercial cinema as well as most HDR content for home viewing.

Avatar: The Way of the Water had its digital release days before I finished this review, but it is a great example of what this TV can do. The combination of detail, color and action is a visual feast you want to appreciate in all its glory, which I felt was the case with the 4K Dolby Vision stream via Apple TV 4K.

With movies there's still the same caveat on the viewing angles, you need to be head-on and not sitting in a recliner off to the side.

Video, Photos, Art
Today's phones, drones, and digital cameras can capture stunning images and videos that hold up on 4K screens. 4K video at 24, 30, and 60 frames per second is easily achieved with even relatively affordable action cameras. Some phones can even capture video with Dolby Vision.

Some of most spectacular, sharp, detailed, and colorful imagery comes from our phones, drones, and digital cameras. With the early spring, I've captured stunning skies and colorful flowers blooming. At night, drone photos and videos of the Philly skyline have remarkable clarity that I would not have thought possible just a year or two ago! And the TCL 6 Series plays it all back smoothly, with accurate color and impressive detail rendition.

I used this 65" TCL 6 Series TV as my primary PC monitor including for retouching photos, creating digital art, and editing video. It has accurate color, fast response, and supports 4:4:4 chroma even in 4K 60 Hz and 120 Hz (albeit only in Game mode). If you calibrate the TV, it can be used as a production tool for photos or video. There's no doubt this TV makes a great PC monitor.

Gaming
With its 144 Hz refresh rate panel and support for both Freesync and G-Sync VRR, this TV is a delight to game upon. Gamers tend to sit centered to the screen and in so doing, you get the full impact of the screen's native 8,000:1 contrast. The result is incredible, with HDR color and pristine 4K—at up to 120 Hz on my PS5 or Xbox, depending on the game—the imagery can look hyper-real, as is the case with Gran Turismo 7. About the only thing it cannot do, aside from accept an 8K signal, is run at 120 Hz in 4K with Dolby Vision active.

I used the TCL 6 Series with both my PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and found it delivers an sublime gaming experience with either. Both consoles reported full compatibility with all video features except for 8K. I found the graphics in the latest games to be among the best quality source material that I demoed, the clarity achieved with 120 Hz graphics has to be seen to be believed. HFR (high frame rate) may look odd when used in movies, but for video gamers, the smoothness, speed and clarity of 4K/120 Hz from a console is immediately obvious and useful.

Input lag is extremely low, with a 4K 60 Hz signal it's around 11 milliseconds and a mere 6 milliseconds with 120 Hz refresh. The lag is so low, it is now in a range where it is no longer a factor for casual players. And not once did I spot screen tearing, whether the source was a gaming console or PC, so presumably VRR did its job.

Sound Quality
This TV's built-in sound is serviceable. For TV and sports it works fine, but they are down-firing speakers and they don't get particularly loud. Some TVs try to cram the equivalent of a soundbar into the frame, but doing so would likely increase the cost of a TV. For movies and gaming, it could use the boost that a soundbar or a pair of speakers provide, so in my view it's better to save the money on the TV versus a more "premium" model that really looks the same but has more speakers, and put it into a separate sound solution that suits your specific needs.

Of course Atmos immersive surround-sound is always fun and since the TV supports Atmos audio output (with eARC), matching it with a compatible, capable spatial audio system is rewarding.

Conclusion
TCL has a winning formula that it keeps refining with the 6 Series. It's a TV that offers spectacular performance for its price and covers multiple applications from daytime viewing in bright rooms to movies in home theater-like settings with the flights out. If you want a TV that is substantially better than the TCL 6 Series in one performance category or another, you will likely pay a steep premium to get there.

A huge consideration with modern TVs is how well tuned it is right out of the box. Not just color accuracy, but the overall mix of features and processing applied to any give mode. This TV makes it easy, set it to Normal or Movie mode (depending on which you prefer) and let it switch to Game mode and your preferred Dolby Vision mode on its own. That's the value contained in this TV, it'll deliver "more than good enough" performance and features, which operate automatically behind the scenes, without making you pay for perfection.

This 'peak bang-for-the-buck' Top Pick TV is packed with the latest video formats and technologies, presented in an easy-to-use Roku interface. If you know you'll be seated centered to the screen, you will consistently enjoy near-reference picture quality without having to fiddle with it. That's why you won't find recommended settings at the end of this review, what I recommend is that you try, and if needed fine-tune the provided settings.

I'll repeat the main caveat with this TV one more time: Viewing angles are somewhat limited. If you sit off to the side, you will not experience the best it has to offer. With that in mind, know that the 6 Series R655 is an incredibly capable TV that will satisfy most viewer's needs.