New Products

TCL’s push to challenge the top TV brands appears to be gathering momentum. The company, which cites data placing it among the world’s second best-selling TV makers for the past six years, now says it’s doubling down on premium technologies to hold onto that spot—and perhaps narrow the gap with Samsung. TCL’s rise, in fierce competition with fellow Chinese manufacturer Hisense, has made it a contender in the U.S. market once dominated by a select group of established brands.

At CES 2025, TCL is unveiling its bread-and-butter lineup of QD-Mini LED TVs: the QM6K Series. This series builds on existing features with incremental refinements—rather than unveiling a wholesale technological leap. The innovation, if you want to call it that, is to keep pushing the boundaries of the price-performance ratio of a modern TV.

The manufacturer claims the new QD-Mini LED backlight offers improvements such as higher brightness, more efficient light control, and refined local dimming through something it calls the “Halo Control Technology Suite.” TCL attributes these developments to its Pangu Lab, a vertically integrated R&D center that it says handles everything from concept design to trial production.

The company points to a handful of added features—including a 144 Hz panel, newly tweaked local-dimming algorithms, and an upgraded image processor—and asserts they deliver a sharper picture and smoother performance. TCL also emphasizes the role of a redesigned backlight system in reducing blooming, which it says should yield crisper contrast in challenging lighting scenarios. While these upgrades may not change the TV landscape overnight, TCL contends the resulting “affordable premium” sets offer meaningful picture enhancements over last year’s models.

TCL says it has redesigned the backlight system to shrink the distance (OD) between the backlight and diffuser plate, a shift it calls “Micro OD.” The company claims this tighter configuration nearly eliminates blooming (the halo effect) and sharpens the contrast between bright whites and deep blacks. TCL also asserts that, paired with its updated lens, the new design increases backlight uniformity by 143% and improves blooming control by 18%.

Beyond the core performance story, TCL indicates the QM6K lineup is loaded with popular streaming and gaming capabilities: Google TV, multiple HDR formats, and variable refresh rates up to 288 Hz for certain console and PC gamers. The brand is positioning these TVs to sit one rung below flagship—yet with enough horsepower to satisfy early adopters on a budget.

Prices range from $749 (50-inch) to $3499 (98-inch). TCL says it will also throw in a complimentary Q75H soundbar with certain screen sizes. Whether these incremental updates are enough to entice shoppers away from the likes of Hisense and Samsung remains to be seen, but TCL is evidently betting that stepping up specs and holding the line on cost is a winning formula in the fight for TV sales supremacy.