Television

By Avi Greengart

In 2023, TCL chose to push quantum dot and gaming features down its line but leave miniLED backlighting only on its higher-end QM8 line. At launch it was a strong value with great contrast and color for less than bigger brands. In 2024, prices have come down further and new TCL models have been announced, but the QM8 will remain on the market for a while — and it's now a bargain.

Introduction

In the U.S., TCL is best known for its televisions, but it is actually one of the largest consumer electronics conglomerates in the world. TCL runs its own factories and invests tens of billions of dollars in building its own display panel fabs in China. TCL's mobile division sells Alcatel and TCL branded featurephones, smartphones, tablets, modems, and more. The parent company also makes washing machines, refrigerators, and consumer IoT devices that are primarily sold in Asia.

All that said, in the U.S., TCL really is primarily a television company, and it has grown at the expense of larger, better-known brands by following two simple strategies: maximizing the initially small budget it had for marketing, and providing a lot of value to consumers. As TCL’s panels grew in size – and the company moved slightly upmarket at retail – TCL paid up for the ultimate U.S. sports marketing rights: it is now the official TV of the NFL.

Sports may move the marketing needle, but gaming and streaming drive higher-priced TV sales. For 2023, TCL moved desirable gaming features and quantum dot color down into lower priced tiers, while reserving miniLED backlight technology for its higher end QM8 line. The QM8 starts at 55” but doesn’t stop at 75” or even 85” — you can get an absolutely enormous 98” miniLED QM8. Pricing on the QM8 line started out reasonably, with the 65” at $1300 and the 98” only $5,000, but holiday sales and time have pushed those prices down significantly. The 65” that TCL sent over is now $1,000, and the 98” monster is just $4,000.

Unboxing and First Impressions

The first thing I noticed when unboxing the TCL QM8 was the attention paid to the rear of the set. Typically, mainstream consumer televisions look clean on the front, but the back has multiple different scalloped segments, with exposed screws, lots of cheap plastic, and a cramped input area on one side. The QM8 will almost certainly end up on a wall mount or sitting on furniture close to the wall, but on the off chance that it will be placed in the middle of the room, TCL took the time to make the rear of the QM8 presentable. The whole back area is a sculpted curve, with port areas covered up, and an attractive bass speaker in the center. Other than the speaker, it doesn’t cost TCL much to do this, it’s more a matter of priorities: the attention to detail on the back is one way that TCL is pushing this set past budget value segments and towards more premium value buyers.

TCL licenses operating systems from Amazon, Roku, and Google; this set is an Android TV version. Android TV OS 11 is functional, with all the apps you’d expect, plus a reasonable amount of Google integration with YouTube, any content you’ve purchased from Google, and home control. It is not as straightforward an interface as Roku or as theatrical as Fire TV, but navigating the interface on the QM8 was responsive. That's good, because TCL does not note which MediaTek chip it uses in the QM8 — or even acknowledge that it is using one (it is). In contrast, Sony boasts that its (admittedly more expensive) Bravia Mini LED TVs use premium MediaTek chips for better upscaling. At least whatever TCL is using in the QM8 doesn't hold it back from responsive day to day use.

The QM8’s remote control is long and rounded. It fits nicely in your hand and is straightforward to use, but it is not backlit, the buttons are not overly differentiated by shape, and only the power, channel up/down, and volume up/down buttons have raised indicators to feel for. Like most TVs today – and all budget brands – TCL sells one-touch placement buttons on the remote to streaming channels. Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and Apple TV are joined by TCL’s own TCL TV+ channel – ad-supported streaming linear TV, and TCL Home – a quick settings bar with its own login. TCL is hardly alone in trying to build an ad business around its TVs, but at least for the programming I watched, TCL doesn’t have a large advertising base just yet – each ad break repeated the same spots multiple times.

Performance

The QM8 is one of the first televisions I’ve had in for review that didn’t immediately make me turn to the Sonos Arc soundbar I have on my test stand. That doesn’t mean that I left the soundbar off – this is still not especially rich or directional sound, music is a bit flat and dialog could certainly be clearer. The "ULTRA-BASS" branding on the rear speaker is aspirational. However, you can get reasonably loud and clear audio out of the QM8’s internal speaker array, and that isn’t always the case even at this price point. If you plan on using this for news, cooking shows, and sports, you should be able to get away without an external audio solution.

TCL is pushing gaming features down even into its budget line, but it certainly doesn’t stop there, and the QM8 is a great match for 5^th generation game consoles from Sony and Microsoft. It also makes a reasonable PC gaming monitor, if by reasonable you mean absolutely enormous. The set has a dedicated low latency gaming mode, supports variable refresh rate, and will let you play games at 4K 144Hz or 1080 at 240Hz. There are also modes that smooth motion even further (great for gaming, turn them off for content, please).

I’ve saved the best for last: picture quality. If you are sitting on-axis, the QM8’s miniLED backlight array and quantum dot color combine to create compelling images that approach OLED contrast with even brighter HDR (High Dynamic Range) highlights. This is a superb TV for rooms with large picture windows and equally good in a dark room watching prestige TV in Dolby Vision. The QM8 hits peak HDR near 2000 nits and supports every HDR format (unlike Samsung) including HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision IQ is included, which auto-adjusts to account for room lighting; I found it somewhat unpredictable and turned it off, preferring Dolby Vision Bright or Dark depending on room conditions.

The title sequence for Foundation on Apple TV+ is a great way to show off Dolby Vision high dynamic range (there are several concentrated lights), wide color gamut (the shifting color beads), contrast, and resolution (the crisp narrow font on top of all the rest). Shadow detail in Fallout on Amazon Prime is excellent, and all the over-the-top gore pops against the muted color tones of the wasteland. The “Family Madrigal” introductory song in Disney’s Encanto is essentially a color saturation torture test – and the QM8 passes with [sorry for the pun] flying colors. If you want to see just how bright the HDR can get on the QM8, you can’t do much better than the opening sequence in Disney’s Encanto – until you get to the “Waiting on a Miracle” number, which could have been animated by Dolby itself as Dolby Vision demo. The QM8 can also do atmospheric, moody content with accurate skin tones.

Like all LCD displays, when sitting off to the side, brightness and color varies significantly; in that situation, or if you simply want the best possible contrast and color reproduction, an OLED is worth paying for. I also wish that the glass was a bit less reflective; the QM8 can go super-bright and outshine reflections from room lamps and windows, but muting those room highlights would still make for easier watching.

Comparisons and Conclusion

I have an LG C2 OLED one room over in my main theater area, and if you don’t have an OLED nearby for direct comparison, you’re unlikely to notice a big drop-off in picture quality with the QM8 even on scenes with white text on dark backgrounds, HDR reflections, or animation with wide color gamut. You probably also won’t notice the technically wider color range that the best OLEDs can produce, at least not on normal program material. However, you will notice about $1,000 more in your wallet.

The TCL QM8 2023 is not as bright as the 2024 models are going to be, nor is it an OLED for the ultimate in contrast and off-axis viewing. But when compared to similar miniLED TVs from Samsung and LG, it offers superb performance at a lower price. This value proposition becomes even stronger when you get to larger sizes, topping out at a projector-like 98” for 2023, and still highly competitive in 2024.

Disclosure: TCL sent over a 65" QM8 4KTV for review but HomeTheaterView has no financial relationship with TCL and does not accept affiliate payments. A market analysis version of this review was published at Techsponential. HomeTheaterView is a Techsponential company; Techsponential has done limited consulting work for TCL's mobile group in the past.

By Avi Greengart

Technological disruption is often portrayed as coming fully-formed from an all-new thing that is superior to established options, but that’s not always how innovations w ork. Many disruptions come from products that provide lesser experiences at lower price points or appeal to a different set of customer needs than the industry standard. These products then improve over time and eventually hit a tipping point where their advantages overtake the status quo. The front projection market has been fairly static for a while, but that is starting to change.

Smart Portable Projectors Move Upmarket

Fitting millions of tiny mirrors on a piece of silicon sounds like science fiction, but Texas Instruments introduced DLP all the way back in 1987. It has been a mature technology since the days of the Intel 286, and it has been used in business and home theater projectors since the 1990’s. Over the past decade or so, companies like Anker’s Nebula have taken commodity DLP chips and put them in soda can-sized containers containing a battery, LED lamp, speaker, and a MediaTek processor with Wi-Fi. By adding Android TV and keystone software, this becomes a self-contained streaming media projection system. You can turn it on, point it at a wall (the keystone software automatically adjusts the image angle, no adjustments necessary), and start watching. Image quality and brightness are usually just adequate, but the portability and convenience make cannister projectors the perfect solution for taking on vacation or getting a big picture without requiring dedicated wall space. They can be cheap, too, with most units selling for $400 – $600, no installation, and usually no dedicated screen – though YouTube van lifers and apartment dwellers often graduate from hanging a sheet to adding an inexpensive pull-down screen.

XGIMI is one of the cannister projector pioneers, and the Chinese company has now sold over five million units. However, it is starting to move decidedly upmarket and its latest product threatening to displace enthusiast home theater projector brands. XGIMI (pronounced “ex-jimmy;” we asked) started with relatively dim, smart portable pico-projectors, but it now offers higher brightness UST (Ultra Short Throw) projectors and 4K HDR projectors using laser light engines. The XGIMI Horizon Ultra I've had in for review is unique: it takes most of the elements of portable smart projectors designed for quick and casual use, then adds serious image quality that should appeal to home theater enthusiasts. In fact, the Horizon Ultra is the first long-throw projector of any kind with Dolby Vision.

The Horizon Ultra runs on the MediaTek MT9629, which is certainly a capable processor, as it supports 4K and HDR, but it is far from MediaTek’s top of the line Pentonic series. By pairing the MT9629 with a 4K DLP chip and a home-grown hybrid LED/laser light engine, the $1799 Horizon Ultra is able to outperform home theater projectors that cost $6000 in some key measures – specifically, HDR.

The Horizon Ultra’s light output requires a lot of power, so the unit does not have a battery and must be plugged into the wall. The power brick is enormous, and the cable position can make placement challenging. The projector itself is also significantly larger and more of a cube than its cannister predecessors, though it weighs just 11.5 lbs. and is still small enough to tuck in a closet when not in use. Despite the power, the Horizon Ultra merely gets warm during use and is almost dead silent even from two feet away.

The Horizon Ultra is spec'd at 2200 lumen, which is bright enough for casual viewing and sports with the lights on. For serious movie and prestige TV watching, you're still going to want full light control to get the best image. In the cinema mode and in Dolby Vision colors pop without oversaturation. To get HDR, XGIMI uses a dual laser and LED light engine, and it works! In scenes like Wonder Woman crossing no man's land, the sparks of bullets off Diana's shield are markedly brighter than the rest of the image, and her lasso is obviously enhanced, too. Watching Foundations on Apple TV — which has a "lets apply Dolby Vision to everything" mode — was a treat. Wide color gamut and high dynamic range scenes abound. Like many 4K projectors aimed at the consumer market, the DLP engine that XGIMI is using is not native 4K – it uses pixel shifting to get there — but it sure looks like 4K when the image is properly dialed in.

The Horizon Ultra’s origin as a portable smart projector can still be seen in its design – and its remote control. The unit’s built-in Harmon-branded speaker plays relatively loud and clean, even if it does not provide stereo or any spacial effects. However, people cross-shopping the Horizon Ultra with other home theater projectors won’t want a speaker at all and may never use the built-in Android TV functionality. They might prefer to save the space and cost of the speakers because they will be using one of the two HDMI 2.1 inputs instead with an A/V receiver or processor and amplifier. The remote control is also a victim of budget projector cost cutting, with no backlighting to speak of.

There are other, more fundamental, design compromises for home theater use.

Black levels and projector placement are the Horizon Ultra's main weaknesses. My eight-year-old Sony 1080p LCOS puts out a markedly softer image (as expected) but slightly better black levels. The XGIMI blows it away on brightness and on modern benchmarks like HDR and color range. However, getting all that light output on the screen can be a bit of a challenge. On most home theater projectors, the distance, height, and left/right position of the mount are precisely calibrated to match the screen size by an installer or the DIY enthusiast. Cannister projectors are less fussy about placement: by including aggressive keystone correction and dropping picture quality in favor of convenience, you can just set them down anywhere and they adjust the image accordingly. The Horizon Ultra tries to split the difference. It has the same set-it-and-forget-it keystoning feature as its smaller predecessors, but using it robs the projector of resolution. Enthusiasts would prefer to adjust the projector physically and not lose pixels, but that can be difficult with the Horizon Ultra. It has a single tripod-style thread underneath that did not seem strong enough for ceiling mounting and it lacks any other standard mounting points. There is an optical zoom lens for distance (settings are buried in the menu) but no ability to tilt and no lens shift. The optional stand does add modest tilt angles, but it did not extend up high enough to use behind my seating position. I ended up having to use the keystone feature and adjust the image manually to fit my screen at the cost of lost resolution and light spill all around the screen. The resulting image still looks good, especially in a dark room and with 4K HDR content, but it would look even better if I could properly mount and aim the Horizon Ultra. At $1800, XGIMI is pricing the Horizon Ultra out of reach for casual users, but if you can’t place the projector in the right spot in the room to ideally fit your screen, it still might make sense to choose a projector from a traditional brand like Sony, EPSON, or Optoma even without Dolby Vision and even at a higher price point.

Conclusion

XGIMI is taking technology perfected in budget smart portable projectors and is bringing it to the enthusiast home theater market. The Horizon Ultra has HDR features that aren’t found on other projectors at any price, and if the placement works in your room, it is a bargain at just $1800. Going forward, XGIMI needs to improve mounting options and provide tilt and lens shift. But even as is, the Horizon Ultra is a disruptive product that should have home theater enthusiasts discovering the brand for the first time.

XGIMI sent over a Horizon Ultra and stand for review but HomeTheaterView has no financial relationship with XGIMI and does not accept affiliate payments.