LG QNED80A6A (IPS) vs TCL A400 PRO

When it comes to image dynamics and brightness, the QNED80A keeps its feet firmly on the ground. It’s not a "light beast" – during our measurements, peak luminance hovered around 350-400 nits. To put it bluntly: these are values that won't fully unleash the potential of HDR formats. So don’t expect the glare of the sun or car headlights in films to blind you. However, this television has a powerful ace up its sleeve that saves the overall image quality – it's the colours. LG engineers have employed an advanced filtration system (technically based on phosphor PFS, marketed as QNED/NanoCell), which does a fantastic job. Thanks to this, despite average brightness, the screen can generate exceptionally saturated and pure colours. Our instruments showed coverage of the wide cinematic DCI-P3 colour gamut at around 93-94%. This is a result that outclasses most standard LCD televisions. In practice, this means that when watching 4K HDR content, the image – although not very bright – is very vivid, lively, and delights the eye with its depth of colours.

The TCL A400 Pro is a moderately bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches around 600 nits. That level already allows for a real HDR effect and in many films it does deliver a noticeably more appealing picture than in SDR. However, it’s not a level that dazzles by brightness alone. The A400 Pro is not one of those TVs that bombard the viewer with a powerful flash in every dramatic scene. The biggest limitation is visible with small bright elements on a dark background. Because of fairly aggressive zone control, the TV can significantly reduce their brightness, in extreme cases down to around 100 nits. That means small lights, sparks, stars or single highlights can be much less visible than they should be. It should be added, though, that this isn’t done without reason. The A400 Pro does this to keep black levels as deep as possible and to limit the halo effect around bright objects. It’s a deliberate compromise: the TV more often opts for deeper blacks rather than maximising point highlights. On the one hand this is understandable, especially given a limited number of dimming zones, but on the other you should be aware that the HDR effect won’t always be as strong as the peak brightness alone might suggest.

On the plus side, the colours are a strength. The PFS LED filter used here, marketed by the manufacturer as QLED, delivers suitably saturated colours. Our measurements showed about 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and around 74% of BT.2020, which is a solid result for this class.

Here, regardless of whether you come across the VA or IPS version, the situation looks identical. LG engineers have once again served us their vision of a "gaming look," which unfortunately has little to do with accuracy. When switching to a console, the white balance automatically shifts to very cold regions. The image is dominated by blue, making it seem artificially sharpened, and the white is so aggressive that it almost burns out. This creates an effect we associate with garish retail modes – everything is meant to shine and scream "I’m digital." While some may like this, we must say it bluntly: it is not an accurate image. If you care about naturalness, we suggest you immediately check the settings and change the colour temperature to a warmer one.

As usual, we carried out colour measurements in the best‑tuned picture mode, Filmmaker Mode, the one intended to be closest to the creators’ intentions. The A400 Pro, of course, also offers other picture modes, but in practice they show much larger colour errors and interfere more with the image character. So we won’t cover them in detail in this part of the review. How does the factory colour reproduction fare? In short: really very well. In fact, looking at our measurements, it’s excellent. Both the white balance and the luminance response were set surprisingly precisely. The errors were so small that during the measurements we genuinely rubbed our eyes in surprise. Such good factory settings don’t happen often, even in televisions running Filmmaker Mode. All the more reason to praise TCL, because the A400 Pro straight out of the box can produce an image very close to how the source material should look. The results were so good you could easily think someone had already given this unit extra attention and tried to calibrate it. Our one bit of nitpicking comes down to a single issue. In SDR material the image was slightly brighter than the reference for a dark room, because the factory gamma was set closer to 2.3 than 2.4. It’s not a large error and most viewers probably won’t even notice it. We should note, however, that we are talking about our specific test unit. There can always be some variation in factory colour between individual units, production batches or screen sizes. We do not assume every A400 Pro will look identical straight out of the box.

After professional calibration, the QNED80A in the IPS version has changed beyond recognition, especially with "ordinary" content (SDR). We managed to eliminate the greenish tint and calm down the overly bright gamma. In classic television or older games, colour errors (DeltaE) have fallen below the threshold of perception (value < 2). The image is now coherent, natural, and truly pleasing to the eye. The situation is somewhat more complicated in HDR mode. Although the colours are now in place, the TV struggles with perfect brightness control (EOTF curve). Due to the limitations of edge lighting and the rather poor adjustment options provided by LG in this area, the TV's software at times "does what it wants" just to mask the imperfections of black and contrast. However, this is not a cause for concern – despite these technical limitations, the image after calibration is a class above what you saw out of the box.

Despite the outstanding factory tuning, we couldn't resist checking how the TCL A400 Pro would respond to professional calibration. With such a strong starting point, we were especially curious whether we could squeeze even more from this TV. And here we have to boast: we managed to bring our sample to absurdly low colour errors. Results below 1 are something you don't see every day, even on very good TVs. Such outcomes are more often associated with professional reference monitors than with a lifestyle TV for the living room. In terms of white balance and colour reproduction, the A400 Pro after calibration simply excelled. The only thing we can pick on after closer analysis concerns the brightness response. The TV can vary the luminance level depending on the content being displayed, and quite often the picture is a little darker than it should be according to the reference. This most likely stems from the way the Mini-LED backlight and the local dimming algorithms work in this model. That said, it doesn't ruin the overall impression, because in terms of colour precision the A400 Pro after calibration reached a level that was genuinely hard to expect.

It often happens that cheap 4K TVs mercilessly expose the flaws of low-resolution materials. Here, it's different. The QNED80A is great equipment for watching content that isn’t perfect. The processor does a great job of scaling the image, making even older recordings look quite decent on the 4K screen – they are consistent and free of digital noise. Interestingly, there’s a gradation reduction feature available in the settings. It’s particularly effective in combating what is known as banding in low-bitrate materials. Of course, you need to approach it with some caution. Due to the lower processing power of the chip (in comparison to the premium series), turning on this option can sometimes result in unwanted artifacts or blurring. Despite this risk, we encourage experimentation, as in many cases this feature can save a viewing of low quality.

Digital image processing is unfortunately one of the weaker points of the TCL A400 Pro. That does not mean the TV performs badly, but it’s hard to call it anything clearly above standard. The upscaling itself is acceptable: edges are fairly well smoothed, the picture does not look overly sharp or “pixelated”, and lower-quality material can be watched without major discomfort. At the same time the overall image has a slightly soft character and you don’t see the kind of precision that the best image processors in more expensive TVs can offer.

Handling of tonal transitions caused by heavy compression is much worse. TCL equipped the A400 Pro with a “Gradual Smoothing” feature that in theory should reduce visible colour banding and artefacts in lower-quality material. In practice, however, its effectiveness is very limited. It does not improve tonal transitions in any noticeable way, and at higher settings it can further smooth image detail, giving it an artificial, slightly blurred character. For that reason we think it’s best to leave this feature off. The A400 Pro copes decently with basic image scaling, but if you often watch heavily compressed material with visible posterisation, this model will not be one of the best choices.

When it comes to motion reproduction, the QNED80 unfortunately has a bit of a disadvantage. The TV is built on a 60Hz refresh rate panel, which is quite disappointing for the QNED series in 2025. If you're looking for perfect sharpness in dynamic football matches, you might feel a bit let down. The solution in this situation is the TruMotion system. It allows for artificially adding frames, which smooths out the picture in movies and TV shows. In the menu, you'll find a De-Judder slider – we recommend setting it to a value of 2, 3, or 4. This is the "golden mean" that improves fluidity without turning the film into a soap opera.

The TCL A400 Pro is equipped with a 144 Hz panel, but in practice we're most interested in how it performs at 120 Hz. That's the refresh rate most consoles, as well as many sports broadcasts and high-motion sources, are limited to today. In that range the TV performs quite well. Motion clarity is really good, especially after properly configuring the motion smoothing. The 'Motion Clarity' function improves smoothness. Its settings include two sliders that let you tailor the motion smoothing to your preferences, separately for low-frame-rate and high-frame-rate content. This allows you to achieve either a more cinematic look or a noticeably smoother image. If you don't want to fiddle with manual configuration, you can use built-in presets such as Low, Medium, High, Cinema or Nature.

In the gaming section, we won't be pulling the wool over your eyes – the QNED80A is not e-sports equipment. The lack of 120Hz signal support is a fact to accept. However, LG's engineers have done everything to squeeze the maximum potential out of this 60Hz panel, providing gamers with a desirable set of features. Above all, the TV supports VRR (in the range of 48-60Hz) and ALLM. This means the image is smooth and doesn't stutter, and the TV automatically switches to low latency mode as soon as you grab the controller. Accessing these options is ridiculously easy thanks to the dedicated system overlay – Game Dashboard. It's also worth appreciating the support for the HGiG format. This is a nod to owners of modern consoles. Even though the screen doesn't support gaming Dolby Vision, HGiG ensures that the TV "understands" how to display games in HDR. This helps avoid the effect of blown-out clouds, which is unfortunately a plague on cheaper LCD TVs.

In terms of gaming features the TCL A400 Pro performs brilliantly. The TV has practically everything you’d expect from a gaming TV today: support for 4K at high refresh rates, VRR, ALLM, correct implementation of HDR formats in games, including Dolby Vision, and HGiG. That means it works well with both next‑gen consoles and PCs. Another plus is the inclusion of a Game Bar, a dedicated panel with the most important settings for gamers. From it you can quickly check basic information about the signal, refresh rate or active features, and customise the appearance and behaviour of some settings to your preferences. It’s a solution that may not change picture quality by itself, but it greatly improves the convenience of using the TV while gaming. The only thing to criticise is the number of full HDMI 2.1 ports. The A400 Pro has only two such ports out of four, and one of them also serves as eARC. In practice this means that if you want to connect two next‑gen consoles and a soundbar you may run into some limitations. In that scenario you’ll need to either swap devices or use extra equipment, such as an AV receiver or a soundbar with HDMI inputs. Even so, it’s hard not to rate the A400 Pro very highly as a gaming TV. The gaming feature set here is genuinely powerful.