TCL C655 / C69B (55"-85") vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

Overall, the quality of the HDR effect in TCL C655 / C69B looks quite promising. The average value in the test patterns is around 450 nits, which already allows you to feel the light effects and better image dynamics. However, as mentioned earlier, this effect may be somewhat subdued by slight differences in bright and dark shades, resulting from the lack of local dimming technology. However, the DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage of 94% deserves high praise, and this is possible due to the use of a quantum dot (QLED) panel. This makes the colours vibrant and well-reproduced when watching HDR content.

The Bravia 3 II isn't exactly a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached around 450 nits, so it's well short of the brightest models on the market. That doesn't mean HDR is just a paper feature here. Compared with standard SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through noticeably, and highlights, light sources and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. You can see this best in simpler shots where the screen contains lots of bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a taste of a higher-dynamic-range picture. The problem only starts with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is needed. There the TV quickly shows its limits and instead of bold, spectacular HDR we’re left with a merely competent picture.

Colours

The Bravia 3 II uses a QLED panel, although technically it doesn't employ a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony has used a PFS phosphor-based solution, which performs a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens, and thus reproduces a much wider colour gamut. In our measurements coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut was about 94%, and of the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. Those are good results for this class of hardware, which means the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing suitably saturated colours in HDR material. Colours don't look washed out, and the more intense hues can look really attractive.

The TCL C655 / C69B television offers a film mode that has been tested for colour reproduction quality. Although this mode is called film mode, it unfortunately has quite a few errors that the director would certainly not want to see when filming their work. Starting with image analysis, it's worth looking at the white balance – both in HD content and 4K HDR, the white balance has significant issues. In both cases, the red colour dominates, resulting in colours that are too warm, with an overall pink or yellow tint. This can be seen in the image below from the film "Star Wars." The Colour Checker test confirms these errors – the colour samples stray into incorrect shades, affecting the overall colour fidelity. The brightness characteristics are a lesser issue. However, they are not without flaws either. The gamma chart shows a strong spike at the beginning, which can cause the image to be overly bright, and the EOTF curve responsible for brightness in 4K HDR content also has significant fluctuations – it's evident how the television tries to maintain appropriate brightness, but it doesn't always succeed effectively.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. The white balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases a bit of blue and red drops away, so whites can sometimes appear a touch warmer with a faint greenish tint. These aren't mistakes that immediately jump out when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setup can be considered quite good. The situation in HDR is similar. Here too there's a slight lack of blue, so the picture is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference isn't large enough to be distracting during normal viewing.

After calibrating the movie mode of the television TCL C655 / C69B , the white balance has been adjusted, and the colours look as they should – which is confirmed by only slight deviations in the Colour Checker test. The gamma is really good, which ensures that the television shouldn't have any issues with brightness in low-resolution material. Unfortunately, a similar EOTF characteristic is still noticeable, which is a natural occurrence in televisions that do not have local dimming – they simply struggle to "shine" brighter in a given part of the screen. Despite this design limitation, which cannot be bypassed, we recommend making adjustments in the settings, as the overall colour presentation looks really very good.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR material. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That’s already the level at which differences from the reference image are very hard to spot in practice. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that despite its place in Sony’s range it has quite a bit of potential for precise picture tuning. Improvement is also visible in HDR, although here you can’t avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. Once the colours are evened out it’s easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film material runs slightly below the reference value in places, meaning the Bravia 3 II gently darkens parts of the image. That isn’t ideal from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps preserve a stronger sense of contrast. You could say Sony is partly masking the limitations of the panel this way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference brightness.

Television TCL C655 / C69B handles tonal transitions in low-quality materials fairly well. The "Gradual Smoothing" feature on low settings effectively smooths out tonal transitions, but it also blurs important details, such as the texture of objects. A positive aspect is that it does not negatively affect film grain, which helps to maintain the natural look of the image. In terms of digital processing, the television adds artificial sharpness, which some users who prefer a sharper image might appreciate. However, for those who prefer a softer look, this may be a drawback. Another downside is that the image has been significantly cropped due to the so-called overscan, which reduces the field of view and cuts off the edges of the image.

Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip, and you can see a few changes in the image processing. Starting with the basics: the upscaling itself is decent. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn't have a strong tendency to over‑emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming material the picture therefore remains quite attractive.

We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its job is basically the same: to smooth out ugly tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, which causes film grain to disappear and object textures or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When there's more motion in a scene, the function's effect noticeably weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. So for everyday viewing we wouldn't recommend using it at a high level. It can help on static shots, but the trade-off is often too much loss of detail.

The television C655 / C69B is equipped with a 4K@60 Hz panel, which means it's best suited for watching movies and less dynamic content. It also features a "Flicker Reduction" function, allowing users to adjust the smoothness of the image – they can choose whether they prefer smoother motion or a more cinematic, frame-like effect. The television can also adapt to lower resolutions, such as Full HD and 2K at 120 Hz, which will surely please gamers by offering a smoother image at the cost of resolution. It’s worth noting that this feature is available in sizes starting from 55"+. Additionally, the largest variant, 98", is equipped with a 144Hz panel with full motion smoothing.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120 Hz VA panel, a solution that by nature, despite the high refresh rate, doesn't always cope well with motion blur. Sony has, however, managed that issue very well here. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic motion trails and blur are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we've had the chance to test. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive flagship True RGB series, the Bravia 9 II.

The TCL C655 / C69B TV offers an almost perfect set of features for gamers, supporting all the key technologies. It has an ALLM feature that automatically switches the TV to low latency mode, significantly improving responsiveness and minimising signal lag, which is especially important during dynamic gameplay. The VRR feature allows synchronisation of the screen refresh rate with the number of frames generated by the console, eliminating screen tearing and providing smoother gameplay.

The TV also supports Dolby Vision in gaming mode, ensuring better colour and contrast reproduction in games that support this format, and the Game Bar enables quick access to gameplay-related settings, such as response time, latency level, and other parameters. Unfortunately, the C655 / C69B does not support 4K resolution at 120 Hz (the 98" variant is the exception), which may be disappointing for more demanding gamers seeking the ultimate smoothness in high-resolution games. However, if we can forgo 4K, the TV offers support for Full HD and 2K at 120 Hz, providing a smoother image and serving as a great alternative for those who prefer higher refresh rates at the expense of resolution.

The Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been solved the way we’d like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the problems that has hung over this manufacturer’s TVs for years. You can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There’s also a simple Game Bar that lets you check the key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game.

There are, however, two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That won’t be an issue for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC—for example to get higher frame rates in certain games—will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony doesn’t let you disable tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV keeps processing HDR even when you’d prefer to leave that task to the console. It’s easiest to spot during HDR setup—the checkerboard test pattern doesn’t disappear at the point where it should based on the TV’s actual capabilities. That doesn’t mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to set up a little differently and, rather than relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. So the issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.