TCL C855 vs Samsung The Frame Pro 2026 (LS03HW)

TCL C855 delivers a highly varied HDR effect. On one hand, the television truly shines, while on the other, it resembles a lower model with FALD backlighting. Such a state of affairs is regularly observed with this brand, so it was not a surprise for us. The first and last scene, which has large light elements, looks phenomenal, "shining" with brightness levels of 1470 and 1820 nits respectively. Such effects will certainly make many people squint, while simultaneously feeling the extraordinary dynamism of the scene itself. You can truly feel as if you were inside the movie. The situation drastically changes when small or minor elements with high luminance surrounded by black appear on the screen. The TCL C855, to avoid the halo effect, significantly reduces brightness to a level of even 240 nits, which is a disappointing outcome, causing the film to not look like it was shot in HDR. The HDR effect in TCL C855 makes watching dynamic scenes more engaging, and the viewer can feel like they are part of the action. Even with smaller elements of high luminance, the television manages to maintain details without excessive dimming. Moreover, the TCL C855 test shows that the brightness of the image is adapted to scenes with a large amount of detail, increasing viewing comfort.

You can't fault The Frame Pro for one thing: brightness. At peak we measured about 850-900 nits, so the TV has plenty of power to make many HDR scenes look really impressive. Bright, full-screen shots and more colourful frames perform best. In those scenes The Frame Pro can make a good impression — the image is bright, punchy and has the effect we expect from HDR. In our measurements some scenes reached over 800 nits, and even in tougher passages the TV maintained a fairly respectable brightness level.

The problem starts when HDR depends on small bright elements shown against a dark background. Single lamps, stars or reflections can be bright, but very often the black level across a larger part of the image also rises. As a result the bright point itself can look good, but the whole frame loses a lot of quality. That means The Frame Pro shows HDR best in scenes that are simply full-screen. If a film or series contains many such shots, the effect can be genuinely enjoyable. In darker material the limits of local dimming become much more noticeable.

Colours

The Frame Pro deserves praise for its colour gamut coverage. The TV uses quantum dots, the solution known as QLED, so it can deliver really well-saturated colours. In our measurements coverage of the important DCI-P3 palette was around 94.5%, while the more demanding BT.2020 was about 72%.

Those are very solid results that in most scenes produce pleasant, saturated colours. Of course they are not as eye-catching as the values from the latest panels using RGB backlights, but The Frame Pro makes up for that in another way — colour stability. Regardless of the scene, colour saturation remains fairly consistent and there aren't situations where the TV loses colour badly in more demanding frames.

The best factory mode for the TCL C855 is "Film," and it is on this mode that we conducted all our tests. However, like every mode predefined by the manufacturer, it had flaws that are worth correcting to achieve an image that is as close as possible to what the film producer intended. We will look at the colour characteristics in both SDR and HDR materials. Taking the former into account, we see a clear dominance of green in the white balance, which, as you might guess, gave an unpleasant greenish tint to the entire image. Examining a very important gamma chart, responsible for the contrast of the image, we see a significant deviation from the reference line marked at 2.4. From the left, we can observe a strong spike in the measured value, which at this point caused contrast exaggeration and blending of details into a dark blob. This state of affairs persisted for quite a while, up to 20% of the chart’s value, before then diving below the reference. This, in turn, meant that the image was brightened and contrast decreased significantly. The factory mode performed somewhat better in HDR materials, as the white balance looked quite good, except for the second half, where green again took over. Looking at the EOTF curve, which, unlike gamma, shows the rate of brightness increase, we see primarily two errors: the darkest scenes were too dark, and the brightest ones were overexposed. This, by the way, could be observed in the scene from the film "Pan" in the check paragraph for the TV's HDR.

In SDR material The Frame Pro in Filmmaker mode performs quite well, though it falls short of perfect. White balance is relatively even, but as brightness increases the blue component diminishes, so brighter parts of the image can have a slightly warmer tint. A bigger difference is visible in the gamma, i.e. the screen’s brightness handling. Across most of the range it runs below our reference point, which means the TV brightens the midtones a little. As a result, the image can appear a little brighter and less contrasty than it should. The colour errors themselves aren’t huge, but they’re noticeable enough that calibration can still make a significant improvement.

In HDR content the white balance looks similar, being fairly even across much of the range, with larger deviations appearing only at higher brightness. The EOTF curve, however, is more revealing. The Frame Pro holds up fairly well against the reference values in the brighter parts of the image, but clearly lifts the darkest parts. This is primarily due to the TV’s backlight design. This also affects the colours. With less saturated colours the errors are still moderate, but they become significantly larger as saturation increases. In Colour Checker measurements many samples already show high error values. So the out-of-the-box HDR can be considered decent, but it’s definitely not an image we’d call very accurate.

TCL, just like the vast majority of manufacturers, provides advanced calibration tools in its televisions. Here we find 2- and 20-point grey scale adjustments as well as an advanced colour management system. The results, as you can see, are very good and in SDR materials we have significantly approached the reference image. We eliminated both the green tint and the gamma issue, although there is still a slight "kink" at the very beginning. It went a bit worse with HDR materials, which the television ChooseTV C855 did not allow us to model properly. We only managed to slightly adjust the EOTF curve and significantly improve the colours themselves.

After calibration, the biggest improvements are seen mainly in SDR material. We managed to even out the white balance, but an even more important change was the gamma correction, which before calibration had the greatest effect on the picture's character. After the adjustments the gamma curve is now very close to the reference, so the image is not as bright in the mid-tones and simply looks more natural. Colour errors have also been noticeably reduced, so the effect of calibration in SDR is clearly visible.

In HDR the situation is a bit more complex. White balance was improved and in some ranges the TV tracks the reference much better, but at higher brightness levels deviations still appear. The same goes for colour reproduction; some errors can be corrected, but not all stem from the settings themselves. This reveals the limitations of the TV's design and the way its backlight and local dimming affect the HDR image. So with The Frame Pro, calibration makes the biggest difference to everyday content. Regular TV, YouTube and films and series in SDR (mainly those from cheaper streaming service tiers) can look noticeably better afterwards.

Once again, we will look at the function of smoothing tonal transitions, but this time also image scaling. The latter is particularly important when watching materials of lower quality, such as some TV programs or older films. We will focus on the function responsible for tonal transitions. Interestingly, just like in the scenes in the previous test, it performed splendidly and smoothed out practically all the choppiness, but here it had problems. Using the menu responsible for the operation of this function, we found that none - not even the strongest - setting helped.

The image scaling in TCL C855 is characterised as one of the best we have had the opportunity to test so far. The image is sharp, but in a way that could be described as natural to our eye. Even small, fine branches do not have jagged contours, and there is no white halo around figures, which is characteristic of weaker scaling systems.

The Frame Pro uses the NQ4 AI Gen3 processor, so in terms of image processing it behaves very similarly to other recent Samsung TVs. Upscaling works really well, with lower-resolution material being sensibly sharpened and the picture remaining readable without over-emphasising edges. With regular TV broadcasts or lower-quality YouTube content this can deliver a noticeable improvement, although viewers watching even older sources, such as VHS tapes, may notice a slight cropping on the left side (overscan).

It’s a different story for heavily compressed footage and the reduction of noise and posterization artefacts. The "Noise Reduction" feature can improve poorer material, but it fairly quickly starts to interfere with the picture and removes fine detail and film grain. So it’s best used sparingly and mainly when the source genuinely needs it.

The maximum refresh rate that we can set on TCL C855 is 144 Hz. Naturally, this is only possible when connecting the TCL C855 TV to a very powerful PC. Otherwise, we will operate at a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is recommended if we primarily want to watch sports or content with a high level of motion dynamics. For those who require high fluidity of image, the manufacturer has implemented a multi-level motion smoother. It has been divided into two separate sliders that adjust the sharpness of moving images (Blur Reduction) and judder (Judder Reduction). Both sliders can be set in the range of 0 to 10, with each level affecting the degree of smoothing, so everyone can find their sweet spot. We present a setting that allows for slight smoothness without the soap opera effect.

The panel of TCL C855 features a very good response time. This is especially important, as VA panels often have issues with so-called ghosting, which is the effect where a black halo can be noticed behind a fast-moving object.

The Frame Pro is equipped with a 144 Hz panel and, when connected to a PC, also supports 240 Hz at Full HD. That's mainly a feature aimed at PC gamers, but the TV also handles the standard 120 Hz refresh rate used for watching sport or gaming on consoles very well. A major plus is the low smearing. For a VA panel, The Frame Pro performs really well in this regard. You don't see the strong, dark trails behind moving objects that are fairly common on TVs with this type of panel. That keeps fast sport and dynamic games clear in motion. There's also a motion smoothing feature with adjustable strength, so for films and sports broadcasts you can tailor the motion to your preferences. You can find our recommended settings in the photo.

The TCL C855 television is equipped with full HDMI 2.1 ports with a bandwidth of 48 Gb/s. During our tests, we confirmed the seamless operation of all functions that come with this standard. As you can see, all the checkboxes light up green, which will certainly be appreciated by gamers, both console and those using the television as a computer monitor. Additionally, the TCL C855 supports both AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA's G-Sync, which can be easily activated in the graphics card settings. Users with very powerful setups can provide a 144 Hz signal to the C855, which the television handles effortlessly. It's also worth mentioning the implementation of the HGIG mode, which, due to the shortcomings of the "Game" mode, is overly bright, making it difficult to configure properly on-screen. Fortunately, the television performs excellently with the Dolby Vision format.

The TCL C855, as one of the first manufacturers, has equipped its televisions with a special GameBar feature that allows extensive setting changes on the fly, without the need to exit the game. It includes functions such as an additional crosshair grid, black level correction, and settings for individuals with disabilities. In the photo, we see the next generation of this solution.

In summary, the TCL C855 television will be an ideal solution for those looking for a screen for any kind of electronic gaming. With all the features supporting such entertainment, it is incredibly engaging. It should also be emphasized that it has very low input lag, regardless of the selected settings, including with the Dolby Vision HDR format.

For gamers, The Frame Pro has a lot to offer. The TV supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, ALLM and a correctly implemented HGiG. When connected to a PC you can also run 144 Hz at 4K, and even 240 Hz if you drop to Full HD. Samsung also bundles its usual set of gamer extras: an expanded Game Bar that lets you quickly view and change the key settings, and Game Motion Plus to improve smoothness for games running at 30 or 60 fps. There’s also the Gaming Hub and the ability to play in the cloud without needing to connect a console. The only real omission is Dolby Vision Gaming, which Samsung doesn’t support. Aside from that, The Frame Pro offers pretty much everything you’d expect from a well-equipped gaming TV today.