TCL C855 vs TCL C8K

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.

TCL C8K is a really bright television. In synthetic conditions – that is, during tests with brightness charts – it was able to achieve even 3500 nits peak brightness in movie mode. That's an impressive result and brings the C8K close to the market leaders, at least when it comes to panel brightness. More importantly – these aren't just numbers on paper. In films with a lot of bright scenes, such as Life of Pi or The Meg, the brightness clearly exceeds 1000 nits, providing a true sense of HDR effect. The picture in those moments looks very dynamic, colors are saturated thanks to excellent coverage of the color palette, and the lights are – spot on and intense. Exactly how it should be.

However, this doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. Just like in contrast tests, here too, in more demanding scenes, compromises appear. In sequences with very fine light elements – such as stars in the night sky or reflections in dark rooms – the local dimming algorithm can… get confused. Instead of bringing those details up, the television sometimes decides to dim them significantly – down to around 300 nits – to maintain deep blacks. On one hand, this is quite a sensible approach (better deep black than a grey/navy blue screen), but on the other – there may be moments when certain elements of the picture become difficult to see or even disappear into darkness.

TEST UPDATE (20/08/2025): The brightness control algorithm in this model is quite problematic – attempting to calibrate the picture so that it doesn’t drastically overexpose the brightest scenes results in unnatural shifts: improvement in one part of the image results in deterioration in another. The television may achieve slightly higher readings in brightness measurements, but in practice, this comes with a heavily overexposed image that looks very unnatural!

For the record, we provide brightness values without this adjustment:

1. 1463 nits

2. 640 nits

3. 1368 nits

4. 468 nits

5. 1025 nits

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 the C8K, a new picture mode has appeared: Filmmaker Mode. This is something we've known for years from televisions of other brands – a mode designed to deliver the director's vision as faithfully as possible, without unnecessary image enhancements. Unfortunately, at TCL, it seems to still be in the "to be refined" stage. Right from the first glance, the screen appears too warm – the image veers into reds, which may not appeal to everyone. The white balance was markedly skewed – the screen looked distinctly warm, and the red colour dominated almost every scene. There was a lack of blue, which led to an unpleasant yellowing and distortion of the image. But that’s not all. Regardless of whether we were watching regular TV, YouTube, or HDR films – the television had a clear tendency to excessively brighten the image. In tests of gamma curves and EOTF, the lines strayed instead of adhering to the standard, resulting in an overly bright and less contrasting image. Additionally, in colour reproduction tests, significant deviations were noticeable – on the colour wheel, some points were actually "drifting away." It must be said plainly: Filmmaker Mode in the C8K, in its current form, is not very cinematic.

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 professional calibration, the TCL C8K has made a huge leap forward. In SDR content, the white balance has been almost perfectly set – the screen has finally stopped being too warm and has taken on a neutral character. The gamma curve, which is responsible for how brightness is represented, now looks very good – the image is more coherent and realistic. In HDR content, we also improved the white balance – within the limits of what the television itself allows. Unfortunately, the C8K still interprets brightness management a bit "in its own way." When we look at the EOTF chart in films, it’s clear that the television brightens entire scenes more than it should. Before calibration, this effect was quite bothersome – now the situation is much better, although it still falls a bit short of perfection. This, however, is a limitation of the device itself, which – despite our efforts – does not allow us to fully tame its nature.

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.

How does the TCL C8K handle lower quality materials? One could say: fairly well, though without much enthusiasm. The television offers a tonal transition enhancement feature designed to smooth out unwanted gradients. In practice, there's a slight improvement visible, but it's not at a level that eliminates all imperfections. The feature subtly softens harsh transitions, but it doesn't work miracles. Film grain isn't completely suppressed, and subtle banding on grey backgrounds can still be noticeable. But maybe that's for the best? – at least the image doesn't lose its texture or depth, as is often the case with televisions that overdo digital processing. When it comes to upscaling, which is enhancing picture quality from lower resolutions, the C8K performs quite well. The image is sharp, and details – though sometimes a bit softened – remain discernible. However, it's not on par with the best picture processors from the competition. On the plus side, there's no issues with overscan, which is the artificial cropping of the image that can still surprise in some models from other brands.

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.

If you're planning a weekend with the Champions League or a marathon of F1 racing – the TCL C8K won't let you down. The television is equipped with a 144 Hz panel, so it should inherently handle fast motion well. And indeed – it performs very well. The fluidity of motion is at a very good level here, and the "Motion Clarity" feature with two sliders (blur reduction and flicker reduction) allows you to easily adjust the effect to your own preferences. Want to slightly smooth things out – no worries. Prefer a cinematic look – no problem.

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.

TCL C8K offers practically everything we could expect from a screen for gamers. It has variable refresh rate (VRR), automatic game mode (ALLM), Dolby Vision in games, and a well-functioning implementation of HGiG, which helps preserve the creators' intent in HDR titles. The TV also supports 120 Hz in lower resolutions without any problems, and it can even display a staggering 288 Hz in Full HD – a figure that will surely appeal to fans of dynamic shooters and sports games on PC.

On board, we also find the GameBar – a graphical interface that somewhat resembles an elongated Nintendo Switch console. Thanks to this, we gain quick access to information about the current game mode, frame count, HDR format, and other little details that really make life easier for the gamer. We obviously couldn’t resist and ran a couple of races in Forza Horizon on the C8K – and we must admit, it looked and worked really well.

However, there is a slight drawback – in such a fast and clearly gaming-oriented device, it's a bit unfortunate that the manufacturer opted for the implementation of only two HDMI 2.1 ports. For some users, who use several next-gen consoles and, for example, a soundbar with eARC, this could be a limitation that’s hard to overcome.