TCL RM7L vs Samsung S90H (WOLED)

TCL RM7L is a bright TV. In our measurements its peak brightness hovered around 1600 nits. That’s noticeably less than the C7L, which can get close to 2600 nits, but in real-world film scenes the difference between the models isn’t that large. In less demanding shots, where plenty of bright elements appear on screen, the RM7L can sustain around 1000 nits, and sometimes even a bit more, approaching 1500 nits. It performs worse in dark scenes with small points of light; then their brightness can fall to about 500 nits. This behaviour isn’t random. The TV deliberately dims small elements to better control the backlight and preserve higher contrast. This comes at the expense of their intensity, but it’s typical for TVs with local dimming in a similar price range.

Colour gamut coverage

In HDR brightness isn’t the only thing that matters, colour does too. Here the RM7L has a lot to show. Colours are strongly saturated and the wide colour gamut is one of its main strengths. In our measurements it reached about 96% of DCI-P3 and around 83% of BT.2020. It’s worth remembering, though, that on a TV with this kind of backlight the result can vary depending on the scene. On test patterns colours look best, while in films their saturation can be a little lower than on SQD Mini LED or QD-OLED TVs. The backlight design itself is interesting. The RM7L doesn’t use the classic red, green and blue LED set. TCL used two green LEDs and one blue, with red produced via a PFS phosphor. You can see this in spectrometer measurements, but it doesn’t have a major impact on the picture. Colours are still rendered correctly.

The Samsung S90H in the WOLED variant is still an exceptionally bright TV for its price bracket, although it is slightly dimmer compared with the QD-OLED version. That difference is not as pronounced as in last year’s F series, where gaps sometimes reached 500 nits. Here the parameters of both panels are very similar, with differences in peak brightness of only about 100–150 nits. In small-window measurements the S90H with the WOLED panel easily reaches close to 1,500 nits. That headroom lets it phenomenally convey the dynamics of HDR effects — blooms, light reflections and explosions have the right punch, exactly as intended by the studio creators. As with most OLED displays, when a very bright scene fills the entire screen, panel protection systems kick in and brightness naturally falls to around 700 nits. It’s worth stressing that this is still an excellent result on the market, often noticeably better than many Mini LED screens in the same segment.

Colour gamut coverage

The biggest difference between the two S90H variants lies in colour reproduction and saturation. This stems directly from the different construction of the WOLED panel, which uses an additional white subpixel. As a result, very high-brightness colours don’t achieve quite the same saturation, and the wide-colour volume is slightly more limited than with QD-OLED. That said, in everyday use these differences will be hard for most viewers to notice. Our measured DCI-P3 coverage on the WOLED panel reaches almost 99%, meaning that for the vast majority of real film scenes both variants will present an almost identical image. The real gap only appears in rarer, especially demanding productions that use the ultra-wide BT.2020 gamut. Because of the WOLED panel’s construction, coverage of that standard is roughly 15% lower compared with the S90HAT with a QD-OLED panel, so the brightest, heavily lit HDR colours may appear a touch less vivid.

Factory colours were checked in Filmmaker Mode, the best picture setting available to the user. TCL has been using it in its TVs for two years, and its purpose is to reproduce the image as faithfully as possible to the filmmakers' intent. On the RM7L it was indeed the best calibrated mode, though not without faults. The biggest issue was the white balance. An excess of red and blue made the image shift slightly toward pink tones. This was visible in both SDR and HDR. In addition, the brightness response was slightly boosted, so the picture looked a little brighter but at the same time less contrasty than it should.

In Filmmaker mode, which we strongly recommend switching on straight out of the box, the S90H offers very good factory colour tuning. Colours are natural and faithful to the creators' intent, without the annoying oversaturation seen in more aggressive profiles. However, as is often the case without full calibration, there is unit-to-unit variation. In our test the white balance was a little deficient in the blue component, so the image leaned slightly towards warmer, yellowish tones. This was most noticeable in bright scenes, such as the snowy sequences from Star Wars. Additionally, the gamma curve was slightly low at around 2.2, which caused a small lift in shadow detail. In HDR mode the tuning was a bit better, showing only a slight undersaturation in the red region.

Thanks to a fairly extensive calibration menu we managed to correct the vast majority of the issues described earlier. The biggest change was the white balance. After calibration it looks very good, so the image has lost its pinkish tint and become much more neutral. The luminance response has also improved. Both the SDR gamma and the HDR EOTF curve are now much closer to the reference values. The picture is no longer unnecessarily bright, and darker parts look more natural and have greater depth. Better luminance accuracy has also affected the colours, which after calibration are noticeably more accurate. Not everything could be set perfectly though. In HDR material the RM7L still interprets part of the signal in its own way and doesn’t always stick exactly to the reference curve. You can see this mainly in some darker scenes, where the TV can either slightly lift the shadows or darken them completely. That’s where the earlier impression of a slightly brightened, less contrasty image came from. Even so, the calibration delivers a very good result here. It removes the most visible errors and, above all, makes the picture much closer to how it should look.

After full calibration, you can safely say the S90H in the WOLED version looks almost perfect. In SDR mode colour errors fall to ultra-low levels and Delta E values very rarely exceed 2. That's a phenomenal result, so if perfectly faithful colour reproduction matters to you, it's definitely worth getting it calibrated. The calibrated HDR mode also performs very well, where the white balance was stabilised and previous deviations eliminated. After professional tuning it's really hard to fault anything, because the TV delivers an image with almost exemplary naturalness and three-dimensionality. The slightly lower score in this category compared with the QD-OLED variant is solely due to the saturation limitation in extremely bright scenes, while the tuning potential and colour fidelity are at the highest level.

Upscaling and digital image processing are not the RM7L’s strong points. TCL has used a MediaTek Pentonic 700 chipset here, labelled MT5896, which isn’t among the best processors at handling lower-quality sources. The biggest issues appear with heavily compressed content from YouTube or regular broadcast TV. The processor can’t effectively hide posterisation and the characteristic banding between shades. The feature meant to smooth these issues does little to help and can also interfere with the picture too much, smoothing faces and fine textures, for example. For that reason it’s best not to use it.

Plain upscaling to 4K looks better. Lower-quality sources are reasonably sharp and retain a sufficient amount of detail. It’s not on a par with the best processors on the market, but for everyday viewing the result is perfectly acceptable.

When it comes to banding reduction itself, Samsung has kept the same solutions known from last year’s models. The dedicated gradient-smoothing function works quite well and can effectively mask unwanted tonal transitions, which can be useful on a WOLED panel that’s somewhat more prone to banding. However, it’s important to remember it acts aggressively. This mechanism, aside from the artefacts themselves, can remove fine film grain and subtly soften detail. Ultimately it’s a trade-off, but if you want perfectly faithful image reproduction, it’s safer to leave this option off.

There’s also no breakthrough in scaling. The S90H uses the same NQ4 Gen3 processor as its predecessor, so upscaling quality was almost identical. The chip sharpens lower-resolution material very well, pulling a satisfying level of detail out of it. However, Samsung still hasn’t solved the old overscan problem. For some older recordings or archival footage the edges of the image can be slightly cropped. It’s a minor drawback, but it’s a shame the manufacturer still hasn’t fixed it.

The RM7L uses a 144 Hz VA panel, so right from the start it's well prepared for sports, games and other dynamic content. The high refresh rate also gives the motion interpolation more room to work, so it can generate additional frames. On the RM7L it performs well and, when set correctly, can noticeably improve motion smoothness without producing an excessive soap opera effect.

When it comes to motion handling the S90H is simply excellent. This year's panel offers its refresh rate boosted to 165 Hz, although in practice the benefit will mainly be for gamers connecting a powerful PC. For movies, TV series or sports broadcasts such a high refresh rate makes no difference and the picture looks exactly the same as at the standard 120 Hz. Regardless of the source, the OLED panel's lightning-fast response time does the job. Motion is clean, and the ghosting or smearing seen on LCDs simply doesn't occur here.

When it comes to gamer-focused features, there's almost nothing but praise for the RM7L. The TV supports ALLM, VRR, Dolby Vision Gaming and works correctly with HGiG, so it's hard to point to any major gaps in that area. In practice that means automatic switching to a low-latency mode, smoother motion with variable frame rates and accurate brightness reproduction in HDR games. There's also a handy Game Bar. From it you can quickly check the frame rate, VRR status, signal format and aspect ratio, and change key settings without leaving the game. TCL has added a few extra options too, such as an on-screen reticle and brightening of dark areas, which can be useful in some titles. The biggest downside comes from using the Pentonic 700 processor. Only two of the four HDMI ports support the full HDMI 2.1 standard. With a single console that won't be a big issue, but if you hook up two consoles and a PC you might run out of ports, especially since one of those ports may also be needed for eARC and a soundbar.

Gamers should feel right at home with the S90H, because Samsung has left few reasons to complain in this area. The TV has four HDMI 2.1 ports, each supporting VRR, ALLM and high refresh rates. There's also the Game Bar, a handy menu that lets you quickly check key parameters and change settings without leaving the game. Importantly, Samsung has also improved HGiG. In last year's models it could cause issues when used with a console, but on the S90H it now works as it should. What really stands out against the competition is Game Motion Plus. It's a specialised motion-smoothing mode for games that works best with titles running at 30 or 60 frames per second. Motion becomes noticeably smoother and latency remains at a reasonable level. In our measurements it was under 50 ms, so gaming is still comfortable. That's important, because on many TVs enabling a similar smoothing feature causes such a big increase in input lag that controls become noticeably sluggish. Samsung has managed to find a good compromise here. There's still no Dolby Vision Gaming, but in practice Game Motion Plus may prove to be the more useful feature.