XIAOMI S Mini 2026 (55"-75") 60Hz vs TCL P7L / P79L

When it comes to HDR, the Xiaomi S Mini 2026 performs really well, especially given the segment this model sits in. The TV can reach around 1000 nits of brightness without much difficulty, so in bright scenes it can deliver a very pronounced HDR effect. The sun, highlights or very brightly lit parts of the picture can be intensely bright and at times really hit you with their intensity. It’s a bit different in dark scenes, though. Very small light sources surrounded by black are rendered at much lower brightness, so they lack the pinpoint intensity seen on the best TVs. That’s not unusual for a Mini LED. The local dimming algorithm reduces the backlight in those cases to preserve as deep a black as possible, which in such scenes matters more than a few extra nits.

HDR colours

Colour reproduction also fares well. Xiaomi markets the S Mini 2026 as a QLED TV, although the solution used here is in practice based on a PFS phosphor. What matters is the result, and that is pretty good. Measured DCI-P3 gamut coverage was around 94%, while in the much wider BT.2020 colour space it was about 74%. That means the TV can show most of the colours used in HDR movies with suitably high saturation. Its limitations are most noticeable with very intense shades of green, where the colour range begins to run out.

The biggest limitation of the TCL P7L in HDR is simply brightness. The TV doesn't have much luminance headroom, so strong highlights, sunlight or small light sources can't clearly "pop" out of the image. As a result, even well-produced HDR material looks fairly restrained and, in terms of dynamics, is closer to good SDR than to what brighter models show. That doesn't mean the P7L completely fails at HDR; the issue is mainly a lack of sufficient backlight power. Looking at colours, the situation is a bit better. The TV covers roughly 91% of the DCI‑P3 gamut and about 68% of the wide BT.2020 space, so for its price class the colour range is quite decent. TCL markets this model as QLED, although the nature of the solution used is closer to a PFS phosphor‑based backlight than a classic quantum dot layer. What matters most to the viewer is the effect: more saturated colours are on offer.

We tested the Xiaomi S Mini 2026 (55–75 inch models) in Film mode, which compared with the other presets offered the most accurate colours. That did not mean the image was correctly set up straight away. In our unit the white balance was noticeably shifted toward warmer tones. There was too little blue and too much red, giving whites and greys a slightly warm cast. The TV also tended to brighten darker parts of the image too much. This was due to the gamma, which instead of staying around 2.4 fell in places to about 2.0. That made shadow detail more visible, but the image lost some depth. So the factory settings weren't bad, but they still needed some adjustment to reproduce the picture accurately.

In Film mode the TCL P7L performs quite decently without major tweaks, especially with ordinary SDR material. The white balance is relatively even, although as brightness increases there’s a slight rise in red and blue and a bit too little green. That doesn’t create a strongly visible colour cast and most colours remain close to their reference points. The Colour Checker confirms this, with a large portion of errors falling below the level that should particularly bother during normal viewing. We have more remarks about the gamma response. In the darkest parts of the image the TV drives it noticeably above the reference, so some shadow detail may be a little too dim. The curve then settles and for much of the range it’s close to the intended targets. As a result SDR generally looks natural, but in dark scenes the P7L can lose some subtlety.

In HDR the factory setup is less precise. As brightness increases the excess blue becomes more pronounced, so the picture can look cooler than it should. The number of larger colour deviations also rises, especially in brighter colours. The EOTF curve itself is handled fairly conservatively, with the TV showing the image darker than the reference over much of the range. For such an inexpensive model, the factory Film mode settings are not bad.

Surprisingly, the Xiaomi S Mini 2026 responds quite well to calibration. After our adjustments we were able to noticeably improve the white balance and the picture stopped leaning toward overly warm tones. In SDR material the result is really good, with the TV able to reproduce such content very accurately and hard to fault for colour reproduction. We made similar adjustments in HDR, although not everything could be corrected there. Colours look better than on the factory settings, but the TV still tends to display the picture a little brighter than it should. You can see this from the EOTF curve, which sits above the reference. In practice this means some HDR scenes are brighter than the creators intended. It's a quirk of this TV and we can't do anything about it.

After calibration the TCL P7L can produce a genuinely pleasant picture, especially with conventional SDR material. We managed to even out the white balance very well, and the gamma curve now tracks close to the target value of 2.4. This is also evident in the colour measurements, as most errors have fallen significantly and in everyday viewing it’s hard to notice any major inaccuracies. Films, series, YouTube and regular TV therefore look more natural, without unnecessary warmth or a cool tint. For a model at this price point the SDR result is really very good.

In HDR the situation becomes more complicated. Calibration improved the white balance and corrected some deviations, but here the panel’s limitations become increasingly apparent. The P7L has relatively limited brightness and can’t sustain appropriate luminance for more saturated colours, so some errors remain even after careful tuning. In other words, settings can improve how the TV interprets the signal, but you can’t overcome its physical capabilities. That’s why calibration is most worthwhile for SDR on this model.

The MT5896 processor handles digital image processing in the Xiaomi S Mini 2026. Unfortunately, in this respect the TV is fairly average. Low-resolution content isn't upscaled very well, and its limitations become obvious on a large screen. The picture looks quite digital, and the TV can't pull out many extra details. You also can't turn off overscan for low-resolution content. The handling of posterisation smoothing is even worse. On the smaller models there's not even a separate setting to reduce the visible banding between similar shades. So if those imperfections are already present in the source material, Xiaomi effectively doesn't mask them.

In this respect the TCL P7L performs surprisingly well, especially for such an inexpensive TV. The banding reduction feature, which in many budget models does little or nothing, actually manages to improve the picture here. It doesn't remove all banding completely, but it can noticeably reduce posterisation and make trickier gradients look more natural. In this price segment that's a genuinely pleasant surprise.

The upscaling itself also looks good. Lower-resolution material is upscaled properly, without excessive sharpening or adding artificial edges around objects. Of course the P7L won't turn a very poor source into a 4K-quality picture, but for regular TV the result is simply solid. For a model at this price point there are few major complaints to make.

The smaller variants of the Xiaomi S Mini 2026 use a 60 Hz panel, and that's their biggest limitation when it comes to motion. For films and TV series this isn't yet a major problem, because the TV has a classic motion interpolator for 24/30 fps material. So you can reduce the characteristic judder and adjust motion to your own preferences. Sports and other 50/60 Hz material fare worse, because there’s no additional feature to improve smoothness. In such content we’re therefore limited by the panel itself.

In terms of motion blur the TV performs fairly typically for a VA panel. The most trailing is visible behind objects moving against a dark background, while in brighter scenes the effect is noticeably smaller. It’s not at a level that completely ruins the perception of motion, but in dynamic scenes you can see that the panel isn’t one of the fastest.

TCL P7L uses a native 60 Hz panel at 4K resolution, and that's how it should be treated in everyday use. For movies the TV mainly offers frame interpolation, so it can smooth motion and reduce noticeable judder, but it doesn't deliver the smoothness typical of true 120 Hz panels.

In the larger sizes the Xiaomi S Mini 2026 becomes a far more interesting option for gamers. The panel runs natively at up to 144 Hz, so when you connect a PC you can use the high refresh rate even at 4K. At lower resolutions the TV can go even further, reaching up to 288 Hz. It also offers ALLM, automatic switching to Game Mode, and a Game Bar that keeps the most important settings within easy reach. Of course, the TV has two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports. So in terms of smoothness the difference compared with the 55–75 inch versions is substantial and particularly easy to notice when using a PC or console. However, not everything works perfectly. As with the smaller variants, we have reservations about the HGiG implementation. The HDR setup screens on the PS5 and Xbox don't precisely reflect the TV's actual capabilities, so if you set the console according to those prompts the brightest parts of the image can be blown out and lose some detail.

For such an inexpensive TV, the P7L has quite a lot to offer gamers. It has ALLM, VRR and Dolby Vision in games, and TCL also includes its Game Bar, where you can quickly check key information or change some settings without leaving the game. Not everything is perfect, though, because HGiG doesn't work here as it should, but at this price point it's hard to complain much about the feature set. The most interesting part comes when you give up 4K. At that resolution the TV runs at up to 60 Hz, but at 1440p and 1080p it can already display at 120 Hz. And that's not just a spec-sheet curiosity. In fast-paced games that support that frame rate the difference in smoothness is genuinely noticeable, so if you care more about smoother motion than maximum image sharpness, that mode can make a lot of sense. Of course, that doesn't make the P7L a true 120 Hz TV. Still, it's precisely these extra modes that make the P7L perform really well for gaming.