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. This situation is, however, regularly observed in this brand, so it was not a surprise to us. The first and last scenes, featuring large elements of light, look almost phenomenal, "shining" with brightness levels of 1470 and 1820 nits respectively. Such effects will certainly cause more than one person to squint, while simultaneously feeling the extraordinary dynamism of the scene itself. You can truly feel as if you are inside the film. The situation changes dramatically when small or minor elements with high luminance surrounded by black appear on the screen. The TCL C855, in order to avoid the halo effect, significantly reduces brightness to a level of even 240 nits, which is a disappointing result, causing the film to not appear as if it was recorded in HDR. The HDR effect in the TCL C855 makes watching dynamic scenes more engaging, allowing the viewer to feel as though 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 adjusted for scenes with a large amount of detail, which enhances viewing comfort.

One thing you cannot deny The Frame Pro is: brightness. At peak we measured around 850–900 nits, so the TV already has enough power to show many HDR scenes really impressively. Bright, full‑screen shots and more colourful frames perform best here. In such scenes The Frame Pro can make a good impression because 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 more challenging segments the TV maintained a quite respectable brightness level.

The problem starts when HDR depends on small bright elements shown on a dark background. Individual lamps, stars or highlights 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 may look good, but the whole frame loses a lot of quality. Therefore The Frame Pro shows HDR best in scenes that are simply full‑screen. If a film or TV series has plenty of such shots, the effect can be really pleasant. In darker material the limitations of local dimming are much more noticeable.

Colours

The Frame Pro should be praised for its colour gamut coverage. The TV uses quantum dots, the solution known as QLED, which allows it to reproduce very well saturated colours. In our measurements coverage of the most important film gamut DCI‑P3 was around 94.5%, while the more demanding BT.2020 was about 72%.

These are very solid results that in most scenes allow for pleasant, saturated colours. Of course these figures are not as spectacular as in the latest screens using RGB backlighting, but The Frame Pro makes up for that with something else: colour stability. Regardless of the scene, colour saturation remains fairly consistent and there are no situations where the TV loses colour badly in more demanding shots.

The best factory mode for the TCL C855 is "Film," and it is on this mode that we conducted all our tests. Like any mode predefined by the manufacturer, it had its drawbacks that are worth correcting to achieve an image as close as possible to what the film producer intended. We will examine the colour characteristics in both SDR and HDR materials. Looking at the first, we see a noticeable dominance of green in the white balance, which, as you might imagine, resulted in an unpleasant greenish tint across the entire image. Observing the very important gamma chart, which is responsible for the image's contrast, 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 the image to be overly contrasted, merging details into a dark blob. This situation persisted for quite some time, up to 20% of the chart's value, before then dipping below the reference. This, in turn, meant a brightening of the image and a significant drop in contrast. The factory mode performed slightly better in HDR materials, as the white balance looked quite good, except for the second half, where green once again took precedence. 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 was something we could also observe in the scene from the film "Pan" in the paragraph checking the TV's HDR.

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

In HDR content the white balance looks similar — for a large part of the range it is fairly even, with larger deviations appearing only at higher brightness. The EOTF curve is more interesting. The Frame Pro sticks reasonably close to the reference values in the brighter part of the image, but clearly brightens the darkest sections. This is mainly due to the design of the TV's backlight. That also affects colours. With less saturated hues the errors remain moderate, but as saturation increases they become much larger. In Colour Checker measurements a large portion of samples already show high error values. The factory HDR can therefore be regarded as decent, but it is certainly not an image we would call very faithful.

TCL, like the vast majority of manufacturers, provides advanced calibration tools in its televisions. Here we find 2- and 20-point adjustments for greyscale 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. The performance with HDR materials was somewhat poorer, as the TCL C855 did not allow us to model them adequately. We were only able to slightly adjust the EOTF curve and significantly improve the colours themselves.

After calibration the biggest improvement is visible above all in SDR content. We managed to even out the white balance, but the more important change was the gamma correction, which before calibration had the greatest influence on the image character. After the adjustments the gamma curve is now very close to the reference, so the picture is not as bright in the midtones and simply looks more natural. Colour errors have also been significantly reduced, so the effect of calibration in SDR is clearly visible.

With HDR the situation is somewhat more complex. White balance has been improved and over part of the range the TV stays much closer to the reference, but deviations still appear at higher brightness levels. The same applies to colour reproduction: some errors can be corrected, but not all stem from the settings alone. This highlights the limitations of the TV's design and the way its backlight and local dimming affect HDR images. Therefore, with The Frame Pro calibration makes the biggest difference to everyday viewing. Regular TV, YouTube and films and series in SDR (mainly those from the cheaper tiers of streaming services) can look noticeably better afterwards.

Once again, we will take a look at the function of smoothing tonal transitions, but this time also at image scaling. The latter is particularly important when watching lower-quality materials, such as certain television programmes or older films. We will focus on the function responsible for tonal transitions. Interestingly, just like in the scenes of the previous test, it performed excellently and smoothed out practically all the inconsistencies; however, here it had problems. Using the menu responsible for this function, we found that no setting - even the strongest - was of any help.

Image scaling in TCL C855 is described 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 for our eyes. Even the small, fine branches do not have jagged edges, and there is no white halo around figures, which is characteristic of inferior scaling systems.

The Frame Pro uses the NQ4 AI Gen3 processor, so in terms of image processing it behaves very similarly to other newer Samsung TVs. Upscaling works really well – lower-resolution content is appropriately sharpened and the picture remains clear without excessive edge enhancement. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality YouTube material this can provide a noticeable improvement, although viewers watching even older material, e.g. from VHS tapes, may notice a slight cropping of the image on the left side (overscan).

It's a bit different when improving more highly compressed footage by reducing noise and artefacts such as posterization. The "Noise reduction" function can improve poor material, but fairly quickly it begins to alter the picture and remove fine details and grain. Therefore it's best to use it sparingly and mainly when the source truly requires it.

The maximum refresh rate we can set on the TCL C855 is 144 Hz. Naturally, this is only possible by connecting the TCL C855 television to a very powerful PC. Otherwise, we will be operating at a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is recommended if we primarily want to watch sports or content with a lot of motion dynamics. For those requiring high image fluidity, the manufacturer has implemented a multi-stage motion smoother. This has been divided into two separate sliders regulating the sharpness of moving images (Motion Blur Reduction) and flicker (Flicker Reduction). Both sliders can be set in the range from 0 to 10, with each increment affecting the level of smoothing, so everyone can find their sweet spot. We present a setting that allows for slight smoothing without the soap opera effect.

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

The Frame Pro comes with a 144 Hz panel, and when connected to a PC it also supports 240 Hz at Full HD resolution. That feature is primarily aimed at PC gamers, but the TV also performs very well at the standard 120 Hz refresh rate used for watching sport or gaming on consoles. A key advantage is the low level of motion blur. For a VA panel, The Frame Pro does very well in this respect. You don't see the strong, dark trailing smears behind moving objects that we often encounter on TVs with this type of panel. As a result, fast-paced sport and dynamic games remain clear in motion. Of course there's also motion smoothing with adjustable smoothness, so for films and sports broadcasts we can tailor the motion character to our preferences. You'll find our recommended settings in the photo.

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

The TCL C855 is one of the first manufacturers to equip its televisions with a special GameBar, which allows for extensive setting changes on the fly, without the need to exit the game. It features functions such as an additional crosshair grid, black level correction, and settings for people with disabilities. In the picture, we can see the next generation of this solution.

In summary, the TCL C855 television will be an ideal solution for those seeking a screen for all sorts of electronic gaming. Thanks to all the features supporting such entertainment, it is incredibly engaging. It is also important to highlight the very low input lag, regardless of the selected settings, including with the HDR Dolby Vision format.

Functionally for gamers The Frame Pro has a great deal to offer. The TV supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR, ALLM and a properly implemented HGiG. When connected to a PC you can also use 144 Hz at 4K, and even 240 Hz when dropping to Full HD. Samsung also includes its standard suite of gaming extras. There is an expanded Game Bar that lets you quickly view and change the most important settings, and Game Motion Plus, which can improve the smoothness of games running at 30 or 60 frames per second. On top of that there is the Gaming Hub and the option to play in the cloud without needing to connect a console. The only real omission is Dolby Vision Gaming, which Samsung does not support. Apart from that, The Frame Pro offers virtually everything you can expect from a well-equipped gaming TV today.