TCL X11L vs LG OLED B6

Such a large number of zones did not only result in deep, inky blacks, but also in screen brightness. The X11L is an extremely bright television. Peak brightness can easily exceed 4,000 nits, and with the special "Boost" mode active it can, in specific conditions, even reach marketing figures around 9,000 to 10,000 nits. It is undoubtedly one of the brightest, if not the brightest, screens on the market. So how do these numbers relate to real film measurements? The results are very good, though of course far from the marketing claims. The brightness we measured in real film scenes was around 2,000 to 3,000 nits. That is an excellent result, given that the vast majority of content available is recorded and produced for those brightness levels, even the rare material mastered to 4,000 nits. But it also clearly shows that the figures the manufacturer touts do not always translate directly to the video material you have at home. The only "quirk" (if you can call it that) is that when very small, bright elements appear on screen, their brightness falls below 2,000 nits. The dimming algorithm does this deliberately to preserve deep blacks and minimise halo. This is entirely understandable, and the effect is still very impressive, but it also shows that even with such powerful hardware, Mini-LED technology has its limits and does not always work without compromise. In HDR itself, brightness is not the only thing that matters; colour saturation and the colours themselves do too. On the X11L these are very good thanks to the new Super QLED (SQD) quantum dots. The application of a new coating filter has delivered excellent results in covering the P3 colour gamut and the ultra-wide BT.2020. Although it does not reach the promised 100% of BT.2020, figures around 89 to 90% can be considered excellent. Colours are not far off those of RGB Mini-LED screens. We can even say they are more stable, due to a less demanding algorithm that RGB screens often struggle with.

The LG B6 is a moderately bright OLED. After calibration it reaches around 800 nits, roughly 200 nits more than last year’s B5. That’s down to the new, budget OLED SE panel from LG Display. In practice it simply gives a bit more headroom and makes HDR look fuller in many scenes than on last year’s lower‑end OLEDs. That does not mean the B6 has no limitations. In very bright shots, when a large part of the screen is strongly lit, brightness can fall below 400 nits. This behaviour is typical for OLED TVs, especially in this segment, and that’s where you see the biggest difference compared with more expensive models. Even so, we judge the B6’s results as genuinely solid. It’s still not a TV for breaking brightness records, but the HDR effect is strong enough that films truly feel like a step up from ordinary SDR. Colour gamut Using the OLED SE panel has had a slight impact on wide colour gamut coverage. Compared with last year’s model the results have fallen by a few percentage points. It covers roughly 96% of DCI‑P3 and about 71% of BT.2020. That doesn’t mean the colours on the LG B6 are weak. In most films and series they look lively, well saturated and simply pleasing to the eye. You only notice the difference in very bright, highly colourful scenes. Then colours lose some intensity compared with QD‑OLED panels. This stems from the WOLED panel structure. Besides red, green and blue subpixels it also uses a white subpixel, which helps to boost brightness. However, this comes at a price. At very high luminance some colour is effectively 'diluted' by the white light, so the saturation of certain colours can be slightly lower. In everyday use this isn’t a major issue, but in the most demanding scenes you can notice it.

Turning on what should theoretically be the best Filmmaker Mode, you expect a one-to-one image of what the director saw. On the X11L it's fairly good, but this mode has obvious faults, which our measurements immediately exposed. Let's start with SDR. Both the white balance and the gamma are simply misaligned. The whites contain too much blue and red, giving the screen a slight pink tint. That also affected the gamma, which instead of holding the cinematic 2.4 drifts closer to 2.2. What did that result in? The whole image is therefore more pushed and looks artificially brighter. The worst comes at the end, namely the HDR measurements. Apart from this slight white-balance shift, the X11L fails on the brightness-management curve, the so-called EOTF. What we saw in the measurements immediately explains what we noticed earlier in films. The image is unnaturally brightened because the curve is massively overshot above the reference. The TV simply blatantly lifts the dark parts of the picture to create a "wow" effect, completely ignoring the director's intent.

We tested the LG B6 in Filmmaker Mode, the best picture setting available straight out of the box. ISF modes produce very similar results, but in our tests we always stick to Filmmaker Mode for better comparison with other TVs. Each of them is, in any case, a much better starting point than Vivid or Eco mode, where the picture is heavily boosted and noticeably less natural. On SDR material the factory settings perform really well. Colour errors are small, the gamma response is correct, and the picture during normal viewing looks natural and does not feel overly "pumped up". It's a bit worse with HDR. When such content is played you quickly see that the white balance hasn't been set perfectly. Too much blue and red gives the image a slightly pink tint. This is also confirmed by colour gamut measurements and the ColorChecker, where samples clearly shift in that direction. It's not a flaw that completely spoils the picture, but it is noticeable with HDR films. Therefore anyone who wants the most faithful image should consider calibration, which we cover further on in the review.

After professional calibration we primarily managed to fully tame the SDR signal. Here the X11L responded perfectly to our adjustments. We were able to completely correct the white balance, remove that pink tint and set gamma to a stable 2.4. After that the picture finally became consistent with the director's vision, natural and free of artificial boosts. We also made minimal tweaks to HDR, but the TV's biggest flaw remained unchanged. It's of course about how the X11L manages its brightness and how much it overshoots the EOTF curve. Unfortunately, TCL provides virtually no tools to adjust this parameter. Even during professional calibration the software offers no way to rein in this curve, so the TV will always tend to brighten the image in HDR on its own.

During calibration, we concentrated mainly on HDR content, because that's where the factory settings needed the most correction. We did not, however, neglect SDR mode, which after adjustment was brought almost to perfection. Colours are very accurate, and brightness is controlled as it should be. The biggest improvement in HDR came from fixing the white balance. Removing the excess red and blue eliminated the pinkish tint, and the image became much more natural. Skin tones, whites and all colours that had previously shifted towards pink improved. After calibration most errors fell below a Delta E of 2–3, the threshold at which the average viewer stops noticing differences with the naked eye. So the LG B6 can deliver a very accurate picture, particularly for the manufacturer's entry-level OLED model.

Much like the C8L model we tested earlier, TCL has delivered a substantial upgrade in its flagship X series. It's all thanks to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 processor used in this model. Thanks to it, features for smoothing tonal transitions and even upscaling content to higher resolutions finally look as they should. The biggest Achilles' heel of previous TCL models has at last been addressed. The processor handles digital processing superbly and, in this respect, the TV no longer lags behind flagship models from Korea or even the most refined ones from Japan.

The LG B6 handles lower-quality material very well. This is largely thanks to effective digital image processing, which can mask some of the source’s imperfections without overly smoothing the whole scene. The "Smooth Gradation" function proves particularly useful. It noticeably reduces posterisation, especially in dark parts of the image. The safest choice remains the Low or Medium setting. The function still effectively smooths out unsightly tonal banding, but does not yet interfere too much with fine details. Purists can of course leave it switched off. Upscaling to 4K also performs very well. Full HD and 720p material retain a good amount of detail, and the image is neither overly sharpened nor heavily blurred. Some limitations only become apparent with very poor sources below 720p, where the smallest text and fine elements are not always perfectly sharp, but this applies to almost every other TV on the market.

From a specification standpoint the X11L can impress, supporting refresh rates up to 144 Hz at 4K, and it can be pushed to as much as 288 Hz in Full HD. However, from a real-world usage perspective we were most interested in how the screen performs at 120 Hz. After all, that is the limit for today’s hardware, with current-generation consoles leading the way. How does that look in practice? Even though it uses a VA panel, the screen does not exhibit significant smearing. With very fast-moving objects you can notice a slight trailing, but it is subtle enough that it hardly stands out while gaming or watching sport. The motion smoothing feature called "Motion Clarity" is also very useful here, allowing you to adjust motion smoothness to your preference. Recommended settings can be found in the picture.

One of the biggest advantages of OLED panels is the very fast pixel response time. This keeps the picture sharp and free of the visible smearing often seen on LCD TVs. However, there is a downside. During slow camera pans motion can look choppier than on LCD screens, where some of that effect is naturally masked by the slower panel. Fortunately, on the LG B6 this can be easily mitigated using the TruMotion system. With the motion smoothing set correctly you can achieve smoother motion without giving the picture an exaggerated soap opera effect.

For gamers the X11L is simply a superb screen. TCL has already accustomed us to the fact that it packs virtually every available feature into its products, and the flagship from the X series is no different. Thanks to the new processor, the X11L has as many as four HDMI 2.1 ports with full 48 Gbps bandwidth. Naturally, HDMI 2.1 brings a set of very useful features, such as Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and VRR frame synchronisation, covering the full refresh range up to 288 Hz. All these features can be conveniently controlled from the dedicated Game Bar. Interestingly, its appearance can be customised to your taste; there are three preset themes to choose from, directly referencing the Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles. And speaking of Xbox, the X11L also supports Dolby Vision Gaming without any issues.

When gaming in the standard HDR10 format, however, you need to bear in mind the specific tuning of the brightness curve, which can prove troublesome during initial setup. Although the TV supports HGiG, configuring everything via the PlayStation or Xbox system menu can be difficult. The screen’s algorithms tend to artificially brighten the test checkerboard pattern, making it really hard to hit the correct white clipping point by eye. For HDR10 to look correct, we suggest manually setting the console brightness in the console menu to around 2,500–3,000 nits.

LG OLED B6 has plenty to offer gamers; it’s simply a complete base for PS5, Xbox Series X/S or a capable PC. It has four full-size HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gbps bandwidth, so you can avoid irritating cable swapping when connecting several newer devices at once. It offers a full suite of synchronization technologies, from standard VRR to G-Sync and FreeSync. The screen synchronises the refresh rate seamlessly with the frame output from the console or graphics card. Of course it includes ALLM: the B6 automatically recognises when a game is running and immediately reduces latency to a minimum. HDR support is also excellent. The TV supports Dolby Vision, and a correctly implemented HGiG standard means that, after initial calibration in the console settings, the image won’t suffer from blown-out highlights or lost detail in bright areas. The cherry on the cake is the Game Bar. Instead of digging through the full menu during gameplay, a single click is enough to adjust shadow visibility, tweak selected parameters or simply check the current display mode. All of this makes the LG B6 an excellent choice for gamers.