TCL C9K vs Samsung The Frame 2026 (LS03H)

As we mentioned with black and contrast – the C9K can make a huge impression in synthetic tests. Our measurements showed that on a screen 10% filled with white, the television is capable of squeezing out… 4000 nits of brightness! It sounds astronomical, but – and here, unfortunately, the pattern repeats – the numbers say one thing, and practice says another. In real movie scenes, the situation looks different. At best, when the light effects occupy a large part of the image and the local dimming algorithm does not have to think too hard about what to do with thousands of zones – the effect is really good. At that point, the C9K can reach around 1500 nits, which provides a pleasant, intense flash and can indeed make a positive impression.

The problem starts with smaller elements – such as stars in the sky, the moon, or single reflections. That’s when the proverbial cat comes out of the bag: the algorithms are not yet refined, and brightness drops to even 400–500 nits. That’s a huge difference compared to the potential 4000 nits we saw in laboratory tests. Why does this happen? Most likely, the television is trying to protect the blacks in this way and minimize the halo effect around bright objects. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of details – some details simply vanish, and the scene loses its nature.

The Frame 2026 is genuinely a bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches about 650 nits and, importantly, similar values are maintained regardless of the type of scene being displayed. So it doesn’t matter much whether we’re watching a very bright full-screen shot or just a small bright element occupying part of the screen. The backlight always has a lot of power, so bright portions of the image are strongly illuminated. That gives The Frame a solid foundation for HDR. Bright highlights can stand out, and the picture doesn’t look flat or too dark. Unfortunately, this is not a solution without compromises. Because it lacks local dimming, the TV cannot darken the blacks next to very bright elements.

This is clearly visible, among other things, in scenes 2 and 4 from our test procedure. Bright areas look intense, but at the same time the blacks around them become noticeably lifted. The picture loses depth as a result, especially when watching in the evening. For that reason The Frame performs best with HDR in bright and moderately bright scenes. There the high backlight brightness works in its favor. In darker shots the situation is the opposite.

Colors

The Frame also performs well in terms of color. It’s a QLED TV, so it can display a wide color gamut and show richly saturated colors. DCI-P3 coverage is around 94%, and BT.2020 about 72%. Those are good numbers and you can see them while watching. Colors are vivid and do not look washed out. It looks best in bright, colorful scenes. Animations or cartoons with lots of saturated hues can look really good on The Frame. In such material the TV shows one of its stronger points.

For color tests, as always, we reached for the Filmmaker mode – a new feature in TCL TVs for 2025. And while the direction itself is a step in the right direction, the execution leaves much to be desired. The white balance in SDR content turned out to be too warm – there was an excess of red. On the other hand, in HDR, it went in the opposite direction: the image became excessively blue. The Colour Checker test revealed quite a few color errors that were noticeable to the naked eye. An even bigger problem turned out to be what we mentioned above – brightness management. Regardless of whether we were watching SDR or HDR content, the image tended to blow out the entire scene, giving it an unnatural, even grotesque character. It's hard to call this a "director-created" mode – because the director has certainly never seen such an image.

To evaluate the out-of-the-box colors we chose Filmmaker Mode. If you’re encountering it for the first time, it’s a mode designed to present a movie or series as faithfully as possible. The TV then turns off most additional picture enhancers, and the colors and luminance characteristics are meant to be as close as possible to what the content creators intended. I have to admit that the The Frame 2026 already performs quite well in this regard straight out of the box. The biggest deviation is visible in the white balance. As brightness increases, blue starts to drop off and green increases slightly. As a result the image shifts toward warmer tones. White is therefore not perfectly neutral, and in some scenes you can notice a slightly warmer overall cast.

The luminance response — gamma or EOTF — looks good. Across most of the range they stay fairly close to the target, though in the darkest parts of the image there is a larger deviation. In practice, some details emerging from black may therefore appear a bit more pronounced. That said, it’s not a flaw that jumps out during normal viewing. Overall, Filmmaker Mode is a good starting point here. However, the factory image is a bit too warm and not all hues land exactly where they should.

After calibration, we finally managed to tame the white balance – and it immediately translated into a more natural image. Colors finally started to look the way they should, and the overall presentation was incomparably better than in the factory settings. In other words – it’s worth taking a moment to improve this, as the gain is truly significant. The gamma responsible for managing brightness was also brought into order in SDR content, and the effect was more than satisfying. Unfortunately, when we turned on HDR materials, the situation quickly became complicated. No matter how we set the local dimming, the television had a tendency to do what it liked with the image – either it overexposed everything or dimmed the darkest parts too much. Exactly as we saw in the scene from the movie Billy Lynn. So, the color improvement after calibration makes a great impression, but brightness management in HDR remains the Achilles' heel of C9K and presents a certain technological limitation.

After calibration we mainly managed to remove that warmer cast and better even out the white balance. We also smoothed the brightness response a bit, which made the image more neutral and predictable. However, there are things calibration won't fix. It's mainly the behavior of the blacks, which stems from the backlight design itself and the lack of local dimming. In some scenes blacks will therefore still be slightly lifted, and you'll just have to accept that. That's more a characteristic of this model than something that can be fixed with settings. HDR is also somewhat limited. Samsung doesn't give full freedom to work across the widest color gamut, so not all colors can be reproduced perfectly. In normal viewing you probably won't notice it, but it's worth being aware of.

Digital image processing in TCL C9K is quite mediocre. The tonal smoothing feature seems to be present, but turning it on practically changes nothing – color bands are still visible, and it can unintentionally highlight elements we would prefer to hide, such as textures of objects. Fortunately, it doesn’t remove film grain, but that’s small comfort since the effects are still poor. Therefore, it's hard to recommend using this option.

On the other hand, image scaling performs much better. Lower quality materials look quite decent – characters and backgrounds are presented clearly, although, of course, with sources at 576p, physics cannot be fooled. Sometimes, characteristic aliasing on objects appears, but that’s the fault of the source itself, not the algorithm. A plus for not having issues with overscan – the image is not artificially cropped or enlarged.

As with many of Samsung’s newer TVs, this one also uses the NQ4 AI processor, only the older, second-generation version. And you have to admit it handles digital image processing quite well. Lower-resolution material is sharpened effectively, and after upscaling to 4K it still looks natural. The TV can also somewhat "tidy up" weaker sources, like older recordings or lower-quality broadcasts. That doesn't, of course, mean it will suddenly turn poor footage into 4K, but at closer viewing distances the difference compared with simpler models with weaker processors is easy to spot. Edges are clearer, and fine details don't get lost as much to signal compression.

Samsung also offers a few additional image-enhancing features, but as usual it's best to use them sparingly. At stronger settings, noise reduction can very effectively reduce posterization, but it also noticeably interferes with the image. The picture then simply starts to look very artificial, for example by heavily smoothing characters' faces. So it makes the most sense with really poor sources when various types of noise are seriously distracting.

Like the C8K, the C9K is also a really fast television – both figuratively and literally. It features a 4K panel with a refresh rate of 144 Hz, and at lower resolutions, the display can even ramp up to 288 Hz. This speed translates into practice – when watching sports or playing games, the image looks very smooth and clear. Additionally, in films, we get an extra motion smoother called Motion Clarity, which allows us to adjust the fluidity to our own preferences – from the cinematic "judder" frame to almost theatrical smoothness.

Samsung again used a panel with a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz here. Refresh rates up to 120Hz primarily offer more headroom for material with a lot of motion. The TV can use additional motion interpolation systems that can improve smoothness in sports and other fast-moving content. However, a high refresh rate alone does not solve everything. The Frame still uses a VA panel, which has a relatively slow response time, and consequently fairly pronounced motion blur. With fast-moving objects, especially on a dark background, motion trails are easy to notice. There's also a slight doubling of edges, which can be visible even with the additional motion processing systems turned off. We already saw similar behavior in last year’s The Frame 2025, and it’s a pity Samsung hasn’t fixed that element. The 144 Hz itself provides a good foundation, but the panel’s response time still limits this TV.

For gaming, the TCL C9K is a complete tool. Here we have two (out of four) HDMI 2.1 ports with full bandwidth of 48 Gbps, so all key technologies work: VRR (variable refresh rate) and ALLM (automatic low latency mode). Additionally, the manufacturer added a really intuitive Game Bar, which allows you to quickly preview the most important parameters and adjust settings without digging through the menu. Also, TCL's policy is a plus – the TV is not afraid of any HDR formats, even in game mode. Whether it's HGiG or Dolby Vision for the Xbox Series S/X console – everything works as it should, giving the player wide freedom.

In terms of gaming features, The Frame is practically on par with Samsung's top TVs. When you connect a console the TV automatically switches to game mode thanks to ALLM, so you don't have to change settings manually each time. There's also VRR, which matches the display's refresh rate to the frames being produced by the console or PC. During drops in smoothness this helps avoid the characteristic screen tearing. The Frame of course supports 4K at 120 Hz, so you can take advantage of the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X in games that offer higher frame rates. HGiG also works correctly. With HDR set up properly on the console the TV doesn't try to brighten the image on its own, so bright effects in games are shown as they should be. Samsung also includes a Game Bar. It's a handy menu you can bring up without leaving the game. There you can check things like VRR and the current frame rate, and quickly change the most important gaming settings. For PC use the options are even greater, since the mentioned Full HD mode allows raising the refresh rate up to 240 Hz. There is really only one feature missing that Samsung has already spoiled us with, and that's Dolby Vision Gaming. Xbox owners will notice this the most, because that console can use Dolby Vision in games. There's one more thing worth mentioning that applies specifically to this model. Its One Connect module has only one HDMI 2.1 port, so that's the only port you can use for a console or PC if you want 4K 120 Hz. Fortunately Samsung didn't tie that port to eARC. You can therefore connect a soundbar separately (3) and still have a full HDMI 2.1 port available for the console.