TCL C8L / QM8L Review

We tested the TCL C8L in the best factory mode available in the menu of this television for image fidelity. We are, of course, talking about Filmmaker Mode, which has been part of this brand's software structure relatively recently (a year ago in the "K" series). Thanks to it, an average user can achieve quite a good color reproduction straight out of the box, although it is certainly not a perfectly calibrated mode. Looking at the factory white balance of our model – both in SDR and HDR materials – it was clear that the red component was noticeably lacking, which made the image appear noticeably cooler and slightly lean toward bluish-green hues. The issue of brightness management is also ambiguous, which we mentioned earlier. While in SDR content, the linearity of the Gamma parameter is really good and it reliably maintains the reference value of 2.4, in HDR the situation looks much worse. Following the EOTF curve clearly shows that the television has significantly boosted brightness across the range, which can cause the final image to be excessively bright and inconsistent with the creators' intentions – and this in a mode that should, by definition, avoid this. Of course, like every unit in our lab, this one was also subjected to professional calibration, and its results can be found below.

As you can see, the results of the professional calibration of the TCL C8L are truly promising, thanks to the extensive adjustment tools that the manufacturer has made available to us in the menu. Above all, we managed to completely correct the white balance – we eliminated the red deficiency, resulting in the image no longer drifting into unwanted, cool shades. After this adjustment, the errors in the ColorChecker test dropped to nearly reference values, regularly placing below the Delta E threshold of 2, which is below the visibility limit for the human eye.

Since the test patterns are so perfect, you might ask us: why, then, is the final rating in this category lower? The answer lies in the brightness management previously described. Although we find sliders in the menu that allow us to precisely straighten the EOTF curve on synthetic signals, in confrontation with real film material (I recommend turning on the EOTF filter in movies now), it is clear that the television, in most scenarios, still responds to HDR metadata in its own way. As a result, the image can be slightly overexposed and not consistent with the creators' intentions – and it is precisely for this lack of repeatability in real films that we had to deduct a few points from the C8L model.