Television of the Year

TCL’s 768 Mini LED backlight zones increase black-level control to something subjectively about as good as OLED, for less.

Regular readers will be aware that we have championed OLED screen technology as delivering the finest available television pictures that money can buy. This has been true for around five years now. Yet neither of our TV award-winners has an OLED panel. Both are LED-backlit LCD TVs. What, then, are we thinking?

Well, we’re thinking that OLED screens are still great, but they haven’t moved forward significantly in the last few years — iterative improvements, sure, but nothing thrilling, plus the prices have stayed at a significant premium. LCD panel makers, on the other hand, have been coming up with ways to make their blacks blacker and their colours brighter (the latter an inherent advantage of LCD anyway). So the gap has narrowed. And if your TV is going to be situated in a room where there’s ambient light through the day, then your best bet is likely to be an LED-LCD screen — regardless of the funds available.

Our winner here boasts two key technologies in the qualifier to the product name. First there’s QLED, which has been around a while, initially promoted by Samsung as an OLED alternative, but in fact it was TCL which made the world’s first big-screen TV with QLED, in China, more than five years ago. Simply put, the quantum dots behind QLED produce very precise colours at frequencies to which the eye is especially sensitive, enabling more accurate and often a wider range of perceived colours.

But what about those blacks which OLED can boast as a front-emissive technology? Backlit LEDs flood the whole screen with light, so if there’s a bright image on a dark background, the background tends to show signs of light, and goes grey. One solution is multiple backlight zones, and with Mini LED TCL has here used 768 separate backlight zones. That increases black-level control precision enormously, and our review found the 65X10 to provide superb black performance — subjectively about as good as OLED. Add in an attractive TV only 16.5mm deep with just 9mm of bezel, plus the wellestablished Android/Chromecast platform providing the smarts, and this is one fine TV.

With the 65X10’s RRP at $4699 but street prices seen under $3k, TCL delivers the tech, the image quality and the value to take our award. More info: www.tcl.com/au