TCL 6-SERIES 65R635 ROKU LCD ULTRA HDTV

IN LATE 2019, TCL flew me to the company’s U.S. offices in California to spend an afternoon with its new flagship, the 75Q825 8-Series Roku LCD Ultra HDTV, a 75-inch 4K model. Not all of that particular set’s firmware was complete at the time, but Sound & Vision took advantage of the opportunity to give our readers a sneak preview. The 75Q825’s signature feature was TCL’S use of mini-leds for backlighting, and at its then price of $3,000, it was something of an outlier for a brand typically associated with budget TVS.

Fast forward one year and we have the 65R635 6-Series Roku LCD Ultra HDTV, a 65-inch model that the company shipped us for review. Like their 8-Series siblings, the latest 6-Series models feature a mini-led backlight, but at $1,000, the 65R635 represents a considerably more affordable option. (Don’t confuse mini-led with the Microled technology that’s currently available only at nosebleed prices. As with any LED/

LCD set, the TLC’S mini-leds are used as the backlighting for an LCD imaging panel.)

Since mini-leds are much smaller than conventional

LEDS, thousands of them can be squeezed into a display. This creates more uniform backlighting than conventional LEDS are capable of, but due to cost considerations, current sets lack the processing power needed to let each mini

LED act as its own local dimming zone. Instead, the mini-leds are arranged into clusters, with each cluster acting as an independently controlled zone. TCL claims a maximum of 240 local dimming zones for the 6-Series, with

“maximum” likely referring to the largest, 75-inch model. For the 65-inch 6-Series set I measured 160 zones—still an impressive number.

TCL won’t be alone in offering mini-led for long since sets using the backlight technology were announced from other manufacturers, including Samsung and LG, at the 2021 CES. TCL itself has announced that the upcoming 6-Series for 2021 will be exclusively 8K. No word, as I write, as to how that might impact set prices.

The 6-Series employs quantum dots for wide color performance and is compatible with most HDR formats, including HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG (but not HDR10+).

TCL doesn’t claim to provide dynamic tone mapping for HDR, but instead uses whatever tonemapping metadata is present in the source: dynamic for Dolby Vision, static for HDR10.

TCL calls the central processor in 6-Series sets the AIPQ Engine, which, in addition to the usual chores a CPU performs in a TV, supports a unique feature: IPQ Mobile Calibration. This taps the camera in your smartphone to capture onscreen images and uses the results to perform a color calibration. So far only two types of phones feature cameras consistent enough to meet the requirements for IPQ Mobile Calibration: Google Pixel phones and Apple iphones. (Calibrations for this review were done manually, the oldfashioned way.)

The 65R635 is almost inseparable from its Roku Smart TV platform, which includes the most familiar streaming apps— HBO Max, Disney+, and Apple TV+ included—along with many obscure ones, some free, and others requiring a subscription. TCL’S non-backlit remote control is small but adequate and offers a useful voice search feature. The set can also be controlled using voice commands and supports voice assistants including Alexa, Siri, and Hey Google.

The set’s four HDMI inputs aren’t fully HDMI 2.1, but they do offer two game-related

2.1 features: VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode). Its Game picture mode is also the first to be Thx-certified. The 65R635 is also capable of displaying 4K/120HZ video at full frame rate, though not in combination with HDR. Using a Bodnar input lag meter (at 1080p), input lag was measured at 17.7ms in both the set’s Game and Movie modes, making the TCL a solid option for gaming.

The 65R635’s HDMI 4 port offers EARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), which can pass multichannel audio (including lossless formats) to an external AVR or HDMIequipped soundbar. When using the apps on the set’s Roku interface, EARC worked well, though the results varied with the app. For example, Netflix worked flawlessly up to and including multichannel Dolby Atmos, but with Youtube I never experienced anything other than lossy 2.0 audio.

With my cable box connected to one of the TCL’S HDMI inputs, EARC offered full 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, but things were not as reliable with an Oppo UDP-203 disc player routed through the TV to a Denon A/V receiver. The initial results were so erratic as to be unusable, ranging from full surround to no sound at all. But a TCL rep recommended that I change the set's S/PDIF and EARC setting from its default Auto detect mode to Autopassthrough, and after that change it functioned perfectly. The TCL can also pass both 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks to an

AVR via its optical digital audio output, though you'll first need to change the default audio settings to the SP/DIF and EARC (Dolby Digital PLUS/DTS) option.

There’s no lip-sync adjustment for the set’s built-in audio, which I occasionally found to be an issue when watching cable TV channels. Overall, the TCL’S sound was respectable and fine for casual listening, but I wouldn’t expect sonic miracles.

SETUP

TCL’S adjustments for a conventional calibration (white balance and color management, or CMS) are only available on its Roku Mobile app. This feature keeps the adjustment menus on your smartphone or tablet (IOS or Android) where they won’t affect the image displayed on the TV screen. There are no clear directions as to how to access the app’s calibration menus (hint: select the small Devices logo at the bottom of the opening App screen, then hit “...” followed by Expert Picture Settings). The TV and your device must both be connected to your Wi-fi network, and the app must sense that a video source is being displayed on the TV. The wireless connection often broke lock for me, requiring tedious fiddling to re-establish (turning the TV off then back on again usually worked, but often only after repeated attempts).

The Roku Mobile app’s white balance settings can’t be separately adjusted for

SDR or HDR (HDR10 or Dolby Vision). For the CMS, you can choose between Custom (your calibrated settings), Auto (turns all of the CMS settings to zero

but keeps your single set of Custom numbers on file so you can return to them if you wish), or Native (don’t go there!). If you try to make changes to the white balance or Custom CMS numbers when switching from SDR to HDR, those changes will automatically reflect back on the SDR settings, disrupting your SDR calibration.

In addition to white balance and CMS, the app menu also includes settings for Picture Mode, Color Temperature, Noise Reduction, and Gamma.

The latter two are accessible only from the app, but all of them can be set separately for SDR and HDR.

Most of the 65R635’s main (not app-driven) controls can be set separately for SDR and HDR, including the Picture Mode.

One exception is the TV Brightness control, which affects overall image brightness (unlike the also present Brightness adjustment, which affects black level). As a result, you have two options for adjusting the TV Brightness control: use the same setting for both SDR and HDR or use a different setting for each format and change it manually each time you switch from an SDR to an HDR source.

With five TV Brightness settings plus five SDR and four HDR picture modes, you can get deep into the weeds choosing optimal combinations. I chose to set TV Brightness to “Bright” for SDR and HDR, relying on other settings to achieve the best results for both. This worked out exceptionally well in SDR, but adversely affected measured HDR performance. But that didn’t mean that the set’s eyeballed HDR performance wasn’t highly satisfying. As we’ll see, it definitely was.

Various controls are provided for motion smoothing, including Action Smoothing, which provides increasing steps to soap opera-land, and LED Motion Clarity, which adds black frame insertion and darkens the image somewhat in the process. I turned the motion smoothing modes off for my measurements and viewing.

PERFORMANCE

Unless otherwise mentioned, all of the following observations were made when viewing Blu-ray or Ultra HD Blu-ray discs played on an Oppo BDP-203 disc player.

The TCL performed well out of the box, though it ultimately needed a little work to show its, um, true colors. Primary colors such as red and green in particular looked oversaturated. Red wasn’t objectionable, most likely because that specific color doesn’t appear in nature as often as green. Viewed on the TCL, the glistening red cape used by the heroes fighting the Tau-teh in the movie

The Great Wall would make the greatest of toreadors retire in shame.

Image resolution was excellent for both HD and Ultra HD sources. Using disc-based test patterns, I could set the Sharpness control as high as 35 with no visible sign of edge enhancement with my face just a few inches from the screen.

Black levels were good, though shadow detail was a shade less impressive than what I’ve seen from pricier sets. The black bars in letterboxed films looked enticingly dark. They did show a trace of light bleed-over when the active picture area next to them was unusually bright, but that’s a common effect with local dimming LCD sets and here was easy to ignore. The bars were dimly visible in a fully darkened room mainly when the image itself was very dark (forcing your eye’s pupils to open wide).

I did note some haloing when bright objects were displayed against very dark backgrounds. But this was most evident on slow movie scenes or on stationary test patterns. Starfields were well-handled much of the time (the ones in Prometheus looked nearperfect), but the starfield pattern on the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark test disc revealed the TCL’S limits—as it has with every other LCD/LED set I’ve viewed it with. Screen uniformity was nearly flawless, and I didn’t spot any false contouring artifacts (coarse-looking “bands” typically visible on plain backgrounds like a blue sky) that were not obviously present in the source material.

HD AND SDR PERFORMANCE

The TCL’S high-definition/standard dynamic range performance was superb. Greens appeared a bit unnaturally fluorescent with some source material, but overall, its SDR color performance was richly satisfying. The reds in Victoria & Abdul, particularly

in the early banquet scene, looked stunning. Skin tones were spot-on accurate as well.

Other films, ranging from the spectacularly well-photographed Seven Years in Tibet and War Horse to animated fare with vivid colors and crisp resolution such as Wreckit-ralph and Kung Fu Panda 2, were similarly impressive on the 65R635.

To check black-level performance, I fell back on an old favorite, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and the TCL didn’t disappoint. The shadow detail in the most difficult scenes here (this film is full of them) did reveal some of the black-level limitations noted earlier, but unless you’ve previously experienced this disc on something like a good (and at least twice as expensive) OLED TV, you’d be unlikely to notice anything missing.

To get the best performance from TCL’S 6-Series set, you’ll want to sit dead center, or at least no more than 10- to 15-degrees to the side. That’s because once you move more than 25-degrees off-center, the TV’S progressively deteriorating contrast and color will be clearly visible to anyone, not just an expert eye. This effect is common to LCD/

LED displays like the 65R635 that use VA (vertically aligned) LCD panels, however.

ULTRA HD AND HDR PERFORMANCE

As detailed in the Test Bench section of this review, performing an HDR calibration on the TCL proved challenging. Even so, the visual results equaled what I’ve yet seen from many far pricier sets, though the 65R635 measured a bit less bright than the best of them. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is loaded with vivid color and bright highlights, in places looking almost cartoonish. But that’s the whole point of the film, and the TCL made the most of it. From the opening battle with an inter-dimensional being (whatever that is) to the final confrontation with Quill’s...um... god-father, the results were eyecatching on the TCL.

The set’s handling of other favorite Ultra HD/HDR discs, from the subtle detail and rich but not overdone color in Pixar’s Onward to one of my persistent demo selections, Oblivion, was impressive as well. After adjustment, clipping was rarely visible and never distracting. Even the wickedly challenging horses-grazing-in-snow scene from the demo material section of the Spears & Munsil Ultra HD Benchmark test disc was handled cleanly. Shadow detail was similar to what I observed in my SDR tests, which is to say it was satisfactory but short of reference-level.

As noted earlier, I didn’t perform a Dolby Vision calibration (as with HDR10, white balance and color management settings cannot be set differently from the SDR settings without skewing the latter’s calibration). But with the TCL’S other controls adjusted properly, it produced impressivelooking Dolby Vision HDR images. I sampled a wide range of discs, including Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, The Lord of the Rings:

The Fellowship of the Ring, and

1917, and had no issues with any of them apart from a subtle but visible emphasis of green in the latter, particularly in the helmets and

HDMI inputs on TCL 6-Series TVS support two HDMI 2.1 features: Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM). The HDMI 4 connection also supports Enhanced Audio Return Channel (EARC).

wood trench supports. (This was much less obvious when viewing the regular Blu-ray disc version of that film, an oddity not visible on any of the other Dolby Vision disc titles that I sampled.)

CONCLUSION

In most respects, the video perfectionist in me was totally satisfied by the TCL 65R635 6-Series Roku LCD Ultra HDTV’S pristine image quality. And even after spending an inordinate amount of time trying, without success, to achieve a satisfying HDR video calibration, the set’s performance with Ultra HD/HDR discs made me smile. In the end, this set’s tempting $1,000 price, combined with its overall impressive performance, earns it Top Value status.