TCL C845 Review: 65" Mini LED TV (576 Zones, 2000 Nits) for 𝗢𝗡𝗟𝗬 £1000!

one thing I often get asked as a TV Reviewer is what TV should I buy given a budget of 1000 pounds well this is a brand new 65 inch mini LED TV with more than 500 local dimming zones and 2 000 needs of peak brightness yet cost only slightly above 1000 pounds in the UK there is no way you can buy a 2023 model of similarly spec 65-inch mini LED TV let alone 65 inch OLED at anywhere near this price by now some of you may already know that I'm talking about the latest c845 mini LED TV from TCL it uses a VA type LCD panel without viewing angle compensation filter from tcl's panel manufacturing division csot with pig white aligned to around 120 Candelas per square meter black level measured 0.021 Candelas per square meter on a 4x4 answer checkerboard pattern with local dimming disable amounting to a native contrast ratio of 5800 to 1. of course the TCL c845 mini LED TV features full array local dimming to improve contrast performance even further and we counted a total of 576 independently dimmable zones in a 48 times 12 configuration while this represents double the Zone count on last year's TCL c83 the local dimming algorithm on the c845 did not seem to activate properly especially in low APL HDR scenes causing the HDR sequences to appear bulky with a distinct lack of contrast although the Samsung q95c crushed more Shadow detail compared to a Sony BVM hx310 reference monitor the top and bottom letterbox bars on the tclc845 also looked greater than expected which was evident when watched in a dark room particularly if there is no bright element on screen to stop our pupillary adaptation in SDR mode local dimming high was necessary to achieve the highest contrast and suppress backlight uniformity issues as you can see in this side-by-side comparison versus the local dimming low setting similar to recent TCL TVs we have tested engaging local dimming would cause the SDR luminance gamma and color temperature to vary between different window sizes and apls on the c845 even after switching off the dynamic brightness setting which is enabled by default out of the box for example these are the SDR measurements on a 10 window after calibrating our review sample to d65 White point and these are the fulfilled measurements on the same settings which may explain why some owners are complaining about an overly warm yellow tinted picture full screen while still not 100 accurate we found that 1022 APL patterns corresponded best with real world content in Str mode so we could still obtain largely natural looking colors in real life viewing by calibrating using 1032 APL patterns to achieve an average Delta error of less than one on this challenging color Checker SGA chart where 140 patches were measured even with motion Clarity disabled the TCL c845 correctly performed 5.5 pull down to present slow panning shots in 24 FPS content without telesing each other engaging motion Clarity would unlock further motion processing options namely LED motion clear backlight scanning as well as blur reduction and gender reduction motion interpolation settings enabling LED motion clear would increase motion resolution from the sample and hole Baseline of 300 lines to 1080 lines on this horizontally scrolling test pattern from The fpd Benchmark software disk interestingly TCL has increased the light output under the hood when LED motion clear is enabled so you will see a slightly brighter instead of a dimmer picture there's noticeable flickering and double ghost images though which most users probably won't be able to tolerate for prolonged viewing periods in the most accurate movie picture preset blur reduction and gender reduction are set to Zero by default even if you enable motion Clarity requiring some manual user intervention to reduce motion blur increasing blur reduction to the maximum value of 10 would more than double motion resolution from the sampling whole Baseline of 300 lines to 650 lines but some trailing Halos were visible indicating some LCD overdriving for 25p and 50 FPS broadcast material found in parallel countries such as the UK engaging motion Clarity did not introduce frame skipping and Microsoft artifacts observed on last year's TCL c83 across a variety of broadcast programs we watched during our review period which is a welcome Improvement Dynamic acceleration would increase the screen refresh rate to 240Hz with half vertical resolution though using line averaging to smooth out jacket edges when upscaling the image to the panel's native resolution when combined with blood reduction 10 Dynamic acceleration would increase motion resolution to 1080 lines but the trailing overdrive Halos would become even more apparent which limits its usefulness upscaling was softer and noisier than TVs from more expensive Brands but at least overscan can be disabled with standard definition content unlike on Samsung televisions even though there is no film mode setting in the user menu the TCL c845 attempted to detect and process 3 2 and 2-2 cadences in film-based interlaced material with some success but occasionally it would still lose log ically due to the mediatek HDMI 2.1 chipset there is some posterization in the skies of the Martian owners can use the gradation clear feature to reduce in content posterization although the high setting would erase too much fine detail so low is our preferred setting for non-pristine Content our 65 inch c845 review sample was one of the cleaner TCR LED LCD TVs we have come across with some minor bending and the discrete effect on fulfilled gray slides though the sides appeared noticeably darker and tinted owing to The Limited viewing angles of the VA type LCD panel in HDR mode pick brightness on our TCL c845 review unit measured 2000 nits on a 10 window after calibration to d65 White point and more than 908 fulfilled on the 35 window the peak brightness could even go up to 2600 nits while higher light output is always welcome the fact that the peak brightness is not largely stable poses a problem because even though the c845s PQ eotf tracking was relatively accurate in mid-tones on a 10 window the hdr10 tone curve would fluctuate depending on the window size similar to what we observed in SDR as a result many HDR scenes in cinema scope movie would actually look brighter than the Sony BBM a6310 mastering monitor on the default gamma value of 0 in the most accurate movie picture preset prompting us to adjust the gamma setting to obtain a closer match to the Sony x310 however for non-cinemascope HDR titles we found that we needed to go back to our gamma setting of zero to better reproduce the creative intent the bottom line is unless TCL fixes APL dependent variable PQ UTF tracking the HDR presentation in real world viewing won't be accurate most of the time despite what the measurement charts say even after Kalman or color space 3D light calibration which is supported by the TCL c845 this ip3 color garment coverage came in at 96 in UV terms whereas right 2020 coverage or 79 with the underlying spectral power distribution showing beautifully distinct red green and blue Peaks typical of content dot technology the TCL c845 provides a dynamic tool mapping function with three different intensities but based on our testing in movie mode it would always over brighten the HDR presentation compared to reference standards even on the least aggressive detail priority setting so we prefer to disable Dynamic tool mapping in the interest of image accuracy the TV supports HDR 10 hlg hdr10 plus and Dolby Vision formats hlg HDR material was mapped correctly on the c845 unlike the muted presentation on the Samsung q95c there's some crushing of Shadow detail in the most accurate Adobe Vision dark picture preset verified by the PQ UTF tracking chart next gaming but before I talk about input lag I would like to thank search VPN for sponsoring this video since the pandemic some streaming providers including Netflix have shorted the bit rate of certain shows especially in Europe resulting in a softer picture with more compression artifacts this is where a VPN comes in surfshot allows you to stream content from another country without needing you to be physically there so you can watch Netflix at higher bit rates with better picture quality besides VPN the new surfshark 1 package also includes softshot search a lightweight Search tool that lets you search the web Without a Trace there's 24 7 like customer support a 30-day money-back guarantee and if you use promo code HDTV test you will get three extra months free so sign up today and give subtract a try I'll put the link in the YouTube description below thanks again for your support okay in game mode input lag measured 13.2 milliseconds at 60 frames per second which can be reduced further to 9.6 milliseconds by setting refresh rate to Performance mode that basically performs frame doubling to 120 FPS feeding the TCL c845 a true 120 frames per second video signal resulted in an impressively low input lag of 5.2 milliseconds the TV also accepted a 1080p video signal at 240 FPS but the input lag was paradoxically higher at around 8 milliseconds perhaps due to the line averaging interpolation process so we would rather play at 120 FPS for the most responsive gaming experience just like on TCL televisions in recent years the default local dimming setting in game mode was low so you will have to change it to high to unlock the best local dimming performance and the highest peak brightness fortunately without increasing the input lag note that in vrr mode the local dimming setting would disappear from the picture menu in game mode even though local dimming was clearly still active under the hood the soc Remains the Same mediatek mt5889 chipset therefore only two out of four HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1 each supporting the full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth of 48 gigabits per second however TCL has at least managed to migrate ER functionality to one of the two 4K 60hz HDMI 2.0 ports on the 65 c845 thus truly freeing up the two HDMI 2.1 ports for those intending to use ER with an external sound bar or home theater system once the animator mapping was manually turned off in the game mode picture menu sgig would become automatically enabled as you can see from the game bar menu this provided a clipping point of 2100 nits for both Max tml and Max fftml values in the HDR calibration app on the Xbox series X therefore preventing display cycle mapping from diluting the HDR impact in hdig compliant games otherwise the continued use of the mediatek mt5889 chipset without core processor not only restricted double vision gameplay from the Xbox series X to 4K 60hz but also handicapped the tclc845 in several areas when it came to 4K 120hz gaming 10-bit gradation in HDR game mode was subpar according to this gray ramp from the display HDR app and the c845 failed to resolve full 444 chroma at 4K 120 whereas it could do so at 4K 60. suggesting that the issue lies within the frl signaling necessary for 4K 120 bandwidth while the TCL c845 could display full 4K 100 details resolution it exhibited occasional interference on this mixed resolution test pattern from the Ryan masiola hdr10 test disk although thankfully we did not see the phenomenon in Real World gameplay the TCL ca45 could achieve 4K 144hz resolution from an Nvidia RTX graphics card by using this custom resolution settings supplied by TCL Europe's product development team with working HDR vrr to eliminate tearing and frame jobs as evidenced by the Nvidia pendulum demo the c845 could even accept 1080p 240Hz video signal which is in fact the TV's preferred timing according to its edit but given the halved vertical resolution and slightly higher input lag we see it as a novelty rather than through utility in terms of design the TCL c845 features a central rectangular tabletop stand and a slim bezel when viewed from the front we like the anti-glare coating on the TV it's glossy and so didn't dilute contrast it suppressed Reflections fairly well yet did not incur rainbow Reflections witnessed on high-end Samsung and Sony mini LED TVs reviewing angle composition film at the back of the TV you can find an Onkyo branded woofer which contributes to the onboard 2.1 sound system delivering above average audio by TV standards with decent bass and volume sufficient for casual viewing listening to feedback TCL is now letting users opt out of creating a TCL account when setting up the TV which is much appreciated however just like on every TCL television we've reviewed over the past couple of years the mute icon will never disappear upon muting the volume so you would have to increase volume by one notch to make the icon go away on screen potential buyers in the UK should be aware that the Google TV platform on the c845 doesn't contain VPC iPlayer but TCL is supplying a free Roku stick to cover UK local apps which you can claim by contacting TCL UK's customer service to sum up the TCL c845 is a well-speced mini LED TV providing several Hardware upgrades over last year's c83 with double the number of local dimming zones a higher Peak brightness of 2008 as well as cleaner screen uniformity on our review sample the TV also features a high contrast video type LCD panel quantum dot colors multi-hdr support not to mention low input lag and two full bandwidth HTML 2.1 ports capable of 4K 144hz HDR vrr yet somehow this 65 inch model is priced at only slightly above 1000 pounds in the UK and so the TCL c845 receives our recommended best value award now at this price you have to understand that the c845 won't be the last word in picture quality and software refinement the TV suffered from ineffective local dimming algorithm particularly obvious during low APL HDR scenes on the latest firmware at the time we filmed this video in July 2023 plus somewhat inaccurate colors and HDR presentation due to its APL dependent calorimetry so we sincerely hope that TCL can address these shortcomings with future firmware updates to make the c845 more competitive in terms of overall picture quality of course no mini LED TV can match the blacks and Shadow detail accuracy of OLED TVs which boast pixel level like control but some of you may still prefer to buy a mini LED over an OLED TV especially in light of several issues unique to OLED which I've demonstrated in this video you can watch by clicking here

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Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023