TCL delivers hands down the year’s biggest TV bargain
T CL’s 65C845K would look pretty good value for even a fairly basically specified 65in TV. However, thanks in particular to its ground-breaking brightness and potent local-dimming light control, the set boasts a level of picture and sound performance that would normally cost you hundreds, even thousands of pounds more.
It’s a substantial TV – even at its thinnest section, it sticks out more than most of today’s super-slim models, while build quality feels a little plasticky. We can forgive all this though for the level of picture and sound specification it offers for so little. In particular, its 65in, VA-type screen uses Mini LED technology, where much smaller LEDs than normal are used in greater numbers to deliver more brightness and light control. This is backed up by local dimming, where multiple ‘zones’ of the Mini LEDs can be controlled independently of each other depending on the local needs of the picture. In the case of the 65in version, we count 576 distinct light control zones – an extremely high number where similarly affordable TVs with local dimming systems will carry fewer than 100 separate zones.
But it’s not how many dimming zones you have, it’s what you do with them. Sony has done some pretty amazing things with relatively limited numbers here on its X90L. Still, it follows that if you can back them up with good control algorithms, having more dimming zones is a great start.
TCL claims the 65C845K is capable of delivering 2000 nits of brightness – a remarkable claim in a TV world where we would expect similarly priced TVs to struggle to hit even a quarter of that. This, in conjunction with the high dimming-zone count and use of Quantum Dots to deliver high-volume colours (capable of capitalising on what TCL claims to be coverage of 97 per cent of the digital cinema DCI-P3 spectrum), means that the 65C845K is looking pretty groundbreaking for its price point.
Gamers will be pleased to hear that it uses a 120Hz panel, while two of its four HDMI ports are capable of receiving 4K/120Hz console feeds, and even 144Hz from PC titles. VRR is supported in the AMD FreeSync and basic flavours, as well as ALLM. There’s a decently low input lag of 15.3ms with 60Hz, which more than halves in 120Hz.
More, the C845K adds support
