thanks to BDI for sponsoring a portion of this video
I have spent considerable time thinking this over and I think it's fair to say
that this is the most frustrating TV I've ever reviewed the reason
it's so frustrating this TV is incredibly good except where it isn't I'll explain
welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison and today I'm going to review for you the
TCL Q7 TV now by some measures this TV is actually outstanding and in fact I think
most folks are going to love it but by some other measures this TV is kind of
a mess and that is frustrating because it doesn't have to be I am so close to saying
this is probably the best TV for the most amount of people but I just don't know if
I can go there will I get there by the end of this review only one way to find out so let's
get into this reminder to like subscribe and ring that Bell your support is what makes it
possible for me to do these reviews and it is so much appreciated okay now it's review time
foreign let's start with where the Q7 sits within TCL's TV lineup this year it is tcl's second best
TV for 2023 sitting just below the epic QM8 mini LED TV of which I have done much rating the Q7
is not a mini LED TV it uses a standard LED backlight system with full array local dimming
but TCL has broken down the backlight into a pretty generous number of dimming zones this
65-inch model has 160 local dimming zones while the 75 and 85 inch variants are closer to 200
zones according to TCL now if we compare the Q7 to the Hisense competition the u7k which is
a mini LED TV and is thus able to have a higher dimming Zone count and very much does has about
384 zones of course as I'm fond of pointing out in just about every TV review these days
it's not about the size of your backlights or how many dimming zones you've got it's how you
use the them the Sony X90L is a great example of a TV with a standard LED backlight system
broken down into just 80 local dimming zones half as many and it looks outstanding and as
long as we're making comparisons it's worth pointing out that the 65-inch Q7 has a street
price of about 700 whereas the Hisense U7K goes for about 730 dollars right in the same ballpark
for reference the much more advanced TCL QM8 65 inch has a street price of twelve hundred dollars
now going forward I'll not be comparing the TCL Q7 to the Hisense U7K anymore because I haven't
tested the Hisense yet but that is coming very soon I will however do my best to describe the
differences between the more expensive QM8 and the Q7 here to give some context to the value
proposition of this TV so at this point you can probably already see the appeal of the Q7 it's 500
less than tcl's best model but it has some very promising Tech inside on paper it looks like the
Best Value in TCL's TV lineup and possibly the best value in TV on the market right now
that's why I think so many average consumers just looking for a great TV at a great price are gonna
end up looking at the Q7 but then there's the enthusiast crowd who may want as much of that
TCL QM8 goodness as they can get while saving a bunch of money maybe it's a second room TV
or maybe the budget is just a bit tight the Q7 should be the answer right well maybe for those
average consumers sure but I think enthusiasts are about to get let down at least a little bit
before I deliver some tough news let me give a brief overview of what I like about the Q7 first
is contrast TCL is just killing it in a good way with the contrast on its TVs they're prioritizing
black levels blooming and Halo control and high brightness and as a result the picture on TCL TVs
like the Q7 has a lot of pop and I gotta hand it to TCL if you're going to single out one element
of picture quality to just dominate contrast is it second TCL is doing a solid job of making its TVs
friendly and accessible to gamers the Q7 has two HDMI 2.1 ports capable of up to 144 Hertz at 4K or
1440p or up to 240 hertz at 1080p it supports vrr as well and input lag is sufficiently low to earn
an excellent score third Google TV runs smoothly on this TV just remember to turn on the network
standby function and then cast to the TV from your mobile device from all kinds of apps it
also supports AirPlay and home kit I mean as a smart TV it's got a lot going for it fourth
would be color while the color performance is not perfect as I'll dive into more later in HDR bright
colors really leap off the screen and I think that's going to impress a lot of folks overall
this TV is built to impress the average viewer with most content anything 1080P and higher SDR
or HDR looks really good on this TV even with low bit rate content this TV manages to somehow avoid
too much macro blocking oddly it seems like it's doing a better job at that test than the QM8 which
I'm gonna have to check on that that doesn't seem right still I've been watching a lot of
YouTube content not all of it premium and it's been looking really solid hey so I'm going to
get you back to the video shortly but I wanted to take a moment to tell you about some exciting news
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BDI for their support of this channel okay so so far so good very good I would say for the price
this TV appears to be one of the best values ever but then drill a bit deeper and we start noticing
some flaws at first they're relatively minor but they just grow from there and that's where my knit
nerd fam is going to wind up disappointed I think which brings us to that section I like to call
numbers for Knit nerds this is where I dive into the measurements I got on this TV to provide some
objective basis for my analysis if you don't know your knits from your armpits that is just fine
feel free to skip this section time code is down in the description but if you're getting into TVs
and want to learn more stick with me so I'm going to get right to it and I'm not going to pull any
punches here the TCL Q7 has offered up some of the worst measurements I've seen in recent years not
all of them now some are just fine but the ones that are bad they're pretty bad we'll start with
some basics in SDR I measured Peak brightness at about 700 nits with the brightness setting maxed
out out of the box the brightness setting is at about 55 out of 100 and that will get you about
400 nits of brightness which is very respectable you can of course dial this down I would suggest
30 for a dark room if you want to see the content closer to what was intended by the Creator then in
HDR using either the movie mode or the IMAX mode Peak brightness maxed out at just shy of well it
was between a 1,000 and 1,100 nits in the variable window size test I got a fair amount
of variance each of the five times I measured before calibration but in the sustained peak
brightness test that number came in reliably around 750 nits and when I use the Spears and
muscle pattern designed to get around any cheating that the TV May employ when it sees test patterns
that number held steady at around 700 nits meaning peak highlights will have a good amount of punch
and sparkle moreover though the average picture level was quite bright for a TV of this price
now all of this is good news for the average consumer just looking for a great looking TV
at a great price but the white balance you guys oh sweet mother of pearl the white balance it's
possibly the worst I've ever seen from any TV now as a reminder any Delta e of three or less
is considered unperceivable to the human eye and I'll give a passing grade for a TV of this price
if it comes in at about six or under though I'm not going to be in love with that but folks out
of the box this TV had an average Delta e of 7.5 with the most egregious errors where it counts the
most at between 10 and 11. now look I understand if you get a chuckle out of me being all again
as I delve into some of the nerdiest TV analytics ever but seriously guys that is not good and while
a two-point white balance calibration took care of the brightest whites all the grayscale in the
middle remained at a Delta e of four or higher and near as I can tell the 20 point white balance
controls are well I'll use the word ineffective but some might call them just straight up broken
as for color well in terms of accuracy the results weren't as bad as the grayscale but the news there
isn't rosy either I saw errors all over the place and getting them corrected in the CMS or color
management system would probably take a lot of work so this is not good news for enthusiasts
who value accuracy and adherence to creator intent in order for this TV's performance to get closer
to what we'd consider accurate you'd need to hire a calibrator and that could cost as much as 500
bucks for a proper calibration folks that's almost the price of the 65-inch TV itself never mind
that it would raise your total investment to about the same price as the 65-inch QM8 so if
accuracy is what you're after don't expect to get close with the less expensive Q7 just buy a
TCL qma and for me that's frustrating because it shouldn't be this way and to be clear I went out
and checked some other reviews to see if they're out of box measurements were close to mine and on
the grayscale at least the measurements I got are in lockstep with other publications now I think
that's just how this TV is and I don't get why I'm thinking back to some of TCL's 5 Series TVs
and they had better grayscale and color accuracy measurements than this TV it's just so close to
being a video files budget darling but not as it is now now all of that information was primarily
for enthusiasts I don't think the average viewer is going to be bothered too much by the inaccurate
grayscale and Scatter shot color accuracy although some of you might notice the white doesn't look
pure white there's a magenta Hue happening that some average viewers might catch I also happen to
get a TCL Q7 with really good screen uniformity just the tiniest bit of vignetting in the upper
left and right corners anti-glare is just okay but the TV gets bright enough that I don't think
most folks will be too bothered with reflections but there are a couple of things I think average
consumers might catch one this TV doesn't do a spectacular job at upscaling low resolution
content it's not it's not terrible but it's not doing as good a cleanup job to cable TV
and low-res streaming TV content as some slightly more expensive TVs and two 24 frame per second
content like movies shows a fair amount of stutter if you don't ever watch 24 FPS movies or if you
like to use motion smoothing then that's nothing to worry about it's motion resolution at 60 frames
per second is like perfect but if you watch a lot of movies in their native frame rate of 24
frames per second you'll see some stutter there's no judder issues the tv offers
judder-free performance but stutter where it holds on to one of those 24 frames just a bit
longer than it should you'll see that again if you're not super sensitive to that sort of thing
then I think you'll love the Q7 but if you are you might want to pass on this one so at risk
of repeating myself for all you non-video files or non-video enthusiasts the Q7 delivers a lot
of wow factor in fact if you get it and start watching it you might think man that Caleb guy
sure was going on about nothing this TV looks great I mean I wouldn't be at all surprised if
that's how you felt but the hardest thing about me doing TV reviews is that I know I have a
fairly significant crowd of enthusiasts watching and for y'all you just need to know accuracy is
not this TV's bag oh and also the backlight is a little sluggish that might bother you too so
it's a mixed bag depending on who you are I've made this evaluation as Fair as possible I think
most folks will love this TV but for those of you with a keen eye stick to the TCL QM8 it's
worth saving a little bit longer thanks as always for watching everyone what did you think of this
review it's a bit different for me also golden sample nope let me hear from you down in the
comments I can't wait to chat with you also don't forget to like and subscribe I'll see
you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like