- I'm Andru Edwards and you're watching gear live.
TCL might not be a household name like Samsung or Sony,
but it's sales of TVs in North America
have grown 60% each of the last two years
and the company's continuing its strong push into
the U.S. market expanding it's home theater line up.
What is going on Tech Squad?
Andru Edward here here, editor and chief at GearLive.com.
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As I mentioned today, we are talking about all
of the new hotness that TCL announced at CES.
Today I'm going to give you a look at key new products
that TCL is dropping this year
that you want to keep an eye on,
and we're starting with the new, bigger, TCL 6 Series.
At CES 2019 TCL announced that it's
releasing 75 inch version of the 6 Series.
And it's actually available right now
for pre order at Best Buy for $18,000,
and it's coming to other retailers over the next few weeks.
The 75 inch model offers all the same features we
like so much in the smaller 65 inch size,
including the foleray local dimming
which is largely responsible for that
sets impressive image quality.
And speaking of local dimming,
as you might expect being a Sony five inch model
vs. a 65 inch, you're getting even
more local dimming zones as well.
The bigger 75 inch model has 160 local dimming zones
which is up from the 120 found on the 65 inch model.
Now the Sony five inch 6 Series also has one other
differentiating feature that a lot of gamers are gonna
care about and that is a true 120 hurtz refresh rate.
The 55 inch, 65 inch models have a 60 hurtz refresh rate,
so 120 hurtz is gonna give you
even better motion performance.
Now one thing that's not changing about the 75 inch
version as compared to the its smaller bothers,
is there there actually two different versions
depending on where you buy the TV.
If you pick up the TV from Best Buy,
you are going to get the infrared Roku remote,
and infrared needs line of sight
to control the TV with the remote.
However if you guy it somewhere else you will
get the Roku voice remote with wifi build in
that allows you to do voice search right on the remote
and you do not need to point the
remote directly at the TV to use it.
Now regardless of which remote you end up with
what you are for sure getting is what
many people believe the best display
available, dollar for dollar today,
but in a much bigger size.
Now TCL does have another big TV announcement,
we're gonna save that one to the end of the video,
and gonna switch over to a new category for TCL,
and that is sound bars.
So not only is TCL selling you the
visual piece of the home theater,
they are now selling you the audio piece as well.
As CES, TCL announced two new sound bars,
first one is the Alto 5,
which is good for TVs that are between 43 and 54 inches,
and there's also the Alto 7 for TVs
that are 55 inches and above.
According to TCL the soundbar offers specialized
sound modes in addition to precision playback
for any TV as well as music form your
smart phone, tablets and laptops.
Now each soundbar will also be available in a plus version,
so you've got the Alto 5 Plus and the Alto 7 Plus.
And the difference there is that those
models come with a wireless subwoofer as well.
So same sound bar, with the
addition of a wireless subwoofer.
Which is nice, you don't need to
run cables all around the room.
Just plug the subwoofer in and it'll connect
wirelessly to the sound bar automatically.
Now one of the differences between the Alto 5
and the Alto 7 besides their size,
is that the Alto 5, the smaller of the two,
supports Optical and Bluetooth connections,
while the Alto 7 supports Optical,
Bluetooth and Direct HTMI as well.
The TCL Alto 5 and Alto 7 soundbars
will be available this Spring.
No pricing has been announced yet,
but as evidenced by everything else TCL does,
I'm assuming we can expect it to come in at a lower
cost than its competitors without sacrificing quality.
All right, now I said there was one other big TV
announcement from TCL at CES 2019.
You waited till the end,
and it was the one that I thought was the most impressive
and the most exciting and that is TCL's 8K HDR 8 Series.
At CES 2019 TCL said its 8K TV will be available
in late 2019 and it'll be the first
8K TV powered by Roku's smart TV OS.
The TCL 8 Series 8K Roku TV is the best sign that 8K TVs
are about to become more affordable.
Now similar to the soundbars there is no price
announced yet for TCL's 8K TV, but again,
TCL is know for making high quality products
at a price that is lower than their competition.
So I think it's safe to say we're gonna
see something similar here in the 8K realm.
With TCLs use of many LED
and quantum dot technology in the 8 Series,
we're gonna see a noticeable leap in image quality
over the 6 Series including better off angle viewing
and a thinner overall design.
Now interestingly enough,
aside from the 8K 8 Series TCL also announced
that they will be releasing a 4K version of the 8 Series TV.
So the only difference is, you're gonna get a 4K panel
instead of 8K resolution, but all the other tech
packed into the 8 Series will be available in 4K,
and obviously that won't cost as much as an 8K model.
In another first for Roku TV select 4K models from TCL
will also start to incorporate
build in far field voice control.
Now what this means is, you'll be able to speak
into the air, hands free, to control the TV.
That includes things like doing searches
and performing voice commands without
the need to have a remote in your hand.
TCL says the TVs use a combination of beam forming
and AI noise cancellation in order to hear
your commands over the speaker on the TV themselves.
Now in addition to all that TCL
also touted some advancements
on its 2019 TV line up as well.
That includes things like quantum dot technology
for improve color as well as additional local
dimming zones up to 300% more zones than on previous models.
To give you an example of what that means,
a 65 inch TV will have 360 zones instead of 120.
But we're gonna need to wait on those as well,
because pricing and availability are TCL's 2019
line up has not yet been announced.
So there you have it guys,
that was a look at TCL's home theater news.
There was even more news from TCL's booth this year.
They also announced a brand new line of headphones.
I have a separate video on those coming to you shortly.
But now I want to hear from you.
Let me know what you think of TCL's new lineup of TVs,
75 inch 6 Series, and 8K HDR TV,
and also them jumping to soundbars as well.
One thing, I did do an ears on test of the sound bar.
I listened to the Alto 7 Plus
with that wireless subwoofer.
They cranked the sound volume all the way up,
and there was absolutely no distortion.
I'm talking about even in the most
intense scenes from Mad Max.
Obviously they are not available just yet,
but take my word for it, TCL did a good job on this one.
All right guys drop a like on this video if you enjoyed it
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That you so much for watching as always guys.
I appreciate your support.
I'm Andru Edwards and I will catch you in the next video.
(Energized rock music)