BIG TV UNDER $1000! TCL 5 SERIES REVIEW
TCL 5 SERIES TV REVIEW BY ANDREW ROBINSON
BIG TVS UNDER $1000! TCL 5 SERIES GOOGLE TV REVIEW
Can a budget TV come close to the likes of LG, Samsung and Sony’s best? Or should more affordable TVs be given their own category and held to a different –albeit lower -standard? Well, that’s what I want to find out in today’s TCL 5 Series Google TV review.
TCL 5 SERIES TV
The TCL 5 Series TV is the brand’s mid-tier product series. It comes in four sizes; ranging from 50 to 75 inches. This TV features QLED technology and is a native 4K HDR display with full local dimming, not to mention support for Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+ and HLG. It has HDMI with eARC giving it support for Dolby Atmos though sadly no DTS:X. Speaking of HDMI, the 5 Series is not a “next gen” set, meaning it does not have support for HDMI 2.1. All of its HDMI ports are of the 2.0 variety which may or may not be a deal breaker for some of you straightaway. If you’re a hardcore gamer looking for 120Hz refresh rates, you may decide to shop elsewhere as the 5 Series is a 60Hz display –On the positive side, It supports variable refresh rate as well as auto low latency in its Game Modes. Those of you looking to simply watch HD and 4K content in HDR needn’t worry, so stay with me - as specs don’t always tell the whole story.
GOOGLE TV
The 5 Series is a smart TV available with your choice of Roku or Google TV. Ours is the Google TV model which means support for Google Assistant as well as Chromecast built-in, though the 5 Series works with Alexa as well. There is a whole host of popular streaming Apps built-in to either platform –Google or Roku –and the included remote has hot keys for favorites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The design of the 5 Series makes this a pretty nice looking TV, sporting a minimal bezel edge-to-edge giving the set a more high-end appearance than some other budget-oriented TVs. I think the 5 Series looks notably better than previous TCL designs, though TCL has never had an issue making a good looking TV –at least from an industrial design standpoint they haven’t. We’ve been using this TV as our daily driver in our primary bedroom for over a month, where it replaced a 65 inch VIZIO OLED. Connected to our Sonos Beam Gen 2 and relying solely on the built-in Apps the 5 Series has proven to be a pretty nice and intuitive setup for this type of casual viewing.
TCL 5 TV SETUP
Getting this TV set up is pretty easy. We chose to mount ours to our wall, though it comes with included feet shown here for demonstration purposes. Out of the box the Google TV operating system is not what I would call lightning quick as there are a lot of Apps pre-installed –many of them falling into the “bloatware” category. Thankfully you can uninstall MOST of them which speeds things up considerably, but if you buy this set and think to yourself, damn it’s slow! Know that it's not entirely the TV’s fault, but rather the Apps that weigh it down out of the box..
TCL 5 picture PROFILEs
The TV ships with its low power picture profile engaged, which TCL claims is good for everyday viewing –it’s not. I’m not going to waste much time here - all of the factory designed picture profiles are pretty bad in terms of their color accuracy. All of them have a noticeable blue shift to both their white point as well as primary colors. I found that the “best” profile out of the box is Movie, though it too isn’t very accurate. It trades a blue bias for red, resulting in overly pink whites and warm primary colors. This is definitely noticeable to even casual viewers, though some may find it preferable as it injects a bit of artificial warmth into skin tones, which typically goes over well.
TCL 5 SERIES AFTER CALIBRATION
Thankfully the 5 Series can be calibrated, well, sort of. I was able to perform a full calibration using the Movie profile as a jumping off point and achieved results that technically met the standard of “calibrated” albeit just barely with the Delta E or margin of error for both grayscale and color just sneaking in under the wire of 3. That said, performing a 20-point calibration produced negative results when it came to watching real world content. My hunch is that taking things to 11 with respect to calibration overly taxes the TV’s processor resulting in notable color artifacts like fringing as well as excessive noise and some motion issues. It wasn’t phased when viewing test patterns, but with real world content like The Batman in Dolby Vision on HBO Max, it did not look good.
BEST PICTURE PROFILE
The good news is that I found a suitable middle ground by resetting the TCL to its factory default, selecting the Movie picture profile and then setting the color temperature to negative 4 (negative 5 is the default). This resulted in a much clearer and artifact-free image. While my workaround would not be considered technically “calibrated”, when viewing the test patterns, it was almost indistinguishable from calibrated to the naked eye, so I decided to leave well enough alone and move on.
HOW BRIGHT IS THE TCL 5 TV?
How bright is the TCL TV? In terms of brightness, the 5 Series is NOT a light canon. It has respectable but not class-leading brightness when viewing non-HDR or Dolby Vision content. I measured a sustained brightness of between 525 and 550 Nits in standard definition depending on the measurement window, though things didn’t really get night and day better when measuring the TV in HDR. I wasn’t able to break a 600 Nit threshold. Going for broke I only managed about 575 Nits of sustained brightness. So if peak brightness is your thing, the 5 is not going to walk away with the W.
TCL PANEL UNIFORMITY
Panel uniformity is good but not great, as there was some vignetting in the corners when viewing an all white screen. I actually noticed some reverse vignetting around logos like when launching the Netflix app, where the area around the red N would appear darker than the edges of the screen, which isn’t ideal but something I don’t lose too much sleep over, because I watch shows on Netflix not their launch screen. I found blooming to be largely a non-issue provided I kept the dynamic backlighting and/or dynamic contrast settings to low or off. Setting either to “high” could induce a bit more blooming –something that was most noticeable when watching non 16:9 content or films with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. With the 5 Series dynamic light settings set to high, films with “black bars” top and bottom could exhibit some blooming in darker scenes when watching real world content, THOUGH with blooming test patterns it always looked pretty good regardless of the settings. Which is weird.
TCL 5 SERIES MOTION
I hate smooth motion so I disabled all of the 5 Series’ motion interpolation settings, and found the TV had organically smooth motion on its own without needing to subject myself to the dreaded soap opera effect. There is no filmmaker mode on the 5 Series that automatically disables these features so you will need to do it manually since they are on by default. The good news is, once you make the necessary adjustments to any of the picture profiles, they’ll automatically transfer to all of the TCL’s inputs –with one exception. Settings made when viewing SD content DO NOT transfer to HDR or Dolby Vision content sadly. When viewing Dolby Vision content, you ARE limited in what adjustments you can make.
PROOF THAT SPECS AND MEASUREMENTS AREN’T EVERYTHING
So at this point you’re probably thinking this TV sounds terrible. Well, the 5 Series, to me, is proof that specs and measurements AREN’T everything. While the TCL may be perfectly average on paper when measured using calibration tools, its day to day viewing experience is actually quite good. Feed it an HD or 4K signal in the TV’s movie profile and I doubt many non-critical viewers would find much IF ANYTHING to complain about – especially if you use my Movie profile work around - setting the color temperature to negative 4 and turning off all dynamic lighting and motion interpolation. With these settings in place I actually found this TV to be rather enjoyable.
HDR CONTENT
The 5 Series may not be a light canon, it’s still bright enough with both SD and HDR content that colors pop off the screen and look natural to all but the most discerning eyes. Skin tones were especially pleasing, even in the face of some pretty overt stylization, as was the case when Kristi and I binge-watched Severance on AppleTV. Detail rendering is good bordering on great with the 5 Series so long as you don’t monkey with the picture settings too much. Similar story when it comes to motion - the 5 Series is a solid performer when viewing everyday content and even sports. In fact, I cannot definitively say if the few subtle judders I noticed when watching the Final Four were the fault of the TCL or just a mild disruption in the broadcast.
TCL 5 SPEAKERS
When I took my reviewer hat off and just watched some of my favorite movies and TV shows, it didn’t take long for me to get sucked in. Nothing about the 5’s performance when watching everyday content was THAT objectionable. My biggest complaint with the 5 Series is its slower power up times, laggy menus and frankly buggy implementation of the Google TV. But these minor annoyances can be easily remedied by connecting either a stand-alone Google TV device or Apple TV 4K to one of the TCL’s HDMI inputs. The only other thing that I would add to the 5 Series is a soundbar - the built-in speakers are not great - they are pretty tinny - but many TV speakers suffer from similar issues so needing a soundbar isn’t unique to the TCL.
COMPARING OTHER TVS TO THE TCL 5 SERIES
In my opinion, it’s a bit unrealistic to compare a TV like the TCL 5 Series to TVs like our reference Sony X95J. Hands down, the Sony wins. Though surprisingly, the 5 Series does better with respect to blooming. Aside from that the Sony is better, but half-way into this review it was likely as obvious to you as it was to me that the 5 Series wasn’t going to upset Goliath. That isn’t to say the 5 Series isn’t a contender when shopping other brand’s entry-level and mid-tier sets.
TCL VS SAMSUNG/HISENSE/LG/VIZIO
I think the 5 Series deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Samsung’s Crystal Series, Hisense’s H8G Series, LG’s lower tier Nanocell TVs like their new UQA Series and even VIZIO’s M Series. Now, I’m not saying the TCL is better (or worse) than these options, as I have not tested them, but on paper if I were shopping for any of the aforementioned options I would definitely look at the TCL which seems comparable based on the advertised specifications of these other TVs.
FINAL THOUGHTS
While the 5 Series from TCL may not be a game changer with reference-grade viewing for well under a thousand dollars, it IS a solid all-round performer for those who want to experience picture quality at a relatively high level without having to fuss too much over things like specs or settings. I think it’s a good choice for secondary spaces like a bedroom or office and near ideal for everyday, casual viewing.
