TCL Announces Mini LED TVs With New HVA Panels And Halo Control Technology

Not content with making huge inroads into the premium TV segment market share in 2024, TCL has now unveiled the first key TVs from its 2025 range — and it’s fair to say the brand doesn’t look like it’s going to be resting on its laurels any time soon.

The new TCL “affordable premium” QM6K series boasts a host of what appear to be genuinely significant new Mini LED technologies. For starters, TCL’s Pangu Lab in China — which TCL describes as the “world’s first full process Mini LED development center”, where all stages of Mini LED backlight development from concept and R&D to design, materials/component creation and full system trials take place on a single site — has developed a new Super High Energy LED Chip that’s claimed to increase brightness by more than 53%.

This would be an eye-catching claim for any brand to make, but it’s particularly startling to see from TCL given that some models in its 2024 range already delivered groundbreaking levels of brightness for their price points. TCL doesn’t quote any precise nit figures in its QM6K announcement, but with some of 2024’s “affordable premium” sets hitting well over 3,000 nits, the prospect of what might be possible with high dynamic range content with the new Super High Energy LED Chip is mouth-watering.

The new chip is also claimed to increase light efficiency by 10%, meaning that its ultra high brightness can be achieved without using as much power as previous chips would have.

Of course, though, delivering extreme levels of brightness is only part of a strong HDR TV performance. That light also needs to be carefully controlled, so that it only appears where it’s supposed to appear, leaving dark picture areas still looking dark and not drawing undue and distracting attention to the mechanics of the Mini LED backlighting system. This brings us to the QM6K’s new Condensed Micro Lens feature, which TCL describes as a “highly upgraded version” of 2024’s UWA Dual Arch Lens that uses enhanced optical materials to deliver better stability and a narrower, more controlled light path.

TCL has redesigned the QM6K backlight system, too, reducing the optical distance between the screens’ backlighting and light diffuser plate to, it’s claimed, virtually eliminate the halo/blooming effect around stand-out bright objects that’s traditionally associated with LED TVs that use local dimming light systems to improve their contrast. This new TCL “Micro OD” backlight system is claimed to provide a 143% improvement in backlight uniformity, with an attendant 18% improvement in backlight blooming specifically.

On top of all these innovations, the Quantum Dot QM6Ks are also built around new high-contrast CSOT HVA (High Viewing Angle) panels that close LCDs more effectively in dark parts of the picture so that they can deliver deeper black tones. The result, according to TCL, is an impressive 7,000:1 claimed static contrast performance, which is suggested — rather vaguely, it has to be said — to be up to 5x better than the static contrast performance of competitor LCD screens. The 85 and 98-inch QM6Ks will additionally get a matte finish to their HVA panels.

Even the QM6K’s core Quantum Dot color system has been tweaked, now deploying more vibrant Quantum Crystals capable of covering up to 98% of the DCI-P3 color range used in the vast majority of HDR mastering, and rated to provide 100,000 viewing hours without major performance degradation.

A new Color Optimization Algorithm has been designed for 2025, too, that’s reckoned to better unlock the range and subtlety of the new Quantum Crystals.

This new algorithm isn’t the only processing improvement TCL is claiming for the QM6Ks, either. New Zero-Delay Transient Response, for instance, is designed to eliminate almost all lag between the input signal and the backlight response, so that there’s less chance of backlight activity distractingly sticking around into subsequent image frames. This could be a particularly important feature for ultra-bright TVs like the QM6K is shaping up to be.

The backlight controller has also been upgraded to a bi-directional 23-bit system, which TCL claims allows the TV to deliver more granular control over 65,000 brightness levels for each and every LED. And to get the maximum benefit from this new backlight controller, TCL has also rolled out for the QM6Ks a new “Dynamic Light Algorithm” designed to convert SDR signals into something close to HDR — though obviously the option will be available to deactivate this feature for purists who want to see SDR looking as it was originally mastered to look.

Other stated features of the QM6K series include up to 500 local dimming zones; a 144Hz native refresh rate; “Game Accelerator 288” technology to deliver a 288Hz VRR gaming experience; TCL’s latest AiPQ Pro processor; Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG support; Dolby Atmos sound; DTS Virtual:X sound; IMAX Enhanced and AMD FreeSync certifications; new Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode support; a new Sleep Sounds mode; new hands-free voice control support; a new 40W Onkyo 2.1 speaker system; 4 HDMI ports (one with eARC support); Google TV smarts; and a slimmer full-view 360-degree bezel-free design.

Preorders open now

The QM6K’s are already available for pre-order at tcl.com, priced at $749.99 for the 50-inch model, $799.99 for the 55-incher, $999.99 for the 65-incher, $1,299.99 for the 75 incher, $1,999.99 for the 85-incher, and $3,499.99 for the 98-incher. Prices which currently include a complimentary TCL Q75H sound bar.

Unusually for TCL it hasn’t used the CES to reveal details of its entire 2025 TV range, so I can’t say at this point how many other series in TCL’s 2025 TV range will benefit from some or all of the brand’s new Mini LED innovations. But even allowing for potential partisan overstating on the part of TCL’s marketing department, it really does sound as if the brand’s threat to the more established premium TV category brands is only going to increase over the next 12 months.

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