TCL C855 (85C855K) review: This big screen beauty offers even bigger value | Expert Reviews

TCL C855 review: Image quality

The TCL C855 may be competitively priced but the picture quality punches well above its weight thanks to its VA panel combined with Mini LED backlight and quantum dot filters. This VA panel delivers excellent black levels, resulting in a native contrast ratio of 4,350:1, which is impressive for LCD. Although as is typical for VA panels the optimal viewing angles are fairly narrow.

The Mini LED backlight is combined with quantum dot filters for a wider colour gamut and a local dimming algorithm, for improved contrast. I tried counting the number of zones, but frankly, they’re too small to accurately keep track of. TCL claims there are 2,304 zones and given the general honesty in the brand’s marketing materials I see no reason not to accept these claims.

The local dimming offers a choice of off, low and high settings. The low setting works best for SDR content, eliminating halos around bright objects without aggressively dimming, which means shadows are free of black crush. At the lower brightness levels used for SDR there were no signs of blooming and the large number of zones are used very effectively by the dimming algorithm.

The TCL ships in the Standard picture mode, which delivers the usual inaccuracies in the image when compared to the industry standards. There’s a significant excess of blue energy in the greyscale, a gamma with a large dip in the middle and over-saturated colours that result in average Delta E (errors) of nine for the greyscale and gamma, along with 13 for the colours.

The Movie mode improves matters, with red, green and blue tracking each other closely and reducing average errors to 2.4, which is below the visible threshold of three. The gamma is now tracking 2.38, which is very close to the target of 2.4, while the colour accuracy is even better, with all the colours tracking their saturation targets and delivering an average error of only 1.33.

This is an impressive level of accuracy out of the box, and TCL is to be congratulated. While calibration controls are included, there isn’t much room for improvement. I was able to slightly tweak the greyscale, reducing the average error to a near-perfect 0.8, and the average colour error down to an equally impressive 0.6, but it’s doubtful anyone would notice these changes.

Along with the default Standard and more accurate Movie modes, TCL offers Smart HDR, Sport, Game and PC. Most are best avoided, especially Smart HDR which creates faux HDR, but Game mode is important (see the gaming section). I’d also recommend turning off Adaptive Brightness in the Intelligent Picture sub-menu because this feature will cause luminance fluctuations.

The screen uniformity on the review sample was a bit patchy in places, but given the 85in screen’s sheer real estate that’s hardly surprising. However, the VA panel and Mini LED local dimming performed extremely well in SDR, making the most of the extra zones to ensure blacks are delivered with depth, while brighter objects are free from unwanted blooming and halos.

The C855’s upscaling and processing are generally effective, and if you feed this TV a high-quality image the results are excellent. However, with lower resolution or heavily compressed content like standard definition broadcast channels the upscaling and processing isn’t quite as impressive, especially on a screen this big. This is an area where more established brands still have an edge.

The overall motion handling is also good, with the panel’s 144Hz refresh rate undoubtedly playing a key role here. There’s generally no blurring on fast motion like sport, and the C855 handles 24p content without introducing judder. There is occasional stutter on some content, but this is easily addressed using motion smoothing.

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