TCL 65C89L Review: Bright Mini LED With Wide Colour

The TCL C89L, which is also sold under the reference C8L, takes over from the C89K and is built around a new SQD Mini LED backlight. That panel technology is intended to improve colour richness and colour-space coverage, and it marks a point of difference from manufacturers who have moved to RGB Mini LED for their premium sets. The unit measured here is the 65-inch TCL 65C89L, one of several diagonals offered in the range.

The set sits just below TCL's flagship X11L, which has a stronger sound system and more backlight zones. Even so, the C89L is well equipped, with a large number of dimming zones, Google TV running the interface and an audio system developed with Bang & Olufsen. All the brightness and colorimetry figures quoted below were recorded with professional calibration instruments and software.

The C89L has not really moved on from its predecessor in design terms, keeping the zero-border screen with no internal bezel. It obviously lacks the slimness of an OLED, because the backlight imposes a certain thickness, but the whole thing is serious and reasonably well finished. The central stand is practical because it adapts to furniture of any width, although it has to be said that it is fairly deep.

Connectivity is very complete. There are four HDMI ports, all of them to the HDMI 2.1 standard, which is welcome after previous years, plus a USB-A 3.0 port, an Ethernet port, an optical output and the usual aerial connectors. There is no 3.5mm output, something that is becoming increasingly common on recent televisions, so headphones have to go through Bluetooth. The set also has Wi-Fi 6.

The television runs Google TV, an interface that remains one of the most complete available and carries all the essential apps. Chromecast is built in, as is Google Assistant, and navigation is generally fluid. As is often the case with Google TV, the home screen pushes a great deal of content and recommendation. Signing in to a Google account is now compulsory, and it unlocks the full feature set as well as personalised recommendations. Gemini is expected to arrive on TCL televisions over the coming months.

The remote keeps a fairly modern approach with its silver aluminium finish. It gives access to the main streaming platforms, includes a microphone for voice control and is pleasant to use day to day. Shortcuts have been added on the edge of the handset to manage screen brightness and picture mode, and the remote is backlit, which is rare enough to be worth pointing out.

The C89L uses a VA-type LCD panel paired with a new-generation SQD Mini LED backlight. Contrast is unsurprisingly very good for an LCD television, with far deeper blacks than a conventional LED set. Local dimming does its job well and produces a dense, dynamic and pleasing image in the majority of scenes. It should not be expected to reach OLED perfection: in some difficult sequences a slight veil can be perceived, and a little blooming remains.

In Filmmaker mode the average SDR delta E comes out at 2.9. That sits just under the threshold of 3, but above the value of 2 beyond which drift becomes perceptible to the naked eye. Average gamma was measured at 2.2, a little lower than the 2.4 reference usually aimed for, which gives an image with slightly lighter tones than standard. That rendering can be welcome in a bright room, though anyone watching films in the dark would have preferred a curve closer to 2.4.

Average colour temperature reaches 7114 K, so the image leans cool with slightly blue whites. It is not disqualifying, but it moves away from the 6500 K expected in video. Calibration would certainly correct the point, even though white balance is already set to its warmest value in Filmmaker mode.

Still in that mode, maximum SDR brightness reaches 514 cd/m2, a comfortable figure but not an especially high one. It can be unlocked considerably by changing mode or by adjusting it directly in the picture settings, on the understanding that this degrades colour accuracy. That accuracy is also slightly less good than on the model this set replaces, which is a shame.

Viewing angles remain the Achilles heel of LCD panels. A brightness loss of 75% was measured at 45 degrees, which is very significant. As soon as the viewer moves off the central axis, blacks lift and hues shift quickly. OLED and QD-OLED televisions are considerably better on this point.

The C89L supports all the main HDR formats: HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision and even Dolby Vision 2, although the last of those is still awaited in service. EOTF tracking is broadly convincing. The set clearly seeks to exploit its very high brightness, but avoids massively overexposing highlights, so HDR scenes keep a great deal of impact and deliver very striking specular detail without sacrificing too much fine detail.

Peak brightness is the headline strength. Measurements returned 3123 cd/m2 on a 10% window and 3054 cd/m2 on a 2% window, with a peak of 4000 cd/m2 at 5%. That places the set among the brightest available and puts it comfortably ahead of the OLED televisions it is compared with, although brightness has not really progressed compared with the model it replaces. On a full-screen white field, brightness reaches 671 cd/m2, an area where Mini LED retains a very clear advantage over OLED, which has to limit luminance heavily when the whole panel is driven.

HDR colorimetry is excellent, with an average delta E of 1.7, so drift is invisible to the naked eye. Colour-space coverage shows the clearest benefit of the SQD Mini LED backlight compared with conventional LCD panels: the C89L covers 97.9% of DCI-P3 and, more notably, 91.2% of Rec. 2020. That is a remarkable result, better than most current WOLED panels and close to the newest RGB Mini LED and QD-OLED technologies, achieved without an RGB backlight.

Reflections remain a weak point across Mini LED televisions. Reflectance was measured at 23%, which is decent without being exceptional. The C89L controls diffuse reflections reasonably well and stays usable in a bright living room thanks to its high brightness, but it cannot compete with the most aggressive anti-reflective treatments available. It does fare more honourably than many conventional LCD sets, which are often heavily penalised by direct reflections.

Blooming control is good overall, though it varies from scene to scene. Blacks generally stay dense, but in some more complex dark sequences haloes appear around very bright objects and blacks can look slightly washed out. White subtitles on a black background, stars and small light sources in darkness can still betray the underlying LCD technology. The set does far better than an entry-level LCD, but OLED remains the master technology here. Because the C89L has no anti-reflective filter, its blacks are not affected by the light diffraction that can be seen on some rival panels.

The C89L ticks almost every box for players. Its 144 Hz panel makes the most of recent consoles at 4K 120 Hz, and can go a little higher with a capable PC. All four HDMI ports are to the HDMI 2.1 standard, which has been a long time coming from TCL and is a genuine convenience when connecting several consoles or a PC alongside a soundbar without juggling cables.

Input lag is excellent. Measurements returned around 10.1 ms at 1080p 60 Hz and only 5.2 ms at 1080p 120 Hz, so display latency is imperceptible in practice, including in competitive games. Persistence was measured at 15 ms, which is respectable for an LCD panel but not at the level of OLED, whose response time is almost instantaneous. Slight motion blur or a little ghosting can therefore be perceived in very fast games, particularly competitive shooters and racing titles.

Game mode in SDR is less well calibrated than the cinema modes, with an average delta E of 4.8. Colours are flattering rather than faithful, which is fairly common in television game modes. In HDR the picture is considerably better, the average delta E dropping to 2.3, below the threshold of 3.

The audio section is very effective and is once again the result of a partnership with Bang & Olufsen. The built-in system offers good bass extension and quite correct spatialisation, using a 4.2.2 arrangement with two woofers at the rear and two additional vertical drivers. It obviously does not deliver the impact of a proper soundbar with a subwoofer, but the performance is clearly above average for a television. Anyone building a home cinema will still want dedicated speakers or a soundbar.

Average consumption on the standard test pattern is 79.2 W, a relative figure of 68 W/m2. That is a very good result for a Mini LED television this bright, so TCL manages a very powerful panel without sending SDR consumption through the roof. In HDR, measured real consumption reaches 0.280 kWh, which is much higher, since the set is then exploiting its powerful Mini LED backlight; energy efficiency is therefore considerably worse than on an OLED television.