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AUDIO-VISUAL
http://www.avhub.com.auTCL 55X7 QLED 4K TV
- Very good value for money
- Classy styling
- Good picture quality, inc. 4K Chromecast
- Issues with deinterlacing of 576i/50 and
1080i/50
Price: $2199
Display technology: LED/LCD QLED panel
Tested with firmware: Android 8.0,
Kernel 3.10.79, Build OTT1.180130.001
Screen size: 139cm
Native aspect ratio: 16:9
Native resolution: 3840 x 2160
Brightness: 680 nits
Contrast ratio: 4000:1
Inputs: 3 x HDMI, 1 x composite video,
1 x stereo audio, 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0,
1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 1 x aerial
Outputs: 1 x 3.5mm headphone,
1 x optical digital audio
Audio: Onkyo Audio sound system,
2 x 8W + 2 x 4W, forwards facing speakers
Included accessories: Table-top stand,
2 x remote controls, analogue expansion cable
Dimensions (whd): 1231 x 795 x 204mm
with stand, 1231 x 758 x 44.1mm without
Weight: 16.5kg with stand, 16.0kg without
Energy Rating label: 5 stars, 334kWh/yearContact: TCL Electronics Australia
Telephone: 03 8541 4666
Web: http://www.tclelectronics.com.aufor quality, working with (or having tuning assisted
by) Onkyo, and this is one of the variations evident
between models released in Australia and elsewhere.
In Europe the soundbars are branded to JBL and
Harman, while in the US they don’t seem to have
soundbar-equipped models at all.
The stand is a slim but sturdy metal thing
which holds the TV close to the desktop. It can be
removed, of course, for wall mounting. There are
three HDMI inputs — all supporting full-blown
UltraHD with HDCP 2.2 — and also composite
video and stereo audio. Optical digital audio and
3.5mm analogue audio outs are provided. The TV
supports ARC and control over HDMI.
The TCL 55X7 is a smart TV, running Android
8.0 ‘Oreo’. It is fitted with a 1.1GHz, 64-bit
quad-core CPU with 2.5GB of processing RAM.
The TV reported, when we first set it up, that it has
16GB of ‘Internal shared storage’. Clicking on that
showed that 11GB was ‘available’. So it has 16GB
in total, with the operating system and whatnot
consuming about 5GB of that space.
It is provided with two slim remote controls.
One is a standard IR one, while the other is smaller,
has fewer keys, but pairs to the TV wirelessly.
PERFORMANCE
You’ll probably want to make a few changes to the
default settings of the TV, although the default
picture settings were actually pretty impressive.
We did notice that ‘Overscan’ was switched on for
a few of the picture modes, so switch that off to
achieve proper pixel-to-pixel display. We fiddled
a bit with ‘Black Stretch’, but the main effect of
that was to slightly crush low blacks down into
full black. Sharpness can come down too, but it
avoided obvious artefacts.
One other change we’d suggest is in the deeper
Android settings. The ‘Settings’ button brings up a
list of options, such as picture and sound settings.
But pressing the ‘Home’ button, in addition to
providing access to the full range of entertainment
options, including Netflix and YouTube, also
provides access to those system settings. There,
under ‘Power’, we’d suggest you switch ‘Instant
power on’ to, well, on. No doubt this leaves the
TV consuming a little more power during standby,
since it keeps stuff stored in storage. But it speeds
start-up dramatically, since without this it has to
load up Android. We timed it at taking 50 seconds
to start up without that engaged, but a mere six or
seven seconds with ‘Instant power’.
Forget about the modest 4000:1 contrast
ratio. We ran our test patterns in a dark room
and were impressed. The nature of edge lighting
tends to restrict the effectiveness of local dimming.
Nonetheless, we found only a mild amount of
breakthrough of the backlight in non-lit areas
of the screen in those patterns. But these are
designed to show defects. In real viewing of regular
programming, dark scenes were powerfully dark.
With an HDR test signal from a Sony
Ultra-HD Blu-ray disc, we could distinguish
between the 0.005 and 0.010 grey scale bands. The
full black-to-white band across the bottom of the
screen was an even graduation with no visible steps.
At the other end of the scale, again in HDR mode,
the TV kept increasing brightness all the way up
to the 1700-nits band. But that was on an image
showing mostly from 1000 to 2000 nits. On the
next image — 2000 to 10,000 nits — the TV again
showed graduated brightness between each band up
to 7000 nits. The 2000-nits band was darker than
the 1700-nits band had been on the other image.
So the TV is clearly changing its brightness scaling
adaptively, according to the image.
The colours were strong and clean, presumably
thanks to the QLED/Quantum Dot light source.
Overlaid on the respectable black levels, the picture
was very enjoyable, even in a projector-suitable
darkened room.
The TV was a little puzzling when it came to
motion. By default, the maximum level of motion
smoothing was switched on, creating new frames
to go between signal frames. Rather than having an
on/off option, or a number of named settings, this
one was controlled by a simple 0 to 10 adjustment,
with 10 as the default. This provided smooth
motion, and with a remarkably low level of picture
distortion. What was odd was that when we turned
this down to zero, there seemed to be picture
judder with 1080p/24 Blu-ray movies pretty much
throughout, including in those sequences in which
we’d never previously noticed it before.
Both 1080i/50 and 576i/50 (from, say, your
PVR) ought to be converted to progressive scan, if
at all possible, before being fed to this TV. InABOVE: The X7 is quite the looker, nicely
slim and with an audio bar below which
is branded to Onkyo, and provides better
sound than most built-in TV sound systems.