At the risk of earning an eye roll after the following generalization, the TCL QM8K really would be a great TV purchase for just about anyone. With superb peak brightness, detailed picture quality, and fantastic glare handling, the QM8K would be best for people who know they’ll be doing a good amount of their TV watching in the daytime (especially if it’s sports).
The TCL QM8K offers great contrast and blooming mitigation in dark rooms for a non-OLED TV. And its non-OLED pricetag will be enticing to shoppers who are more than casual movie watchers but not exactly strict cinephiles with no budget cap. Each size of the TCL QM8K can often be found on sale for $1,000+ off, bringing both the 65-inch and 75-inch models under $2,000 — not the absolute cheapest you can go by any means, but certainly on the affordable side compared to flagship OLEDs from LG, Samsung, and Sony.
The QLED TV market is a more saturated one than OLED, so pinpointing a singular model as the best QLED TV with no further questions asked is a little bit rockier. For most people, the best QLED TV for your buck will be the TCL QM8K. And though it does extra points for being so punchy at such a practical price point, this isn’t one of those “it’s a good TV… for the price” situations — the QM8K is hard to beat, period.
The 2025 QM8K is even brighter than the older version, the QM8, which was consistently regarded as one of the absolute brightest TVs on the market for 2024. Though there are some brighter TVs than the QM8K model this year, the QM8K’s brightness is still in the top percentile — it actually gets brighter than many of its more-expensive peers.
The full-array local dimming system is really where this model shines, though. There are thousands of little pockets of bulbs behind the screen (far more than the 2024 model) tweaking their brightness to accurately portray each scene, inch by inch. Pendlebury couldn’t help but point out this stellar picture quality, contrast, and shadow detail — especially for being a non-OLED TV.
Its more-precise-than-usual backlights extend to dark rooms, where QLED TVs sometimes struggle to prevent washout. TCL’s new halo control technology is an effective fix for some of the blooming that its predecessor experienced.
