TCL has unveiled a number of new home entertainment products aimed at its European consumers for the first half of 2022, including two new series of Mini LED TVs and two QLED ranges, along with a fresh trio of soundbars. You could also take a similar approach to the Movie mode settings, if you don’t mind colours looking quite substantially flatter. The TCL C745 sits towards the top of the brand’s 4K HDR lineup, offering most of the benefits associated with a modern smart TV, while also keeping gamers happy by including all the bells and whistles needed to get the most out of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The 55-inch 55C735K, though, finally fixes this frustration, at least for the UK and Europe, combining an unprecedented feature count for its money with picture quality that shames some TVs costing twice as much. Price

The TCL C745 offers a simple but attractive design, with a bezel-less screen and elegant silver trim around the outer edge. The construction combines metal and plastic into a sleek chassis, and the 55in model measures 1,225 x 76 x 71mm (WDH) without its stand. The most glaring example of this mixed-bag performance comes from its colours. With some sources and settings its QLED-driven colours are strikingly good, achieving saturations and volumes seldom if ever seen at the 65C815K’s price point. But at other times its colours go what’s probably best described as ‘off road’. so good for its money that it pretty much redefines the whole TV market in a single blaze of ultra-bright glory." We’ve been wondering whether TCL, like Hisense has done in recent years, could offer an affordable alternative to premium TVs. Having got our hands on the 55C715K QLED, we now have a firmer idea of whether this is the case. TCL 55C715K price and availability The 65C845K sees TCL finally bringing to Europe the combination of aggressive pricing and unexpectedly excellent performance that has made the brand so successful in the US. In fact, the 65C845K is so good for its money that it pretty much redefines the whole TV market in a single blaze of ultra-bright glory.

The TCL C745 is a smart and capable 4K HDR TV that's a superb choice for next-gen gamers on a budget

Running in its brightest, most dynamic mode, colours in bright HDR10 scenes can look distractingly gaudy and unnatural ALLM allows the video game console or PC graphics card to switch automatically the TV into game mode for a super fast TV game input lag below 6 ms **​ VRR eliminates lag, judder and frame tearing effects for fluid and better detailed gameplay.​ The entirety of the 55-inch set is balanced on a base with 2 legs and is quite different from the stands you usually get with high end TVs. It thankfully comes fitted with a lot of ports which is amazing, as most manufacturers these days skimp on giving ports for multiple inputs. There are 4 HDMI ports of which 1 accommodates 4K at 144hz, 1 is 4K at 120hz and 2 accommodate 4K at 60hz meaning it can accommodate practically any current and last gen console and optimal performance levels. If you have multiple consoles that you play on along with your PC, you will not have to unplug any of the cables and instead can have all of them on the different access ports. Besides the HDMI ports there is also a LAN cable port, a digital output port, headphone- in port and 2 USB ports at 2.0, which we felt was a little out of sync and off-putting as everything else is up to date, so why not have USB ports at 3.0. We test every TV we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product. The rear does suddenly become chunkier a few inches in from those super-svelte edges, but even then the set wears this extra area of bulk quite nicely. The chunkier area doesn’t just house the screen’s processors and connections; it also provides space for TCL to build in a strikingly large rear-facing bass driver – again adorned by the Onkyo logo.

The TCL C745 is a budget superstar, offering large screen sizes and impressive features at very affordable prices. The overall image performance is generally very good with both SDR and HDR, and while the Movie mode could be more accurate out of the box, and the TV isn’t quite as bright as claimed, the pictures produced are detailed, vibrant and punchy. I should stress that these colour issues only crop up with bright HDR10 scenes/image areas. Dark HDR10 shots and scenes look pretty normal where colours are concerned – although, ultimately, this just makes the excesses with bright scenes all the more glaring.The soundbar manages to radiate sound up as well as forward, creating at least a vague sense of height with Dolby Atmos mixes – although there aren’t really any specific overhead effects to speak of. Android TVTM with Google AssistantTM built-in provides access to your favourite streaming services, apps and games When it receives a Dolby Vision signal the TV defaults to the IQ option, which adjusts the tone mapping based on the measurements from a light meter. It’s a more sophisticated approach compared to the Adaptive Brightness control offered with SDR content. Still, purists might prefer to use the Dolby Vision Dark picture mode at night, thus retaining the original artistic intentions.

The intense colours are at their best with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ sources. The extra scene-by-scene picture information these two formats provide appears to help the set rein in its most aggressive colour instincts to deliver punchy but also mostly believable and balanced tones. So much so that pictures actually look much more dynamic and bold than the good (for this price level) peak measured brightness of around 540 nits would lead you to expect.There are a number of unusual elements to the 65C815K’s reasonably attractive design. First, it features a very obvious, blue-tinted soundbar hanging from its bottom edge. This wears the branding of renowned Japanese audio brand Onkyo, raising hopes this might be the rarest of things: an affordable TV with a built-in sound system that doesn’t sound horrible. On top, HDR Dolby Vision IQ optimises the picture quality to adapt picture quality to the room lighting conditions.Dolby Vision IQ intelligently optimizes your TV for a perfect picture in your room at every moment.​