Hi All,
Making a post with my experience with the TV.
Quick background: I owned a TCL 6 series Roku TV from 2018 and i loved the TV. The picture quality was great, the UI experience was fast and great, HDMI auto switch was good etc...
When the latest “Mini-LED" TV's were announced and BestBuy had them in stock, I immediately sold my 2018 TCL and got the new one for $1200+taxes. I was very excited to get the new TV shipped and then..
I notice that the display glass upfront doesn't line up with the frame, it was not really noticeable until you search for it, I thought it was OK. I ended up using it for 4 months until I couldn't take it anymore.
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WIFI and Ethernet will successfully connect but, account setup wont work.
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I was unable to update the software EVER.
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The display always chose to set to 100% brightness and will always reset with sleep
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HDMI auto switch is a nightmare. I had an apple TV and Xbox connected. Lets say I am watching the apple TV and I chose to turn on Xbox. I switch the input to see that the screen has moved -10% to the right with blank space on the left. I had restart the Xbox to fix this issue.
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Dolby viston is not good. Its very warm
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Blacks on this mini-LED display are the worse. My old 6 series did it much better.
Overall, I am not very happy with thts purchase. To add insult to injury, TCL's support sucked! BestBuy dropped the price to $800 before eventually discontinuing the model. I have contacted the TCL support multiple times to always have my concern forwarded to the "evaluation team" after the same troubleshooting steps every time.
Fed up, I went up to my local best buy (The place where my TV shipped from) and expressed my concerns and how I am now left with a $1420 purchase that I am left with. The manager was very understanding and offered to take the TV back for the full price I pad and offered and exchange. I could buy any TV that they had in stock. I am very happy BestBuy decided to support the customer.
If you face these issues with your TCL mint-LED TV, try to return it. The customer is not a Ouality Assurance tester for a company.
I have/had similar experience. I still do have my 2018 Roku 6-Series, and it just works. No issues with it other than a bit of blooming but at least it has local dimming.
Long story short, I picked up a second TV for the living room, also a new TCL panel w/ AndroidTV9. The interface is sluggish (cheap SoC and next to no RAM), the updates actually bricked the first TV I got. Also the TV would just crash every so often, and came with a suspicious amount of what I can only call bloatware from TCL.
I e-mailed TCL and let them know and they literally stopped replying to my emails. Phone call went to some employee that was half asleep likely working from home who didn't seem to even know the model numbers.
While I enjoy this (and I do use the term loosely) new wave of budget TVs. The lack of support definitely is going to make me have to reconsider next time. In the end, I use it as a dumb display and for now just have a cheap Android box hooked up to it for a more streamlined experience. I would consider a Shield Pro, but they're likely slated to update their line any moment now.