TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648) review
Our Verdict
The TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648) is a next-generation set at this generation'due south prices, just it'south non a compelling buy while 4K reigns supreme.
For
- Technical picture quality is good
- Well-conceived remote redesign
- Fine gaming performance on consoles and PCs
Confronting
- 65-inch model struggles to testify worth of 8K resolution
- Very little 8K content available in the wild
- Poor off-bending viewing
- Mediocre sound
Tom's Guide Verdict
The TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648) is a adjacent-generation set at this generation'south prices, but it's not a compelling buy while 4K reigns supreme.
Pros
- +
Technical picture quality is skilful
- +
Well-conceived remote redesign
- +
Fine gaming operation on consoles and PCs
Cons
- -
65-inch model struggles to prove worth of 8K resolution
- -
Very little 8K content available in the wild
- -
Poor off-angle viewing
- -
Mediocre audio
TCL Roku TV vi-Series 8K (R648): Specs
Price: $ii,199.99
Model number: 65R648
Screen size: 65 inches
Resolution: 7,680 ten 4,320
HDR: HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision
Refresh charge per unit: 120 Hz
Ports: 4 HDMI, 1 USB
Audio: 15W ten two, 30W subwoofer
Smart Television software: Roku TV
Size: 57 x 32.7 x 3 inches [w/o stand]
Weight: seventy.1 pounds [w/o stand up]
Information technology takes a while for every captivating new technology to become commonplace plenty for ordinary consumers to have regular exposure to it — and to be able to afford products that use it. The TCL Roku Tv set 6-Series 8K suggests that the company renowned for bringing skillful-looking sets to lower price ranges thinks 8K (at seven,680 10 four,320 pixels, four times the resolution of 4K) might have finally reached that point.
The Goggle box itself makes that less obvious at the moment. Information technology carries all the usual advantages of TCL models in terms of price and picture quality, but is hobbled by existing to showcase a technology that hasn't had the time it needs to live, breathe, and influence the industry. This makes the Television receiver itself a marvel — specially in its 65-inch incarnation — and non a terrific value prospect, fifty-fifty if you see the next big leap forward as more of an investment than a money pit.
Editor'southward Note: November 11, 2021 – TCL has just announced the first 8K streaming service , exclusive to TCL's 8K Roku TVs. It's an important step forwards for 8K, and makes the TCL Roku Goggle box vi-Series 8K (R648) a little more enticing than when we first reviewed it in July of 2021. Our rating remains unchanged, for now.
TCL Roku TV 6-Serial 8K (R648): Price and availability
For our review, nosotros assessed the 65-inch version of the TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K, the 65R648. Because the other available model, the 75-inch 75R648, shares the same core features and underlying technologies, we expect the 65R648 and the 75R648 to be comparable in functioning — if not necessarily viewing experience. (See the Performance section for more on this.)
- 65-inch (model 65R648): $2,199.99
- 75-inch (model 75R648): $2,999.99
TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648): Design
The Roku Television receiver 6-Series 8K generally retains the thick, boxy look of previous entries in TCL's 6-Series, with a few tweaks. The gear up measures 57 ten 32.7 x three inches at its thickest, with the main portion of the screen itself slightly more than 1 inch deep.
Its size and weight (just over 70 pounds) mean that you lot will need some other person'due south help to set it up safely. The brushed-metallic bezel is thin on all sides except the bottom, where its half-inch width is large plenty to accommodate the TCL and Roku Tv logos; at that place are quarter-inch bands of black on the top, left, and right.
The back of the Goggle box is all black, with the plastic compartment housing the set'southward components sporting thin, vertical lines to mask the vents. A column in the centre is all black, except for the ii metallic concentric circles that add some visual interest to the top-center portion. The screw holes for the VESA mount frame that centre cavalcade.
Should you prefer to identify your Goggle box on a table or entertainment heart instead of on the wall, a wedge-shaped metallic stand is included that easily connects to the bottom of the TV with four screws.
The attractive brushed-metallic stand is heavy duty, measuring 18.9 x 7.8 in front of the Boob tube when installed (and raising the screen about 2.5 inches), while built-in cable direction channels on its back side assistance simplify the usually dull process of keeping your media setup peachy.
TCL Roku Television set 6-Serial 8K (R648): Ports
All the ports are piece of cake to admission, as they are all side positioned. The ability port is on the left, and everything else is on the right: the Ethernet port, the pinhole Reset button, iv HDMI ports, the coaxial cable connector, one USB ii.0 port, the headphone jack, and the optical sound out port. The big hardware Power button is positioned below them, in the lower-correct corner.
Just ii of the HDMI ports back up the HDMI 2.1 standard, which allows for next-generation technologies like 120 Hz refresh rates at 4K resolution, Variable Refresh Rate and Car Low Latency Manner (ALLM), for automatically switching over to gaming settings when you actuate your panel. Considering the ports are not labeled, figuring out which uses which standard requires some trial and error. At least the port supporting eARC and ARC is marked every bit such.
As HDMI 2.1 becomes more prevalent in the industry, hopefully TCL will follow the lead of companies such every bit LG, which on its contempo models has equipped all its HDMI ports with the newer, more powerful standard.
TCL Roku Television receiver 6-Serial 8K (R648): Test results
Among the offerings TCL highlights on the Roku TV half dozen-Series 8K line are the mini-LED backlighting and Dissimilarity Control Zones for upping the contrast across the whole picture, in add-on to the breakthrough dot (aka QLED) applied science we've seen on previous models from TCL and Samsung. What practice these hateful as far every bit what appears on the screen?
For testing TVs, we use two pattern generators (an AccuPel DVG-5000 for SDR and a SpectraCal VideoForge Pro for HDR), the X-Rite i1 Pro spectrophotometer and the SpectraCal C6 colorimeter for display measurements, and Portrait Displays' Calman scale software.
In both Normal and Motion picture SDR modes, the R648 covered 99.8% or more of the Rec. 709 color gamut, which was just behind that of final year'due south TCL 6-Series Roku TV 55R635 in Standard mode (99.86% versus 99.92) and more clearly ahead in Picture show fashion (99.79% versus 99.08%). The R648 outstripped it in color fidelity, too, using the Delta-E measurement (which specifies the deviation between the transmitted colour and what appears on the screen): ii.12 versus two.85 (with lower numbers being improve). The new set was superior in brightness, too, with its brightest mode registering 621 nits as opposed to the 594 nits of the earlier model.
Although OLED sets tend to deliver superior performance beyond the lath, the R648 does what many TCL TVs exercise: punch higher up its weight relative to price.
TCL Roku TV half-dozen-Series 8K (R648): Performance
For the time being, there are two key questions to consider with respect to 8K video operation: How does the set await when upscaling from lower resolutions, and how does information technology look when playing native 8K content? For the R648, let's take them one at a time.
As far as the commencement question is concerned: not as well bad. It maintained both the sharpness of edge and the starkness of contrast then necessary to the early on farmhouse scene in Blade Runner 2049. It attractively conveyed all the dazzling earth hyper-tones of the Italian Riviera, and the sparkling blues and greens of the underwater scenes in the new Disney-Pixar blithe film Luca. Zack Snyder'due south Justice League retained its evidently intended sense of color-sapped, ii-dimensional "cartooniness" with the ambitious popping of its contrast-bombing special effects. The lightning-streaked concluding boxing between Rey and Palpatine in Star Wars; The Rise of Skywalker lacked a bit of the oomph we've seen on other TVs; the swirling festival on Pasaana bordered on the garish in both the Normal and Vivid Dolby Vision modes, but passed muster in Dark.
In all cases, these 4K-rendered movies looked acceptably abrupt when observed from a standard viewing distance (8 to ten feet from the screen). Softer edges were visible in these titles only when looking at them from far closer than any human being being ever should, then you don't have to worry nigh all your 4K movies being visually "obsolete" in 8K any time before long.
Upscaling from 1080p, all the same, was another matter. In almost everything we tested, the fuzziness was conspicuous and distracting. Coming off best was Mission: Incommunicable — Fallout, though fifty-fifty that evinced a loss of the richness that make that action film look and then firsthand at lower resolutions. Near other videos shot in Hd looked direct bad, equally if shot in wrinkle-obscuring soft focus.
Don't forget that 8K is 16 times the resolution of 1080p, so all of this is, on some level, to be expected. Let your living and entertainment circumstances guide you: If a large chunk of your movie library is in 1080p, and if you're forced to sit fairly shut to your set, 8K may merely non be right for yous at this time.
Then there'due south native 8K content. Disclaimer: Nosotros're seriously hobbled by the electric current dearth of it, then we didn't accept an extensive drove of movies to sift through; we were mainly express to YouTube nature and tourism videos. No, these aren't genuinely representative of what you're probable to spotter, but they're good for showing off what the resolution means. Even from a standard viewing distance, we could make out single strands of fur on animals or the individual bricks on a Swiss windmill, and the bustling nighttime Manhattan cityscape came live in all its twinkling celebrity simply as information technology does when you're padding through the streets of the City That Never Sleeps.
Comparing the 65R648 side-by-side against another 65-inch TV we've recently reviewed, the 4K Sony Bravia XR A80J, painted a different moving picture. The exact same videos, looked at this style, appeared almost identical, and in a couple of cases, the A80J actually looked fuller and cleaner. This isn't a huge stupor; cramming a lot more than pixels into the same corporeality of space means they'll be minor plenty for the nuances to evaporate earlier you go too far away from the screen. This is why a lot of premium 8K sets are 75 or 85 inches, bigger than even well-nigh 4K TVs: It's a lot easier to run into what you lot're getting, regardless of where you're sitting.
In fairness, the A80J is besides a higher-end 4K TV and the 65R648 comes with a bleeding-edge premium, then they're not actually directly competitive. But it's notwithstanding an important reminder that not all TVs are equal, content is fundamental, and the built-in limitations of, well, optics are always in play. Pixels blending from far enough away isn't a bad thing, per se (just ask Georges Seurat), only information technology doesn't help in making a compelling argument for a "smaller" 8K TV at this moment in the technology's life cycle.
One thing that'southward true of the R648 at every resolution: Its off-bending viewing leaves a great deal to be desired. Colors are drained of most of their vibrancy well earlier y'all reach the corner of the fix, and once you're at or by that, forget it. The summery peaches and reds of Luca's face flattened into colors you'd expect to find on a sun-bleached affiche; and the color version of Zack Snyder's Justice League, which already laughs in the confront of saturation, becomes barely a half-step removed from the black-and-white "Justice Is Greyness Edition" when viewed from anywhere other than straight on. If anything, full-screen color tests were even worse: At the corners, an all-orange screen became lemon yellow, cyan turned pastel green, and violet was a violent magenta. Solid red, green, and blue fared the best, but that's not loftier praise for a big goggle box.
TCL Roku Tv vi-Series 8K (R648): Gaming
If i area makes an open up-and-shut case for 8K today, information technology's gaming — only even that's not caveat-free. The TCL Roku TV 6-Serial 8K sets are the start at this resolution to support THX Certified Game Style, which meets certain benchmarks for color, speed, paradigm clarity, and more than. As previously mentioned, two of the R648's HDMI ports support the gaming-friendly HDMI 2.1 standard, and firing upwardly our Xbox Series X showed that near all of its capabilities are met by this set. And when it comes to input lag, it just surpasses our threshold of 20 milliseconds for smooth gameplay, with 19.three ms equally measured with the older 1080p Leo Bodnar Point Lag Tester and xiv.6 ms when measured with a newer model designed for higher-resolution sets.
As with 1080p video, older games are iffy; Assassin's Creed Odyssey was passable, but looked smudged and fake. But final year'due south Assassin'south Creed Valhalla, optimized for more than modern hardware, had the crisper, realer wait nosotros craved; even with all the details turned up, the 120 Hz refresh rate ensured shine movement of the lead character, Eivor, in action at various levels of intensity. We tin't yet study on how native 8K panel games would play, but based on what we've seen here, we're not besides worried.
But the R648 did allow us to examination 8K PC games, and this may accept come up the closest to converting us. We tried iii titles — Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Assassinator's Creed Valhalla, and Clay v — and they all looked terrific, with the combination of the Television receiver'southward size and resolution providing the next level of immersive experience that smaller monitors are not always able to realize.
Here, though, we faced a different bottleneck: PC performance. Our test arrangement was a gaming desktop with a ten-core, xx-thread Intel Cadre i9-10850K processor; 32GB of RAM; and, most crucially, an Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics carte du jour — non just the gold standard for 8K gaming today, but pretty much the only standard. The carte du jour, with its heaven-high 24GB of video retentiveness, could handle the stress, but even information technology could only practice then much. With the graphical details maxed out in every case, frame rates striking a low ceiling: on Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, 23.1 fps for the Loftier criterion preset, 18 for Ultra, and 11.v for Extreme; on Assassin's Creed Valhalla, 25 fps; and on DiRT 5, 27.6 fps; remember, 30 fps is typically considered the blank minimum for a smooth experience. And this is the aforementioned system that, at 4K, turned out frame rates on the same tests of 69.nine, 55.five, 36.six, 64, and 75.two fps, respectively. Yeah, you're getting a huge gaming playground with 8K, but the operation you have to cede may non be worth information technology — and if you lot have a bottom video bill of fare, you're but wasting your time unless you want to dial back the visuals (maybe a lot).
That'southward not all you lot're giving up, either. Nvidia lists its version of the RTX 3090 at $1,499, which is loftier enough, only thank you to the global shortage, the least expensive ane bachelor at Newegg is $2,739, and Amazon's lowest is $2,724. If you don't already have this card, y'all'll probably desire to wait to aggrandize your PC gaming into the 8K realm when doing so is more than realistic.
TCL Roku TV half dozen-Series 8K (R648): Audio
Whether you adopt watching movies or playing games, you want a Telly'southward audio to be top-notch, and, similar to other TCL sets, the R648's isn't. With its two 15-watt speakers, movies, music, and games akin sounded diddled out even at lower parts of the set'southward volume range, and metallic distortion became increasingly axiomatic the college it was cranked. Soprano vocals came across as shrill with that setup, slightly clipping and sounding roundly unpleasant. The Boob tube's problems with layering sound were peculiarly noticeable with dialogue, which got swallowed up if anything else was happening at the same time. (We tried multiple sound modes, and experienced these issues to some caste or another in all of them.)
Interestingly, the xxx-watt subwoofer contributed to tolerable bass presence, as evidenced by the relentless thumping of The Knife's "Silent Shout," and information technology took until about the volume midpoint to lose its luster. That's something, simply if sound is really disquisitional for your Tv-watching enjoyment, pair this Idiot box with one of the options in Tom'due south Guide roundup of the all-time soundbars.
TCL Roku Television set 6-Serial 8K (R648): Smart features
As its full name implies, the R648 uses the familiar Roku Television receiver interface. A scrolling carte du jour on the side highlights the available choices, which include "Featured Free" (no-price Boob tube shows and movies); "My Feed" (your customizable video stream); movie, Boob tube, and aqueduct stores; Search; and Home, which provides instant access to your installed content channels, live Idiot box (if you use it), and whatever other devices you have connected via HDMI. (At the time of writing, another option was "2020 Tokyo Olympics," which provided a one-glance medal breakdown aslope a link to picket daily highlights or live coverage with the proper subscription — a fun add-on.)
Roku Television receiver is quick to learn and easy to use, merely it lacks the depth and breadth of functionality that characterize the all-time smart TV systems, such every bit Google TV. There's not much incorrect with it now that its app choice has expanded to include such necessities as Apple tree TV+ and Disney+, but information technology'south starting to wait simplistic and dated compared with the more than avant-garde offerings plant on other sets.
TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648): Remote control
The Roku TV remote, on the other paw, has received a major update — and it's a welcome change. Replacing the tiny, squat black one that's been all but universal for years is a sleeker silver-and-gray model that's easier to hold and more comfortable to utilise. Information technology measures nearly 7.three by i.6 inches, with all the buttons in the acme three-fifths or and so; the bare lesser section slides open to reveal the battery compartment. The chief buttons are round, decently sized, and piece of cake to printing, every bit is the navigation cycle and its central OK button; only the buttons that access defended streaming channels (Netflix, Disney+, Apple tree TV+, and Hulu) are oblong in shape, so you're unlikely to hit anything accidentally in the dark.
Some other option is the new Roku Voice Remote Pro ($29.99, sold separately), which looks and feels a lot more like the traditional Roku remote but which offers improved voice controls. A hands-free switch lets you result vocalisation commands without start having to depress the microphone button (though information technology's still there to utilise even if you lot plow off the hands-free mode). There are also 2 new programmable personal shortcut buttons, and a built-in headphone jack lets you listen to the TV silently. Plus, if y'all misplace the remote (which, let'southward face information technology, you eventually will), you can say "Hey Roku, where's my remote?" to get assistance in tracking it downwards.
These are fun capabilities, no uncertainty, and if your preferred method of interacting with your TV is by voice, this is an upgrade that's worth having. (It should piece of work with whatever Roku Telly, as well — not just this one.) Personally, I prefer the size and shape of the redesigned included remote, and it'south too bad the new phonation features aren't standard on it.
TCL Roku TV 6-Serial 8K (R648): Verdict
All the same much we may want to pretend otherwise, we don't yet live in an 8K world. Heck, with so many worthwhile videos (on YouTube and the streaming services) that are still coming out in 1080p, and net bandwidth rather less than affordably maximized at many locations in the U.Southward., it's probable to be years before we go at that place. My colleague, Tom's Guide Television set Editor Brian Westover, suggests we're a decade away; I'1000 more than bullish, and call up that the speed of 4K adoption and the constant improvement in internet speeds puts it closer to five (with 8K videos worth watching hitting fifty-fifty before that), only its condition as the de facto industry standard is not merely around the side by side corner. And as good as gaming on an 8K TV can be, PC hardware needs to become up in performance and down in toll before that becomes wise, either.
All that said, the TCL Roku Tv 6-Series 8K (R648) might exist worth information technology if information technology were a killer performer in its own right. The sound, which aspires to the average but doesn't always get in that location, and the aging smart Telly interface are sticking points, and the benefits of 8K are literally and figuratively hard to come across on the 65-inch model we tested. All this gets in the way of its fine color and brightness, solid design, and prissy new remote — the things that do make this Television set worth considering.
The trouble is, you can become all this and more in a 4K set up that costs the same and will even so exist a viable, fifty-fifty enviable, choice for years to come. Considering the prices of most consumer models, it's understandable why early on adopters would want an 8K TV only to say they have the adjacent, big thing. But although it's currently hard to find a cheaper 8K ready than the TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648), it's all too like shooting fish in a barrel to discover a better 4K model — and virtually viewers will find they don't miss those extra few million pixels that much, if at all.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/tcl-roku-tv-6-series-8k-r648
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