TCL 6 Series - Slam dunk bang for the buck gaming display. Also, does 75Hz!

[kaibosh]

I know this *barely* meets the requirements for a post here, but the TCL 'Roku' sets are still kinda unknown and offer arguably the most bang for your dollar for a PC gaming monitor. I have the R615 55" model, which they didn't even have a demo unit on display for at my local Best Buy here in Canada. I know why they didn't have any on display, because it would gut their sales of high end units that don't offer anything better on any front. They routinely go on sale for absurd deals, I think I paid around $400 (CAN) for mine just over six months ago.

On only one of dozens of sites listing the raw specs for these sets, I saw that it listed the maximum refresh rate as 75Hz. The official owner's manual (PDF) also lists this in the fine print, something I never saw mentioned once in any review of it - for gaming or otherwise. Obviously the review sites were 100% about using it as a console display, so that wasn't a surprise. The 75Hz is definitely real and rock solid, I had to make a custom resolution in the Nvidia Control Panel but didn't touch any timing or anything else - it just works. I haven't pushed things right to the limit to see just how far I can push the HDMI bandwidth, for example what the absolute max custom res would be for a 10 bit/HDR @ 75Hz, but I have used 8 bit 'full'/1440p @ 75Hz without any issues of any kind.

In every other way, this is an incredible display on top of a gaming display. Some people get a unit with uneven backlighting, mine is pretty much perfectly even and overall the quality control seems bang on for these things (The 55" has 100 zones for 'local dimming'). There are apps for top end phones to do fully automatic calibrating through the camera, and the way they handle settings is done right with little fuss for dealing with your typical stuff when you want to tinker with HDR and all that. The PC/game mode offers killer latency, 16.7ms is about as good as it gets on that front. When I want to watch 4K/HDR movies from my tv, it flawlessly swaps modes back and forth (using scripts in MadVR/Potplayer) and the blacks are as black as anything non OLED are going to get. Again, for what these things cost, you are getting ridiculous performance/specs.

The HDR specs are pretty top notch too, supporting all 3 standards and 1000 nits / 6500:1 brightness/contrast. The tv has no problem toggling HDR on/off for games, as usual it is Windows itself that usually makes that a pain. HDR in PC games is still kind of a clunky affair, but Gears 5 is amazing (trade-off between 4k/60Hz or 1080p/HDR) and Borderlands 3 in HDR is truly jawdropping. B3 was quite a shock because I kind of assumed that the cel shaded style wouldn't benefit much from HDR, boy was I wrong. The difference is night and day.

The only things that reviews point to as 'weaknesses' of these sets are that they have a fairly narrow viewing angle, and that they don't do as well as the real high end sets in a room with a lot of ambient light. Neither of those are a problem for a basement dwelling sperglord using this for gaming. Some people have said that the sub-pixel design (or scaling) results in 'fuzzy fonts' in Windows, which is laughable when it is setup right in gaming mode. I normally keep my desktop at 1080p and things look pretty damned crispy to me.

I know the general audience here at this forum would wrench neck muscles turning their noses up at a display that can only do 75Hz, but for an all around PC gaming tv this thing has absolutely blown me away with how good it looks for the price. I knew going in that even with a 9700k/2070 rig with top shelf parts tuned to the last inch, I was still going to be playing almost all games at 1080p with a target of a locked 60fps, focusing on cranking the visual fidelity of the game way beyond all rational limits otherwise. The big thing to keep in mind is that even without Nvidia DSR most major titles feature some form of 'internal rendering' as well - and this can really, really make 'just 1080p' eye-popping hot. This may sound like a modest end goal, but I've probably put around 200 hours into getting RDR2 running *flawlessly* @ 1080p/1.25X (Vulkan) with zero compromises in the settings, handling sync/AF as well as TAA sharpening tweaked to perfection from the Nvidia Control Panel. Playing the game with 100% buttery smooth locked 60fps (and zero input lag) when tweaked right is absolutely amazing, the kind of consistent performance you need for total immersion. Again, those numbers may seem like amateur hour when it comes to 'hardcore gaming', but not many people are getting flawless frametime pacing with zero stutters of hitching in RDR2 or *many* other major titles these days - regardless of what kind of gear they are running. All the serious DX11 tweaks have become obsolete, and DX12 brings all new issues to the table.