Hi Guys,
Catching up after long time, so here are my inputs for what it is worth. There were various emotions in this thread which I will hopefully capture and answer here.
TCL intentionally keeps the US market happy for various reasons. It is their biggest market and most reviews in Youtube are from US only. This year they have surpassed LG to become the 2nd biggest seller next only to samsung. Such is their presence there. This is in no way indicative of their global stategy (or lack thereof).
A sane part of you would like to map the behaviour of established brands like Sony, Samsung and LG to the likes of TCL and Hisense. This is where it goes entirely awry. The sonys, samsungs and LGs of the the world spend R&D money to make a product and advertise and sell it worldwide. Few settings could be removed/added here and there or some versions could be present/absent between different countries globally. Sony especially makes sure most of the models are available in most of the places where they do business. Chinese companies DO NOT follow this model at all.
There is no meaning in getting emotional that the highest tech of TCL does not reach indian shores. In fact their global strategy is same. Check out the EU models yourself.
https://www.tcl.com/eu/en.html . None of the non US nations get their current tech. None of the models have mini-LED, micro-LED or even local dimming and hover around <500nits for brightness. They want to sell TVs based on the QLED buzzword and compared to the Sony, Samsung or LG, and the reviews from US to their favour. This is just predatory behaviour and questions their motive and what other they are lying about. To start with, why is there a need to build separate TVs for rest of the world when you already have established TVs in various price brackets? Only reason I could think of is to pass off inferior TVs for higher price.
In short, TCL in india or rest of the world never looked like vfm compared to established brands. It always lacks something which when you add will add up to something around the price established brands sell TVs which makes them irrelevant at best and nuisance at worst. You need to consider them in the shortlist and remove them once you realize they are just pranksters after your money.
LED technology itself totally inferior and should have long gone, but just put in the ICU and given life support by samsung with all their ulterior motives and failure to accept failure to produce OLEDs or comparable technologies and move on. They just create buzzwords and irrelevant technologies like 8k, quantum dot, frame insertion, motion compensation, burn-in (OLEDs) etc to beat the dead horse and give the technology in ICU some much needed oxygen. None of the LEDs are ever going to produce picture quality like OLEDs. (period). You can only decorate a donkey so much to make it look like a horse. OLEDs are far superior. If you touch one area, there is going to be issues in other areas or cost is going to be extremely high to implement. In the game to produce decorations to LED technology, they lost picture processing battle to sony too and every year the gap is increasing. Hopefully they move on.
These Chinese manufacturers ride on the same hype train to make it look like QLED or quantum dot is the next big thing. Only QLED in samsung stable itself which is notably good is the Q90 and it is good not because of the QLED but because it is FALD. Sony produces very excellent TVs without QLED using other means to create the desired colour gamut.
If you are looking for dark room or cinematic experience, you can directly chuck out all LED Tvs and look at OLEDs. They are not very costly now. Last year diwali time, one could get LG B series for like 1.1L. This year it could breach 1L limit if you know where to look for 55 inches. With 0% EMI you will hardly be paying few thousands extra per month which is not the biggest of problems like it used to be when OLEDs were upwards of 2L. It is a very good starting point if you dont want to look at clouding and dirty screens whenever there comes a dark scene. Honestly a TV which lets you see the TV instead of the content is just not worth it.
Also, north of 1L, picture processing is all that matters. Sony kills everyone else in that department. So a sony X950 with excellent local dimming can help if you are looking for a bright TV for an always bright room kind of situation.
A TV without FALD or OLED is just not worth the money to anyone in this forum. Those are for simpletons who are upgrading from an age old HD ready TV. Even if you are looking into the clouding, ghosting, uniformity, light bleed kind of issues, those TVs are not for you. Ignorance really bliss in this case. You will end up seeing a blue screen instead of black with clouds and irregularities and bleeds due to uneven backlight if you were ever to choose anything other than a FALD or OLED. Some will learn to live with it, some will crib and some will go into rampant replacements until you are left with one of these, spending more in the process.
Brightness issue:
This is again an overblown issue by samsung because, guess what? They can only archive that with the yesteryear LED technology. OLEDs may look darker in showrooms but at home, oh boy do they perform... I haven't for once not squinted my eyes during the HDR videos and my OLED is just 700nits which would translate lesser in real world.
Indian reviews:
A lot of uninformed tom dick and harry in india are out creating youtube channels just for the advertisement money. I have not seen a reviewer with proper equipment and numbers. The most fault they find is of volume not being loud or being tinny or that some apps not present or not working and the like. These bunch of people are direct converts from mobile reviewers (the poorer ones). They know nothing on TV reviews or even which is better if you were to calibrate and place 2 TVs in front of them. There are these other group of claimed reviewers who are totally clueless and parrot the first set of reviewers and have never seen a TV in person. These are the worst bunch but with less than ideal IQ and more than required self-respect. You have no choice other than to ignore them. Daily 1000s of people fall for these reviews and are left with sub standard TVs.
Baseline:
Avoid LEDs if you can and go with OLEDs.
If LEDs are must, go with the FALD ones. Not much options here, Toshiba U79, U80 or Sony X950 depending on budget. (Toshiba is hisense produced in ex-toshiba fsctories).
If both are not possible, or if looking for <50", go with DLEDs without local dimming but never Edge LED lit ones.
Look for DCI-P3 colour gamut %. Should be > 90%. QLED is only one way to archieve this, not the only way. Some TVs only mention wide colour gamut/HDR and not numbers. They are fishy and need more looking into.
FALD with >90 DCI-P3 will generally serve well in the <1L bracket. More than this, you need only a sony for picture processing. I will go on to say, if you are crossing 1L, go with any sony (minus 900H) or one of the LG OLEDs.
Finally, The TCL 6 series and up and Hisense H8G and up are critically acclaimed TVs not because of being a QLED but because of being a FALD. Otherwise they would have been lost in the crowd like numerous other TVs. They don't make sense in the indian or outside of US context other than just mudding the waters.
Look at TCL6 with local dimming on and off below and decide for yourself if you can live with a non FALD TV. (start from ~10minutes)
. Its all greyish tones so the same reflects in most movies. On the other hand, it would make a difference in sci-fi, pixar/animated movies and video games. But still its just at 6%