HD PICTURE QUALITY HD picture quality was Very Good, overall. On the plus side, its reproduction of fine HD image detail was Very Good, just shy of excellent. Color accuracy was Very Good, with flesh tones in particular, looking natural. Very Good contrast—the difference between the darkest blacks and brightest whites—gave images convincing depth and dimension. Its reproduction of smooth edges on image content was Very Good (minimal "jaggies") when deinterlacing 1080i video. Its detection of the film mode of 1080i film-based content was Excellent. On the minus side, the black levels were merely OK, and maintained some contrast in darker scenes, but fell short of the better TVs. The quality appeared worse as we viewed from the sides—see our Viewing Angle results, below. Image brightness was moderately low, dimmer than most even with the backlight control turned up—OK for a dark room but not the best choice for a bright room. There was slight display non-uniformity in our test sample—it appeared as brighter cloudy areas which were most noticeable on very dark scenes (or in the black bars of a letterboxed movie)—the severity can vary from model to model.
VIEWING ANGLE This TCL model has a narrow viewing angle overall, below-average performance among TVs. Only those seated directly in front of the screen will see the best picture quality. We examined the image quality at various viewing angles—its image quality notably decreased as we moved away from the center position. When we viewed the TV from the sides image quality degraded significantly. The picture showed a strong loss of color, so flesh tones looked very washed out. Black levels brightened significantly, and made dark scenes look hazy. Lastly, we viewed the image from above and below center screen, and saw Fair vertical viewing angle performance, with significant changes in color, contrast, and black level.
