TCL - 50" Class 5-Series QLED 4K UHD Smart Google TV

When I first purchased this TV from the helpful employees, my expectations were quite low. The price point, "QLED," and the fact that its a TCL had me thinking it would be "good enough" for gaming and YouTube, but not likely to impress. After turning it one starting my xbox, I found it to be fine, nothing more. However, my brother told me I had to adjust the settings first, and change the mode. I swapped it, altered the brightness and contrast, and it was like night and day. The colors came to life, the picture was sharp, and the black was flawlessly dark. Needless to say, I quickly changed my opinion and realized the TV was top tier, like the OLEDs, (at least when you factor the price.) For what it cost, you honestly can't find a better TV in that price range, and its certain to surprise you!

The Google interface is a bit choppy and laggy. I feel the home screen struggles with this responsiveness due to loading up so much "recommended content." To bypass this, I selected the option to just display installed apps (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a Google TV). The remote is a little odd at first if you're used to having number buttons and channel/volume select on the front. Other than that, picture quality is very good. Obviously you can't compare this to a QN90A or an LG OLED, but the S546 produces crisp images and its local contrast (dimming) feature is solid. It handles reflections pretty well. I mainly use this TV for gaming with my PS5; fast responsiveness little input lag and smooth motion. It isn't "future-proof" since the panel's refresh rate is only 60Hz, but I honestly don't see console games running 4k120 anytime soon. The built-in speakers are ok, so I'd recommend adding a sound bar if that's your thing. I use my Sennheiser GSP 601 headset when I game. My kids use the TV for Disney+ and Youtube. No complaints from them!

The TCL 5 Series S546 offers a lot of bang for the buck when it comes to features and value, my experience has been good with prior models so it’s an obvious choice for a TV with decent picture quality on a budget that will please the majority of people. The TV’s picture is fantastic with no major panel defects like DSE, banding etc. Picture is very clear, but colors seemed off to me out of the box (this is very subjective according to taste) with it being oversaturated and skin tones having a slight green tint to them. I prefer natural skin tones and less exaggerated colors, I attempted to calibrate the colors myself and could not get the picture the way I wanted it. After a YouTube search for “TCL S546 Settings” I found a guy named QUANTUM TV video who settings fixed all my issues with color and made the picture perfect. SDR over the air via antenna content 720p & 1080i looks really good with 480i just looking ok. HDR content Dolby Vision & HDR10 with streaming services, Blu-Ray is fantastic. Sound is just average. Google TV user interface was fine until it updated to latest firmware: Software Ver: V8-R51MT05-LF1V173.020128 which made slower afterwards, hard resetting the TV by turning it off -holding the power button for 15 seconds-then choose reset option fixed this, but OS is still glitchy sometimes with the settings button not working when depressed every now and then. Live OTA TV guide lags and does not propagate info sometimes also. I’m sure TCL with address these bugs in future firmware updates. Overall, I really like Google TV’s layout and voice commands that makes it so much easier to find what I want watch. There are 12 gigs of total storage for apps so that future proofs it a bit. With any newly released device there are going to be a few bugs to iron out and when that happens this is 5-star product, many will be happy with it.