TCL's 98-inch Award-winning Mini LED TV is the basis of this super-simple home cinema

Now this one is a bit bonkers, really.

A full Dolby Atmos home cinema with, practically, a 100-inch screen for three grand? If you had asked me for an estimate on the overall cost of that lot a decade or so ago, I would have had to double that price. At least.

And ease of use? Forget it. This was the realm of the full home cinema projector (with a decent screen) and a good multichannel amplifier with a full surround sound speaker system to go with it – and hours of painstaking set-up to go with it.

Not with this system. Just three components (one of which is really only a bonus) that are a doddle to set up together are all you need for a stunning, cutting-edge home cinema.

The system

• TV: TCL 98C7K (£1999)
• Sound system: Samsung HW-Q990F (£849)
• Console: Sony PlayStation 5 (£400)
• Total system price: £3248

The TV

TCL seems intent on finishing off the projector business – in the home at least – as quickly as possible.

To get this screen acreage on a TV for less than £2000 was complete science fiction a few short years ago. To get it today, and for it to have the performance capabilities it does, is astonishing.

Yet here we are. How TCL has managed to deliver so much TV for so little money is, frankly, beyond us.

The 98C7K is an all-out assault on the super-sized screen market. And it achieves the seemingly impossible: a 98-inch 4K Mini LED TV for a price that would make many 65-inch sets blush.

The raw cinematic impact of a 98-inch picture never grows old, but this TV is far more than just sheer acreage. It is built on a foundation of spectacular picture quality, driven by its Mini LED backlight and Quantum Dot colour system.

TCL claims a mighty 3000 nits of peak brightness, which, when married to more than 2000 separately controlled local dimming zones, results in a picture that is dazzlingly bright and contrast-rich.

Small HDR highlights, such as the glint of metal or the gleam in an eye, look bold and lifelike, while bright daylight scenes maintain much more brilliance than even the best OLEDs can muster up.

TCL’s new ‘Halo Control’ technology is the ace up its sleeve. This impressive tech focuses on greatly reducing the unwanted light halos that can plague local-dimming LCD sets.

While subtle, deliberate clouding is occasionally introduced to disguise potential blooming, the overall result is a beautifully handled performance with contrast, with deep, convincing, neutral black tones and a vibrant, subtle colour palette.

The picture also feels sharper and denser than previous models, holding up nicely even with motion, and the set supports every major HDR format: HDR10, HLG, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision.

The console

Crucially, for the modern living room, the 98-inch C7K is a superb gaming hub.

It supports 4K/144Hz, VRR (including AMD FreeSync Premium Pro), and ALLM, with an input lag of just 13.1ms at 60Hz.

It’s an enormous, responsive window into your gaming worlds – which is why we suggest you include a PS5 in this set-up, and connect it to one of the TV’s two full HDMI 2.1-capable ports.

Gaming on this scale needs to be experienced to be believed, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of the TCL’s talents in this area.

Besides, you can also use the PS5 as a Blu-ray player while you’re saving up for a dedicated machine for your amazing new home cinema.

The sound system

While the enormous telly boasts (or tries to boast, at least) a 6.2.2-channel sound system, designed in conjunction with Bang & Olufsen no less, our usual advice with a big-screen TV holds true, even with one as big as this: invest in decent sound to make the most of your lovely big picture.

And with Samsung’s Award-winning HW-Q990F soundbar system currently available in UK shops for vastly less than the £1699 price at which we believed it worthy of not only five stars, but also a Product of the Year gong for 2025 – our choice of sound booster was clear.

The HW-Q990F is last year's iteration of Samsung’s exemplary all-in-one solution. And it has taken an already spectacular package and turned it into an exemplary one.

The Q990F is an 11.1.4 system, boasting 23 drivers across the main bar, the wireless rear surrounds, and the sub. It supports both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, and it sounds terrific.

Dialogue sounds excellent, with natural and detailed voices that carry plenty of subtle inflexion.

This carries forth to sound effects, and, as we say in our review: “We have to commend the Q990F’s delivery of Dolby Atmos effects. The ‘bubble of sound’ that we look for in any Dolby Atmos system is well and truly present here, and it’s not just the impressively placed height effects that we like. It's the way that the soundbar and surrounds are so tonally well matched, while the audio processing ensures that sounds move organically between the channels, that truly seals the deal for us.”

The real star of the show is that new subwoofer. Samsung has swapped from a tall, narrow unit to a much more compact, rounded-cube design. Don't be fooled by its smaller dimensions compared with the sub that comes with the Q990D; this one packs an almighty punch.

We find the Q990F’s bass to be rich, powerful, and, most importantly, controlled and dynamic. It’s a huge step up from the previous model. There is a newfound sense of tonal variation in the low-end, making the bass feel more organic and seamlessly integrated into the system as a whole.

The TCL 98C7K and the Samsung HW-Q990F work so well together. The TV’s only real weakness – the inevitable shortfall in sonic ability – is surgically corrected by the soundbar’s greatest strength: its class-leading, controlled, and deeply textured low-end from the new subwoofer.

The verdict

The TCL 98C7K delivers a picture that is utterly dominant and absorbing, with intense brightness and deep contrast, and it does a great job of replicating the look of a premium, high-end cinema display.

The Samsung HW-Q990F soundbar system then adds the scale and immersion to the sound that the picture deserves. The 11.1.4 system’s superb delivery of Dolby Atmos effects – the precise placement of height effects, the organic movement of sound – wraps the enormous visual in a convincing, three-dimensional audio landscape.

You get a full 98 inches of bright, sharp, detailed, and colourful 4K images, backed by a dynamic, cohesive, and deeply immersive surround sound performance – all without the hassle and cost of a separate AVR and countless passive speakers.

Now that, for us, is the definition of a fuss-free cinema. Just make sure your room is big enough for that telly…

MORE:

Read the full TCL 98C7K review and Samsung HW-Q990F review

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