TCL C7K (65C7K) review

The 65C7K arrives on our test benches on the back of a remarkable run of TCL TV form across a wide range of price points and screen sizes.

It’s fair to say, then, that the auspices for the C7K are seriously good. Can it really keep TCL’s good times rolling, though, when its large screen and promising feature count come at such a (relatively) low price?

Pricing

The TCL C7K’s price is definitely one of its star attractions, with the 65-inch model we’re testing costing just £899 / AU$1595 (it’s unfortunately not available in the US).

That makes it significantly cheaper than the recently reviewed C8K model that sits above it in the 2025 TCL TV range.

Yes, there are plenty of 65-inch TVs out there these days that are cheaper than £899, but you’ll be very hard pushed indeed to find any of those cheaper models getting even close to matching the C7K’s feature set and, as we’ll see, performance.

If 65 inches isn’t quite right for you, the C7K is also available in sizes ranging from 50 inches all the way up to 115 inches. Bear in mind that the different-sized versions of the TV will have slight specification differences, such as the number of dimming zones. We have already reviewed the 98-inch TCL C7K, though, and it’s excellent.

TCL also produces a Q7C model which, the company says, is identical to the C7K in all ways but one: the Q7C doesn’t have the anti-reflection film that the C7K does. Given how much such elements can affect picture quality, this review shouldn’t be seen as also covering the Q7C.

Design

The C7K looks and feels exactly like what it is: a premium TV being sold for a barely even mid-range price. Its screen is wrapped in a slick, narrow brushed-metal trim, behind which a narrower black back section protrudes to provide room for the new Bang & Olufsen multi-channel speaker system to breathe.

The screen sits on what appears to be the same metal central desktop mounting plate as the one provided with the C8K, and this stand attaches to the screen using the same wide-neck-with-detachable-cover arrangement into which you can ‘tidy’ all your cabling.

The C7K is robustly built, and since it’s quite a bit slimmer than the C8K, it is arguably the more attractive of the two – especially if you’re looking to wall hang your TV.

The C7K doesn’t get the same premium silver metal-finished remote control the C8K has, but the elongated black handset provided still bears a premium brushed metal-style finish (even though it’s really all plastic). It feels comfortable to hold, too, the buttons are numerous but helpfully well spread out, and there are direct access buttons for Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, TCL Channels (a curated selection of streamed TV channels) and Disney Plus.

Features

There’s far more to get through here than you have any right to expect for the price.

Starting with those headline-grabbing facts that, despite its affordable price, the C7K’s screen is illuminated by Mini LEDs rather than the usual large ones, and that these Mini LEDs are organised into a remarkably numerous 1008 independent dimming zones.

Add to this a claimed peak brightness of 2600 nits, and you’ve got some core specifications that most really high-end TVs would struggle to match.

We’ve been around the block enough times to know, though, that it’s not just how many Mini LED dimming zones you’ve got; it’s what you do with them that counts.

That is where TCL’s new AIPQ Pro picture processor will hopefully play its part, controlling those dimming zones and Mini LEDs with enough intelligence to ensure they boost contrast and general light control without drawing undue attention to themselves.

The C7K joins all the other new 2025 TCL TVs we’ve seen to date in deploying a whole ‘Halo Control’ suite of new hardware and software technologies to deliver better dark-scene consistency.

This sees the features we have mentioned already joined by other innovations such as new super-condensed LED lenses claimed to focus light more effectively and stably; a new six-crystal light-emitting chip reckoned to deliver nearly 30 per cent more brightness and more than 30 per cent more energy efficiency; the introduction of Polyimide to the liquid crystal molecules to make their microstructure more controllable; and 16-bit bi-directional screen control delivering 65,000 levels of precise light control.

This isn’t even the full extent of the innovations TCL has introduced to the C7K’s new CrystGlow WHVA panel, but we’ll leave it there before your eyes start to glaze over. And because the resulting picture quality is what really matters in the end.

The C7K’s connections are good for a TV in its price range. Four HDMIs lead the way, as we’d expect of a premium TV, and these are backed up by a single USB port, an optical digital audio output, an ethernet port and the now obligatory wi-fi and Bluetooth (v5.4) wireless connections. The wireless connectivity includes Apple AirPlay and Chromecast support.

It’s slightly disappointing that only two of the C7K’s HDMIs support high frame rate gaming, rather than all four of them, and that one of these gaming-friendly HDMIs has to do double duty as the only one equipped with the eARC HDMI technology required to ship sound – including lossless Dolby Atmos and DTS:X – to compatible soundbars and AVRs.

Most premium TVs provide more than one USB these days, too, though that matters much less.

Most households will be more than content with the C7K’s connections overall – and we shouldn’t forget that this is a 65-inch TV that costs only £899.

The C7K scores major brownie points with us for supporting all four of the key high dynamic range formats: HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

In fact, it even supports the versions of Dolby Vision and HDR10 that can adapt their picture presentation to the ambient conditions in your room, and its Dolby Vision support further extends to a low-latency Dolby Vision Game mode.

Other gaming features include support for 4K feeds at frame rates up to 144Hz – and that frame rate support remarkably (and arguably a bit pointlessly at the moment…) jumps to 288Hz using TCL’s Game Accelerator technology, provided you don’t mind the resolution dropping to Full HD.

VRR is supported right up to the 288Hz maximum, and there’s support for the AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VRR system as well as the core HDMI one. TCL’s screen will automatically switch into its fast-response Game mode when a game source is detected, rendering 60Hz game graphics in this mode in just 13.2ms.

As we’re seeing with most mid-range and high-end TVs these days, the C7K lets you call up a dedicated Game Bar main menu screen when a game source is detected, from which you can check information on the incoming game signal and activate such game aids as an onscreen crosshair, a system for brightening just the darkest parts of the image, and support for the super-wide aspect ratios supported by a few PC titles.

Smart features on the C7K are provided by Google TV, complete with support for the Google Assistant voice-recognition system. TCL has also seen to it that its version of Google TV includes all of the UK’s main terrestrial broadcaster catch-up TV services – something that regular Google TV systems fail to do.

It’s a pity, perhaps, that there’s no support for Freeview Play or Freely, but all the key individual UK broadcaster catch-up apps are present and correct.

Last but not least on the C7K’s extensive feature list is its all-new Bang & Olufsen sound system. This replaces the brand’s previous Onkyo collaboration with new high-fidelity speaker designs fed by 60W of power and capable of handling both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks.

Picture quality

With the 98C7K having already shown us that TCL’s new C7K range can deliver the goods even on a screen as big as 98 inches, it’s no great surprise to find that the more modestly sized 65-inch C7K is at least as good.

Particularly stellar for its price is its contrast. On the most basic contrast level, it can deliver both extremely intense, vibrant HDR peaks by sub-£1k 65-inch TV standards, and some of the deepest and most neutral, natural-toned blacks and dark scenes the mid-range LCD TV world, at least, has to offer.

What’s more, it’s able to deliver its light and dark extremes on screen simultaneously, without either significantly compromising the other. By which we mean that shots where bright highlights stand out against dark backdrops appear without distracting light halos around them; the bright objects in such shots aren’t heavily dimmed to achieve that lack of haloing; and for the most part, blacks remain as inky as they do with uniformly dark shots.

Throw in excellent shadow detail reproduction (the C7K is actually slightly better in this respect than the more overtly punchy C8K) and an almost complete absence of either fluctuating dimming zones or noticeable jumps in brightness during cuts between bright and dark shots, and you’ve got a brilliantly effective and, thanks to its consistency, immersive backlight system that punches well above the TV’s weight.

The C7K’s impressive brightness holds up strikingly well even when an HDR shot fills the whole scene with intense light, too, looking at least twice as bright with such shots as even the best new OLED TVs can – further contributing to the excellent consistency of the C7K’s HDR images.

The brightness and contrast both play their part, too, in the C7K’s precociously brilliant colour performance. In its Standard picture preset, colours across a huge spectrum look radiantly beautiful, combining vivid intensity with a level of blend and tone subtlety that feels too good to be true on a TV as affordable as this.

The colours the Standard mode produces might not be particularly accurate to established video standards, but every tone looks impeccably balanced against the rest, painting extremely enjoyable – and believable – worlds for anyone not obsessed with true-to-creative-intent accuracy.

If you are obsessed with true-to-creative-intent accuracy, even after witnessing the splendours of the 65C7K’s Standard preset, then worry not: the C7K’s Filmmaker Mode delivers pictures that follow the established HDR and SDR standards impressively closely. They do this, too, without ending up looking drab or washed out, as can be the case with the Filmmaker Mode on LCD TVs with less impressive ‘native’ screen talents.

As part of our C7K tests, we ran it side by side with the step-up C8K, and we were startled to see during this head to head that the C7K’s colours actually look slightly richer and more rounded in its Standard preset than they do on the C8K – perhaps because the C7K’s slightly reduced brightness versus the more expensive C8K doesn’t put its Quantum Dot colour system under quite so much strain.

The head-to-head also shows, though, that the 65C8K delivers slightly more effective colours in its Movie and Filmmaker Modes than the C7K.

The excellent subtlety of the C7K’s light and colour handling helps it deliver impressive sharpness with native 4K sources, while the latest AiPQ processor also upscales HD sources to the screen’s 4K pixel count very handily, adding sharpness and density without exaggerating noise or creating significant unwanted processing side effects.

The C7K retains its clarity excellently when required to handle 24fps motion too, suffering pleasingly little with either hardware judder or resolution loss over moving objects.

There are a couple of niggles with the C7K’s pictures to report. A small patch of yellowish colour sometimes creeps in just below the middle of the top black bar when watching wide aspect ratio films (though we suspect this might be an isolated issue with our review sample), and occasionally, slightly too much detail is revealed in dark areas, revealing faint traces of noise along with the ‘correct’ shading information.

That’s basically it on the negative front, though. The 65-inch C7K is, overall, every bit as excellent a performer for its money as every other 2025 TCL TV that has come through our doors so far.

Sound quality

As with the C8K, the C7K’s audio isn’t quite as all-round brilliant as its pictures. The new Bang & Olufsen influence is enjoyably evident both in the extremely clean and prolific detailing the speakers present with good film soundtrack mixes, and in the way it can hit trebles other TVs cannot reach without sounding whiny or harsh.

The midrange is nice and open, too, providing plenty of room for soundtracks to ebb and flow, as well as helping vocals sound well-rounded and reasonably contextual.

The main problem is that the speakers don’t lean into low frequencies as enthusiastically and effectively as they deal with the higher end of the spectrum. So bass doesn’t reach as deep as trebles reach high, and what bass there is is delivered a bit too politely. This results in a slightly treble-heavy presentation where background and ambient sound effects can sometimes draw more of your attention than they should.

Exceptionally dense soundtrack moments, such as the swelling score during the extreme close-up of an eye opening near the start of Blade Runner 2049, sound slightly more swallowed and condensed than they do on the more powerful C8K, and very deep and extended bass sounds also exhibit a little chuffing and buzzing interference that the 65C8K typically avoids.

Despite these niggles, though, the C7K’s sound is good overall for a TV in its price range. It’s just not quite as good as that of its step-up sibling, and leaves room for improvement next time round.

Verdict

TCL has done it again. The C7K follows the C8K and C6KS in scarcely putting a foot wrong – and once again it does so at a price that also makes it outstanding value.

SCORES:

Picture 5

Sound 4

Features 4

ALSO CONSIDER:

• TCL C8K review
• Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini LED review
• LG QNED93 review