TCL X11L SQD-Mini LED TV review: the new evolution of mini LED

Since I saw the TCL X11L SQD-Mini LED TV at a pre-CES event in December, I’ve been eager to get a close look at it in my living room. At first glance, the TV impressed me enough that I named it the best TV of CES 2026.

From the moment I completed Google TV setup and started watching the TCL X11L I was amazed. I could immediately tell it’s the brightest TV I’ve had in my home, but it was the color vibrancy that I found most impressive. The colors we’re all most familiar with — skin tones, the sky, green grass and trees — all look as close to realistic as I’ve seen on a TV. And with the color vibrancy it looks staggeringly good.

It’s a flagship TV unlike any other that TCL has made, with vibrant colors and incredible blooming control. It competes with flagships from all the major TV manufacturers — including the Sony Bravia 9, LG G5, and Samsung S95F — and it gets brighter than any of them. But it’s also expensive, with the 75-inch model I tested going for $7,000, and the 85- and 98-inch versions for $8,000 and $10,000, respectively. And with a bunch of RGB LED TVs on the way this year, for likely comparable prices, you might want to wait before committing to the X11L.

While the TV industry leans into RGB LED — and TCL is too, on other TVs — TCL’s flagship instead uses an evolution of mini-LED technology. The X11L uses blue LEDs for its backlight with super quantum dots (hence the SQD) and an upgraded color filter that together provide the widest gamut coverage we’ve ever seen from a mini-LED TV. Both technologies should have similar light output and color performance, although the individual red, green, and blue LED backlights of RGB LEDs could deliver more accurate colors — or they could have visible color crosstalk issues. We won’t know until RGB LED TVs are more readily available. What we do know is that mini-LED is a proven technology, and that TCL has made significant improvements to its performance with the X11L.

It also has a higher-end design than previous TCL TVs, with a solid metal frame and uniform thickness across the chassis that’s just about an inch deep. It uses a B&O audio system, including front-firing speakers along the bottom of the TV that deliver clear dialogue and, with the built-in subwoofers, surprisingly deep and booming bass. (The system can also be expanded with TCL’s Z100 FlexConnect speakers, which I’ll be testing soon.)

Filmmaker mode is, as usual, the most accurate according to my testing. Grayscale performance is the best I’ve seen from TCL, with the only perceptible issue being that it crushes black a bit. With default settings, the TCL tracks a little under the EOTF curve (meaning as the gray approaches white, it isn’t quite as bright as it should be). When I increased the brightness from the default 50 to 70, it tracked the EOTF almost perfectly and still tracked grayscale very well, apart from the small near black issue, which was still a little too dim. It’s not quite as accurate as the LG G5 OLED, but it’s comparable to the Sony Bravia 9. And even in Filmmaker, the TCL can get significantly brighter than either.

Default Filmmaker mode isn’t the brightest of the modes available, with a 10 percent window peaking at 2,789 nits, but the X11L can easily get brighter. With my Konica Minolta LS-100 luminance meter (which is more reliable over 6,000 nits than either my colorimeter and spectrophotometer) I measured just over 8,800 nits from a 5 percent window in Filmmaker with brightness at 100, local contrast at high, and peak brightness set to boost. By comparison, the mini-LED TCL QM9K hit 5,844 nits, and the brightest OLED of last year, the LG G5, topped out at 2,340 nits, both also in Filmmaker mode.

While it’s great that the TV can hit that, especially in its most accurate color mode, for the vast majority of people and their living rooms it isn’t necessary. For most of my viewing I set the brightness at 70, local contrast at medium, and peak brightness at high. If I had the light off, I sometimes turned the brightness down further because the extra brightness wasn’t necessary for the situation.

Changing the brightness is quicker than on any other TV because TCL added brightness buttons (and a picture mode button) to the side of the remote. It’s something probably most appreciated by reviewers and display nerds like myself, but I can’t overstate my joy when I first saw the buttons. Otherwise it’s just like last year’s TCL TV remote, including an input select button, a mic for voice commands, and a settings button, and it’s backlit.

I know a lot of TV reviewers, and some of them told me Movie mode is more accurate than Filmmaker on their samples, so I went back and did some more testing. And while Movie mode is brighter at its default settings, it wasn’t as accurate in my testing. But while comparing the two modes, I did notice that as the day went on, the red channel of the grayscale became slightly less accurate.

I re-ran my normal barrage of tests first thing in the morning, and they were close to the very accurate measurements when I first set up the TV. I then left the TV on the Olympics for four hours before re-measuring with the same tests, and sure enough, the red channel measurements in the grayscale test were lower than they were in the morning. Now, while the change shows up in testing, the difference is minor and happens over the course of hours. It’s not something I noticed during my time watching the TV. Still, if you’re considering a $7,000 TV, this feels like something you might want to know about.

On the contrary, everything I watched on the X11L during my time with it was spectacular. The fire and explosions during the desert chase in Mad Max: Fury Road look dazzling. The lush green trees of Rivendell are inviting and realistic. And the blooming control is by far the best I’ve seen from a mini LED, even better than last year’s TCL flagship, the QM9K. There’s a sharp separation between bright elements that are right next to black. It’s still not at the level that OLED can achieve with its pixel-level control, but its performance is closer than it’s ever been.

The X11L arrived at my home the Friday before the Super Bowl, and I used it to watch a bunch of events during the Winter Olympics. Through all of it, the TV has handled the fast motion extremely well. Sports picture mode adds motion compensation and some clarity settings — noise reduction, super resolution, and sharpness — but is far too blue for my tastes. Instead, I left it in Filmmaker mode and turned on some of those settings while watching sports, which is easy to do in the Picture Settings menu. Motion compensation at low was enough to make a football pass or triple lutz smooth without looking artificial, although bumping it up to medium was too much. The noise reduction and super resolution settings improved 1080p broadcast TV signals by upscaling the image and cleaning up unwanted artifacts. I wouldn’t put the processing at the same level as Sony, but it’s definitely better than I’ve seen from TCL before.
Google OS on the X11L also runs smoothly. The apps I used regularly — HBO Max, Prime Video, Peacock, and Netflix — all booted up quickly, and navigation was snappy. The X11L is also an excellent gaming TV, handling motion well and supporting high frame rates from consoles and PC. I spent time on the road in Forza Horizon 5 and F1 24 on both my Xbox Series X and my PC and never experienced screen tearing or smearing. I also never had any issue with input lag.

With every TV manufacturer hyping RGB LED TVs this year — and TCL itself releasing an RGB LED TV this year — it may seem like a gamble to stick with mini LED for its flagship, even if it does push the technology forward. We won’t know for sure until the bevy of RGB LED TVs is released if the claims of their color accuracy and brightness will prove true with actual content, not just carefully curated demo screens.

But maybe the fact that TCL’s choice of mini-LED for the X11L is a hint that RGB LED isn’t quite ready to overtake mini LED — if it ever does. We also don’t know how the X11L will compare to the pricing of 2026 RGB LED TVs. Last year’s 100-inch Hisense UX is currently available for $13,000 (down from $20,000), which is still considerably higher than the $10,000 TCL is asking for the 98-inch X11L.

Based on my experience with it over the past couple weeks, though, the TCL X11L SQD-Mini LED TV is poised to be the best TV of the year. At the very least, what TCL has been able to achieve by pushing mini-LED technology forward is incredibly impressive.

Even though it’s an incredible TV to watch, it’s hard to recommend someone go out and buy the X11L right now, especially since we don’t yet know how it will stack up to RGB LED. Historically, TCL TV prices come down quite a bit as the year goes on. The 85-inch X11K from last year, which started at $10,000, can now be found for $3,500, so there’s a good chance we’ll see the same with the X11L. If it manages to get within $1,000 of the Bravia 9 or LG G5, the X11L is worth it.

Photography by John Higgins / The Verge