TCL 65R615 Review: A Fantastic 4K Roku OS Television

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TCL 65R615: At First Glance

TCL is a well-known television brand dedicated to providing its customers with high-quality televisions at affordable prices. Hence, in order to continue what they know how to do best, the brand released the TCL 65R615.

The TCL 65R615 is a smart television that was released in 2018 alongside other televisions in the TCL 6 series. Furthermore, the television offers a good picture quality and uses the well-known Roku TV as its operating system.

However, as with most televisions out there, the TCL 65R615 comes with its own fair share of flaws, such as poor viewing angles. Having given a hint of what to expect from this TCL television, how about you continue reading to find out more about it?

TCL 65R615: Design, Dimension, and Weight

The TCL 65R615 comes with an attractive design and sturdy build quality. To give more details, this television features averagely-thick bezels that surround its display screen.

These bezels are entirely made out of metal with a sleek-looking glossy-silver finish. Moreover, you will see a “TCL” logo at the center of the bottom bezel that adds to the beauty of the television.

That’s not all; there is also a white “Roku TV” inscription at the right edge of this bottom bezel. This inscription gives first-hand information on the type of operating system that the television use.

That said, the TCL 65R615 comes with two V-shaped legs that are made of metal, just like the bezels. Because of the metal build of these legs, they are very robust and offer enough support for the television to stand firmly with minimal wobble.

Besides, the legs are quite tall and widely set apart, creating enough space to place a soundbar underneath the television. However, due to the wide settings of the legs, you might need to place the TCL 65R615 on a fairly large table.

Moving to the rear of the television, you will discover that the top half of the back panel is metal with a matte-black finish. Meanwhile, the bottom half is made of plastic with a glossy-black finish.

Moreover, you will find four VESA 200 x 200 holes on the back of the television for wall-mounting. Unfortunately, the television’s back panel lacks a cable management system.

Thus, to ensure a clean setup, you will need to manually arrange the cables attached to the TCL 65R615. Although it lacks a cable management system, the overall thickness of the television’s back panel is fair.

Therefore, if the TCL 65R615 is mounted on the wall, it shouldn’t bulge out or look odd.

Having said all that, now let us quickly discuss the dimension and weight of the television. To begin with, the TCL 65R615 measures 1450.3 x 76.2 x 835.6 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 23223.9 g.

Comparatively, this television is lighter than most of its competitors. For example, the Samsung UN65RU7100FXZA weighs 24992 g, and the Sony XBR-65Z9F weighs 29500 g.

Thus, to conclude this design review section, I will offer the TCL 65R615 a rating of eight out of ten.

TCL 65R615: Display Features and Picture Quality

The TCL 65R615 features a 65-inch LED display with a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolution. All thanks to this 4K UHD resolution, this TV’s display will be to render sharp and colorful picture quality.

Moreover, as a few of us know, a 4K resolution display has about four times the pixels found on the standard HD resolution display. What this implies is that a 4K display such as the TCL 65R615’s display should be far better than a standard HD display.

Apart from featuring the popular 4K UHD resolution, the TCL 65R615’s 65-inch display also has a fantastic contrast ratio of 5,182:1. To be brief; contrast ratio refers to the difference between the brightest shade (whites) and the darkest shade (blacks) that a display can render.

Furthermore, a high contrast ratio implies that the display will be able to render deep blacks. Meanwhile, a low contrast ratio means the display won’t be able to render deep blacks.

That is to say, blacks on the display will look more like gray when it has a low contrast ratio. Thankfully, the TCL 65R615’s display offers a high contrast ratio, as mentioned above.

As a result, it should be able to generate deep blacks. Hence, movies with lots of dark or shadowy scenes, like Blade, will be appealing to watch on the TCL 65R615.

Additionally, the television is also ideal for dark room viewing thanks to its high contrast ratio. Impressively, to enhance its contrast ratio and dark room performance, the TCL 65R615’s display supports local dimming.

For clarity, local dimming is a process that entails dimming the backlight zones of a display to improve its contrast ratio and black level. Thus, blacks rendered by this television’s display will be darker than they would be without local dimming.

The TCL 65R615’s display has been impressive from the start of this section. Well, the display continues to impress as it offers an outstanding maximum brightness of 840 cd/m².

As a result, the TCL 65R615 is good for usage in well-lit areas or outdoors. Besides, the display’s impressive maximum brightness might be due to the fact that it supports HDR (High Dynamic Range).

To clarify, HDR is a picture technique that increases the brightness and color presentation of the display. Therefore, with HDR, the picture on the display will be very bright, clear, realistic, and more natural.

On the downside, the TCL 65R615’s display has poor viewing angles. Therefore, colors will look distorted, and pictures will lose accuracy when watching the television off-center.

Thus, for an ideal viewing experience, I suggest you watch the television directly from the center.

On a positive note, the TCL 65R615’s display comes with a great response time of 12.4 milliseconds. In case you are wondering, response time is the duration it takes a display to change from one particular color to another.

Hence, with a response time as fast as 12.4 ms, there will be minimal blur trails when the display is rendering fast-moving scenes. Thus, the TCL 65R615 is adequate for watching content with lots of fast-moving scenes like racing sports and action movies.

That aside, the TCL 65R615’s display has an excellent low input lag of 17.6 ms. As a result, this TCL television is good for playing video games, making it an ideal option for gamers.

To be clear, input lag is the time it takes a display to register signal input from an external source.

In conclusion, apart from its poor viewing angles, the TCL 65R615’s display is flawless. Moreover, the television is good for gamers thanks to the display’s low input lag.

Hence, the TCL 65R615 deserves a nine out of ten rating in this display review section.

TCL 65R615: Sound Features

The TCL 65R615 comes with a pair of 8-watt speakers that provide decent sound quality. Although not loud enough for a large room, these speakers are loud enough to fill a medium-sized room with sound.

Besides, despite the lack of a subwoofer, the TCL 65R615’s speakers are capable of generating a good amount of bass. Hence, this television should be ideal for watching movies with thumping and rumbling sounds.

Also, for movies or songs with a moderate amount of bass, the television should be okay. However, you might need to consider buying a soundbar if you are planning on watching bass-heavy movies on this TV.

Moving on, as with most modern televisions, the TCL 65R615 features Dolby Digital Plus. Dolby Digital Plus is a sound technology that improves the loudness and surround sound production of the television’s speakers.

Thereby, enabling the speakers to produce a cinema-style audio quality. Moreover, thanks to Dolby Digital Plus, the speakers are also able to generate clear and audible dialogue.

For your information, dialogue is the conversation between multiple individuals in a movie or TV show.

That said, the TCL 65R615 offers an outstanding distortion performance. To be more specific, this television performed brilliantly on a THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) test.

Briefly, the THD test is a sound test that tells you the amount of distortion a sound system can produce. Moreover, a score of 1% or less on this test means that the sound system produces a low amount of distortion.

Meanwhile, a score above 1% implies that the sound system is capable of generating a significant amount of distortion. Gladly, on the THD test, the TCL 65R615 delivered an amazing score of 0.396%.

Thus, either at the maximum volume or moderate volume, distortion on this television will be minimal and almost inaudible. If you are wondering, distortion in this context is the change of a sound system’s original signal.

As a result, making the sound system delivers unwanted noise and unappealing sound quality.

All things considered, I will be rating the TCL 65R615 an eight out of ten in this sound features review section.

TCL 65R615: Ports and Connectivity Features

Like most TCL televisions, the TCL 65R615 comes with a reasonable amount of ports. Moreover, all the ports can be found on the right side of the television.

Hence, whether wall-mounted or not, accessing these ports on the television should be very easy.

That said, the TCL 65R615 features three HDMI 2.0 ports, including one that supports ARC (Audio Return Channel). Therefore, with the ARC-supported HDMI port, you will be able to connect a soundbar to the TV.

Aside from the HDMI ports, this TCL television also comes with one USB 2.0 port, an RF connector, and an Ethernet port. That’s not all; the television also features a digital optical audio output, analog audio out, and composite video input.

Meanwhile, for wireless connectivity, the TCL 65R615 offers a built-in 802.11ac 2×2 dual-band WiFi. However, this television lacks Bluetooth.

For the remote control, the TCL 65R615 has a Roku TV RC280 remote. This remote is quite small and has an all-plastic body with a matte-black finish.

However, due to the small stature of the remote, it features a limited amount of buttons. Among the few buttons that you will find on this remote is a distinctive purple plus-shaped navigation button.

Also, the remote has four dedicated buttons for quick access to Hulu, Sling TV, NOW TV, and Netflix. Uniquely, there are volume and channel rockers on the right side of the remote control.

Besides, for brand identification, you’ll find a “TCL” and Roku TV” inscription at the bottom of the remote. Aside from that, the remote also has a built-in microphone that allows for voice input via Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

In conclusion, the TCL 65R615 comes with a good number of ports that should be easy to access whether or not the TV is wall-mounted. Also, this television features a voice-supported remote control.

However, the TV lacks Bluetooth. Nonetheless, I’ll be rating the TCL 65R615 an eight out of ten in this ports and connectivity review section.

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TCL 65R615: Smart Features

The TCL 65R615 comes with the popular Roku TV operating system. This operating system features a tile-styled interface that is lag-free and has smooth animation for seamless navigation.

Moreover, it takes this interface only 3 seconds to respond when you select an application. Speaking of applications, the Roku TV operating system offers a wide range of free and paid streaming apps.

Among the paid streaming apps are Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO, and Sling TV. Meanwhile, the free streaming apps include Peacock TV, Tubi, YouTube, Pluto TV, Crackle, and PBS kids.

Besides, you should be able to stream/share multimedia content from your smart device to the TCL 65R615. To do so, you have to download the Roku app on your smart device.

Also, the smart device must be connected to the same WIFI network as the television. Moreover, apart from sharing multimedia content, you can also use the Roku app to control the television.

Impressively, this Roku app is available on the Google Play Store and App Store. As a matter of fact, the application is totally free to download.

Based on the facts above, I will be rating the TCL 65R615 a nine out of ten in this smart features review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The TCL 65R615 is a smart television that offers the almighty Roku TV OS, which gives it access to lots of paid and free streaming apps. Moreover, this television also offers an almost-flawless 4K display that supports HDR.

Additionally, the television has a good sound performance as well as a good number of ports. That’s not all; this TV also comes with a voice-supported Roku TV remote control.

However, there are a few places where the television falls short. For instance, the TV lacks Bluetooth and has poor viewing angles.

Nonetheless, the TCL 65R615 offers an overall excellent performance which makes it worth considering when shopping for a 4K smart television.

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