The new TCL 6-Series is the cheapest 8K TV out there – but not as cheap as we’d hoped

TCL has unveiled the pricing for its new 6-Series 8K TV that it announced at CES 2021 earlier this year. When it launches in August, the 65-inch TCL 65R648 will cost $2,199 – while the 75-inch version, the TCL 75R648, comes in at a cool $2,999. 

Both prices undercut the 8K TVs we’ve seen this year from Samsung, LG and Sony, however it’s only by a few hundred dollars rather than a few thousand like we had hoped.

The reason expectations were so high was because traditionally the 6-Series has started off around $600 and still managed to pack in features like quantum dot, Mini LED, and Dolby Vision and Atmos. 

The new 6-Series 8K has all of those features in addition to its 8K resolution, but its price is nearly four times as much as the 55-inch 6-Series we saw last year.

In TCL’s defense, the company never claimed the 6-Series 8K would have the same pricing as its regular 6-Series 4K line. Instead, TCL hangs its hat on creating TVs that have similar performance to the competition at a lower price – which seems to be the case for the new 6-Series, but we’ll need to put it through its paces before we can say that with any certainty. 

Analysis: Is any 8K TV worth the investment right now? 

Whether or not an 8K TV is worth the investment right now is a subject of debate amongst home entertainment enthusiasts right now. Some say that the lack of native 8K content and publicly broadcasted 4K shows indicate that we’re not ready to jump up to 8K while others claim that 8K offers the necessary resolution for screen sizes larger than 65 inches. 

Both arguments have their merits, but ultimately it will come down to how much you’re willing to spend on a new TV – whether that’s just a few hundred for a great 4K TV or now a few thousand for the most affordable 8K TV. 

As for the new TCL R648 in particular, it does present an appealing proposition on paper – it’s an 8K Mini LED TV with quantum dot for the same cost as some high-end 4K TVs. We’ll need to spend some more time with it to see how it stacks up against the 4K TVs in its price range and the 8K TVs it’s trying to undercut, but on paper it seems like a good value… just maybe not as good of a value proposition as we had hoped.

• Check out our guide to the best TVs of 2021