I've never been into the art TV craze, but TCL's ultra-low power 85-inch digital canvas could change my mind

Ever since the arrival of Samsung's The Frame TVs, the idea of 'art TVs' has become more and more popular. These are TVs that look like a picture frame, and instead of showing nothing when you're not watching them, they can show beautiful artworks. In many cases (and particularly with the Samsung Art Store), that means famous paintings and photographs from truly great artists.

You now have options from Hisense and TCL as well as Samsung, while Amazon Fire TVs from all kinds of makers (including Amazon, obviously) have an 'Ambient Mode' that can work similarly.

I've never personally been into this idea, mostly because I just don't see it as a good use of energy, and partly because widescreen TVs just aren't that well-suited to a lot of art. The masters didn't exactly agree on the 16:9 aspect ratio as a standard.

However, I saw a screen concept from TCL at IFA 2025 that could change things. It's a square-ish 85-inch display using ultra-low power oxide-based LCD technology, which is incredibly efficient at getting light through the pixels, and can operate at much lower refresh rates than regular LCD screens.

TCL says it should be able to achieve Energy Class A certification, whereas most TVs are more in the E or F category. It can operate at just 10Hz, and isn't very brightly lit, both of which are fine for an art display.

It's also got a paper-like finish that's anti-reflective, again, which is normal for these kinds of displays, and it looks good.

Being nearly square (it's actually an 8:9 aspect ratio) also means it can show portrait artworks just as large as landscape ones, even if it does leave some dead space if you do it that way.

It's my understanding that this panel is essentially two 75-inch 4K TV panels, one on top of the other, but there isn't a split down the center. It's not two TVs joined together – TV panels are always cut from much larger sheets, and in this case, it was just cut to this square shape.

The resolution of the panel is listed as 4320x3840, which fits this – that's exactly the resolution of two 4K panels, one above the other.

The 85-inch size is bigger than is practical for my home, and there's no indication that TCL is about to make this into an actual product in the near future anyway, so I'm unlikely to have to decide whether I want to buy one – and given that the tech involved isn't going to be used in TVs any time soon (the oxide process is way too expensive, for a start), it's probably unlikely that I'll end up softening my stance on art TVs.

But this is definitely the version of this kind of screen that's tempting me most – it had really rich colors, a nicely convincing level of lighting and brightness, and that relatively low energy consumption level is definitely something to look out for in future screen tech.

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