TCL has offered consumers sensational value when it comes to making TV-buying decisions for many years, serving up premium, flagship technologies at prices that don’t require you to remortgage your home.
That statement is especially true in 2026, as the company has introduced its new SQD-Mini LED technology in its flagship screens such as the C8L. This new tech promises to rival OLED and RGB mini-LED TVs when it comes to both colour reproduction, brightness and the ink-deep blacks necessary to create a truly immersive, cinema-like experience at home — and based on our testing, those claims are largely justified.
What’s more, this new technology has, in true TCL fashion, once again arrived without the oft-associated flagship price tag, with prices starting at AU$2,999 for a 65-inch model and still coming in at just AU$9,999 for the mammoth 98-inch variant.
With winter in full swing in Australia, the C8L provides a fantastic gateway to enjoy cosy cinematic experiences from the comfort of your sofa.
An image that needs to be seen to be believed
So, what is SQD-Mini LED and why has TCL used it in its 2026 flagships? With so many buzzwords in the TV industry and new acronyms seemingly arriving each year, it’s an understandable question.
SQD stands for Super Quantum Dot and refers to the quantum-dot layer that’s positioned over the LED backlight. While many mini-LED TVs now use a quantum-dot nanocrystal layer to control and expand their colour capabilities, TCL’s new Super Quantum Dot layer implementation turns things up a notch by offering even finer colour filtering and colour-management systems.
It’s this more-advanced ‘super’ quantum-dot layer combined with an incredibly granular control of the backlight system that allows the TCL C8L to achieve higher brightness levels, deep contrast and exceptional colours (and prevent those colours from bleeding) than many other mini-LED models.
And we can certainly vouch for that, having spent time with the QM8L, which is the name the C8L is sold under in the US market. Under testing, we measured 3,719 nits of peak HDR brightness in a 10% window in Filmmaker Mode and 760 nits of fullscreen brightness — more than three times brighter than the 245 nits we measured for the LG C6 OLED.
Colour reproduction is incredibly strong too, with the C8L achieving 98% of the DCI-P3 colour space in our tests, a remarkably high figure for a mini-LED TV and a result that puts the TCL TV on par with the elite OLEDs on the market.
Putting numbers into practice
We could relay numbers to you until we’re blue in the face, but what do they actually mean in reality?
The short answer is that images on the TCL C8L look natural and lifelike. It’s also capable of retaining detail in darker scenes thanks to effective backlight control, aided by a higher number of dimming zones — which ranges from 2,000 to 4,000, depending on panel size. As we said in our review, “There’s no bleed from one color to the next, and I’m able to see details in shadows clearly thanks to the high dimming capability of each section.”
On TVs with inferior backlight systems, shadow detail isn’t always a given, as less precise local dimming can cause light to spill into darker areas of the screen, diminishing contrast and obscuring fine detail.
Furthermore, bright highlights have real intensity without washing out the rest of the image, and colours land with a richness that feels natural rather than exaggerated: “Whether it's the fine lines of a petal in one of those hi-res screen tests or the crowd in the background of a game, it all looks clear and natural”, according to our reviewer James Holland.
Gamified greatness
Gamers will also find much to love about the C8L, as all four of its HDMI inputs are the HDMI 2.1 variety, so they universally support 4K at up to 144Hz, ensuring both next-gen console and PC gamers can enjoy smooth framerates and pin-sharp visuals.
Furthering its gaming credentials, the TCL C8L features a specialised Gamer Bar menu that allows for quick settings adjustments during gaming sessions, and we recorded an impressively low input lag time of just 9.5ms, placing it in touching distance of premium OLED sets such as the LG G6, with its 8.9ms last time .
In use, everything from fast-paced shooters to racing sims are handled expertly, with motion clarity being a particular highlight — a benefit which also transfers over to live sports.
Sounding out
It’s not just picture quality where the TCL C8L shines, but on the sound front too. Sound quality can so often be an area that plagues TVs, but TCL has entrusted the highly experienced Bang & Olufsen to tune the sound system of its premium SQD-Mini LED TVs — the C7L, C8L and the X11L.
The result is out-of-the-box audio performance that will serve most homes incredibly well. As our reviewer James Holland noted, “I believe the audio here is good enough for you to skip adding a soundbar as long as you’re not looking for a home theater-type listening experience”.
What’s particularly impressive is that you can optionally pair the C8L with a TCL wireless subwoofer to improve low-end output, while still skipping the need for a dedicated soundbar.
With strong performance across the board, the TCL C8L makes a compelling case for staying in this winter. Whether you’re working through a watchlist, settling in for a big-screen gaming session or enjoying edge-of-your-seat live sports, it delivers a level of picture and sound quality that feels genuinely cinematic without the usual premium price barrier.
Add in its ability to perform just as confidently in bright, sunlit spaces as it does in dimly lit rooms, and it quickly becomes the kind of all-rounder that earns its place at the centre of the home — no matter what time of day or what you’re watching.
In Australia, the TCL C8L SQD-Mini LED TV range is available in the following configurations: