TCL’s latest 6-Series Roku TV has serious gaming flaws

TCL has finally made a Roku TV with great gaming features. The company is on a tick-tock release model of sorts with its popular 6-Series TV. A year, There is a Roku version; next year, We get the Google TV edition, and now the company is revamping the Roku model again. Like previous 6-series TVs, the latest features Mini LED backlighting, which uses thousands of tiny LEDs spread across hundreds of local dimming zones to create high brightness, impressive contrast and deep black levels. This panel has up to 360 dimming zones. And according to TCL, it uses quantum dot color with “100 percent color volume measured in the DCI-P3 Hollywood reference color space.”

For the 2022 6-Series Roku TV, TCL is focusing heavily on gaming capabilities. The previous Roku model excelled at 1440p at 120Hz, but now – as you’d hope for the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s lifespan – the 6-Series can do full 4K resolution gaming at 120Hz. PC gamers can achieve a higher peak variable refresh rate of 144Hz. Other TV manufacturers like Samsung have adopted 144Hz; Vizio even reached 240Hz at 1080p resolution. These companies are doing their best to appeal to both console and PC gamers, but I’m glad TCL is offering a true 4K solution at higher refresh rates this time around.

*In a perfect world these would all be 4K 120Hz HDMI ports, but at least eARC doesn’t use one of the two you get.*

The new 6-Series has four common HDMI ports and two of them support 4K / 120Hz. Cleverly, TCL uses a different Use more of these two ports for eARC purposes, so you don’t have to waste a high-performance HDMI port on your soundbar. Any port with full HDMI 2.1 capabilities is ideal, but where that’s not possible, this is about the best layout you could ask for. The latest 6-Series base supports AMD FreeSync in addition to the industry standard VRR specification.

Instead of placing the legs on all sides of the TV, TCL switched to a centrally located stand. There are two levels of loudness if there is a soundbar in front of the screen. You also get some integrated cable management that runs through the stand. Supported HDR formats include Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10 Plus and HLG. That aside, the 2022 6-Series Roku TV shares the usual brushed metal aesthetic and slim bezels.

There is now an ambient light sensor at the bottom of the screen, and this addition has allowed TCL to include Dolby Vision IQ in the 2022 6-Series. When enabled, HDR brightness should be optimized for your specific viewing conditions. The Google TV 6-Series doesn’t have built-in voice microphones on the new Roku model, but you can still use the included remote for voice commands.

It would be great if TCL released Roku and Google TV sets with the same specs at the same time and just let consumers choose their preferred software experience. After a rocky start, last year’s 6-Series Google TV (R646) is now a pretty great choice – even Google TV itself can still be slow. But now, the latest version of Roku has leapfrogged the pack with an upgrade to 144Hz VRR; I can’t help but predict that overall navigation on the Roku 6-Series will be smoother and faster than Google TV.

The TCL Roku TV 6-Series is available immediately in the following sizes: