TCL P725 4K HDR TV Review: Great Large screen LED TV For Cinematic Experience

TCL P725 4K HDR TV Review summary

Expert rating: 3.5/5

TCL is yet to become a household name in India but has been steadily eating into market shares of prominent brands with their aggressive pricing and aggressively specced products. Following that same strategy, TCL introduced P725 4K HDR TV in India earlier in March, 21. It’s a feature pack smart TV that starts at a competitive price of Rs. 41,990 onwards and goes up to 89,990 for the 65-inch model.

TCL P725 4K HDR TV is the first TV running on Android TV 11 in the country. Apart from that, it has several high points including Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and HDMI 2.1 support.  For the last couple of weeks, I have been exploring the 65-inch variant of TCL P725 to see if it’s worth the ₹89,990 price tag. Based on my experience here’s my TCL 4K HDR TV P725 review:

The TCL P725 has a functional design that aims to keep you focused on content playing. Looking at it from the front, you will see a large screen with slim bezels all around except at the bottom where it features a sizable chin with a metallic paint job. There’s also a small module at the bottom wrapped in fabric that packs an IR receiver and LED indicators. If you look at the rear end, you will find a black plastic cover that tapers towards the edges but gets considerably thicker at the centre and at the bottom.

TCL has placed all the ports on the right of the screen, while the power cord goes in the port on the left. It has well rounded I/0 support with one HDMI 2.1 (with ARC) and two HDMI 2.0 ports. Apart from that, it also has one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0 port, a LAN port, an Antenna In socket, digital audio out (Optical), a single AV-In socket which can be used with an adapter, and a 3.5mm audio out socket for headphones or speakers. Of course, there’s dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and Bluetooth for connecting to the internet. Users can easily access most of these ports without moving their TV set.

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There is also a toggle button at the back of the tv for enabling or disabling far-field microphones (to access Google Assistant hands-free).

TCL ships the TV with a table stand in the box. You may choose to wall-mount the TV as well, but you will need to buy the wall mount kit separately.

The TCL P725 TV comes in various sizes and, as stated above, we have the 65-inch display variant. It has a 3840×2160 screen resolution and is capable of delivering up to 12-bit colours. It’s a back-lit VA (Vertically Aligned) type panel delivering excellent contrast ratios as compared to IPS panels. While in theory, VA panels have viewing angles narrower than an IPS screen we didn’t face any issues in this regard.

The TCL P725 runs on a quad-core RT2851M chipset with 1.3GHz Cortex-A55 CPU cores and Mali-G31 GPU. You also get 16GB of eMMC storage and 2GB of memory. It also features TCL’s own AiPQ Engine which uses intelligent algorithms for audiovisual optimization and AI-based upscaling.

The television boots up using the Android TV platform – Android 11. This makes it one of the first TVs in the country to come running on Android 11. On top of Android, there’s TCL Channel 3.0 interface, which delivers content recommendations from different platforms including Disney+Hotstar, Netflix, MX Player, Youtube and more on the home screen.

There’s also Google Assistant built-in with a dedicated button on the remote. And there’s a toggle button at the back of the TV to turn off the mic to put privacy concerns to rest. A simple ‘Hey Google’ command can trigger Google Assistant. Apart from the TV, TCL has put a mic on the remote for better command detection. It does well in answering general stuff like checking weather updates or controlling smart devices. It also manages to search and play content on Youtube. Or to even find a said movie or show on Netflix for us. However, the same was not possible with Amazon’s Prime Videos or Disney+ Hotstar. We also managed to switch between input sources using our voice. Let’s now discuss what matters the most in a TV:

The TCL P725 65-inch TV delivers 4K resolution at 60Hz refresh rate. It supports HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. During this review, we paired the tv with LG Bluray, TataSky HD, and Amazon FireStick 4K. Apart from that we also played content on native apps to test out TVs capabilities.

Let’s start with the picture settings. There are 5 picture presets including movie, Smart HDR, and game mode. There’s no expert or custom option as the television allows users to tweak all the available picture modes as per one’s own preference.

There’s no difference in settings for SDR and HDR content. You might be watching HDR10, or HDR10+ or HLG settings picture presets remain the same. With Dolby Vision content, picture presets are replaced by Dolby Vision Bright and Dolby Vision Dark.

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It is also capable of taking advantage of Dolby Vision dynamic metadata which contains the brightness information of each frame of a movie or TV show, so TV’s like TCL P725 can know precisely how to display pictures.

In terms of picture quality, the TCL P725 delivers excellent image quality in SDR mode. The panel here gets plenty bright for viewing in almost every condition. The contrast levels are also fairly good. Color performance is also on point but not as impressive as on QLED TVs, which are quite easy to find in this price bracket.

For this review, we played a slew of HDR 10 and Dolby Vision content on the TV – and were impressed with the performance. It delivered excellent dynamic range, vibrancy and contrast. We were also impressed with the clarity, sharpness and noise reduction. While watching SDR content, the ‘Picture’ mode worked the best for us. There’s also a Smart HDR preset that boosts dynamic range and colours, and this might impress someone who prefers punchy details over natural colours.

While watching Our Planet on Netflix, black is actually not the absolute black which we get on OLEDs or with some really premium TVs with full-array local dimming. Having said that, the TCL P725, thanks to its VA panel, has great black uniformity and deep blacks appear when viewed in the dark.

We watched regular content with MEMC (Motion Estimation & Motion Compensation) turned on and the TV managed to display action scenes without blur or juddering. 

On the audio front, the TCL Smart TV has powerful in-built speakers. There are a total of two bottom-firing symmetrical speakers on board with a combined output of 24W. It is capable of covering audio from 60Hz to 20KHz frequency. Apart from the regular audio, the TCL P725 also supports Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD audio formats.

The speakers were loud enough and we never had to bump up the volume beyond 50%. The performance will of course vary depending on the size of your room. While TV comes with Dolby Atmos, expecting directional audio impact from 24W speakers would be expecting too much. 

The TCL TV remote control is tall but has a curved back ensuring a good grip. Apart from the number keys, there are dedicated buttons to launch Netflix, Zee 5, Prime Videos and TCL Channel service. The remote control also has a dedicated button for Google Assistant.

At a time when most of us are working from home, TCL has smartly bundled a magnetically affixed video call camera with the P725 Smart TV. The 2.1MP auto-focus camera is plug and play ready. We tested it with Google Duo and were able to communicate effortlessly. The picture quality looks grainy on the large screen, though. When not in use, you can unplug it, or use the slider cover for better privacy assurance.

Review Verdict: Should you buy TCL P725 4K HDR TV?

The TCL P725 4K HDR TV is an easy recommendation for anyone looking to get a large 65-inch TV with premium features under Rs 1,00,000. It is probably one of the few 65-inch TVs that offers excellent HDR and SDR performance. Features like HDMI 2.1 port and bundled camera arguably give it an edge over the competition.  It comes running on the latest Android TV interface which gives you access to a large library of apps designed for TVs. The User Interface and User Experience has been fluid during our time with the TV. It also has 4 far-field mics for hands-free controls, but they didn’t perform well most of the time.   

Reasons to buy

• Good 4K, SDR and Dolby Vision content reproduction
• Easy to use UI
• Attractive design
• Connectivity options

Reasons to not buy

• Speakers lack bass
• Mediocre camera