With the RM9L RGB-Mini, TCL doesn’t skip the HDMI 2.1 ports. There are four in total, and each can support a 144Hz refresh rate for low latency Computer games or whatever you want to broadcast on television. One of the HDMI 2.1 ports is for eARC pass-through audio to powered speakers or receiver. I added an Xbox Series X and Google TV for testing and connected Klipsch the Nines II speakers. There are two USB ports (one coaxial), an Ethernet port for a wired connection, and a digital optical port. The TV uses Wi-Fi 6, which is fast and active.
I liked the remote control for the most part, as it is clean and easy to use. The brightness controls are on the right side, which is an amazing design choice. For late night sessions you can quickly dim the light or push it up as the sun sets. Small buttons on the volume and channel controls help you find them without looking. Free-to-air television channels and a few others seemed to be plentiful. Also, the Home button isn’t centered, so it’s hard to find. Thanks to this price, the remote control is back on.
Real World Test Results
The two movies I test once in a while, mainly to see if the contrast and brightness are as exceptional as they should be for the price of the television, are. Wake up on Netflix and The creator on the Fandango at Home program. That’s because these movies have very dimly lit scenes at night or dawn. Even some OLED models seem to have disappeared during the cycling event Wake up in which the actress Gina Rodriquez passes a man in a blue shirt. It was only after selecting the Clear picture mode that I could see what was going on. I find the Mini RGB technology to be cumbersome at times, requiring adjustments to image quality.
For creator, an early scene by the sea lacked the brightness I would have liked for the price, looking a little washed out without enough blues or blacks. Even after using Vivid or Dolby Vision IQ picture modes, the area still looked very gray.
For skin benchmarks, the RM9L performed poorly compared to the LG Micro RGB Evo. I noticed a lack of tonal differences, but in a side-by-side test against an LG television, there was more of a difference. That meant the RM9L was more closely matched to the midrange Sony Bravia 7 Mark II and Hisense UR9 which also benefited from Mini RGB tech.
In the example scenario, there is one difficult challenge involving white fog over a snowy mountain. The Leica Cine Play 1 The projector is admittedly not a good test (even if it is cheap) because that model has a unique lens, but the fog was more different on it. The green grass near the fence in winter was more visible and distinct than on the Hisense UR9, and the two televisions were similar during the scene with the buffalo in the field, showing different shades of brown. LG Micro RGB Evo showed several scenes with more colors, including yellow flowers, red cactus, purple butterfly, and dark trees in the night scene.
