Intro hi I'm Abby from ratings.com Welcome to our in-depth comparison of two of the most talked about TVs on the market the TCL qm8 51g and the high sense u8n in this review we'll dive into the nitty-gritty details that set these two models apart covering everything from build quality and design to picture performance and gaming capabilities both TVs offer exceptional value for their price range but which one is the right fit for you whether you're a copile craving the perfect HDR exper experience or a gamer looking for Peak Performance we've got you covered let's find out which of these two powerhouses deserves a spot in your living room we bought and tested the 65 in Build Quality & Design model of both the TCL qm8 51g and the high sense u8n both TVs come in a wide array of sizes and the results of our tests are valid for all sizes of both TVs with a few exceptions notably this 75in model of the u8n uses an ads pro panel instead of a VA panel this gives you worse contrast in HDR brightness but a wider viewing angle while the smaller 55in model has different Peak brightness values than the bigger sizes we also expect the larger models of both TVs should have better dark scene performance than the 65in models due to having more local dimming zones for our European friends the similar TCL x95 5 is available as the TCL qate 51g is currently only available in North America typically similar models from other regions perform differently so these results aren't valid for it as for the high sense in Canada the TV is known as the high sense 88n and it performs the same there are similarly named International models like the u8n Au in Australia but these models perform a bit differently than the North American models so our results aren't valid for them all right with that out of the way let's jump into it notice the visual differences between these two TVs see any yeah there there aren't many the qm8 has a slightly thicker silver border on three sides while the high sense has a much thicker one on the bottom otherwise the TCL has its branding in the upper right corner when viewing the TV from the front while the high senses branding is in the lower left corner and that's pretty much it for visual differences unless you consider the stands of course even then the difference aren't massive they both have center mounted metallic stands but TCL opted for a square design while high sense went for a hexagonal one but again that's about it for differences they're both Compact and lift their respective TVs about 3.5 in from the table so you won't have any issues with Soundbar placement the TVs wobble a bit when pushed on their stands but they settle quickly note that the 55 and 100in u8 end models used 2 ft instead of a central stand from the back however the two models opted for strikingly different visual designs the TCL has a more common checkerboard design with speaker grills at the top and a subwoofer near the center the high sense well went for a mixture of honeycomb and square patterns it's rather unique to say the least it also has a subwoofer although near the top instead of the center the high sense's back design makes it much thicker than the TCL more than half an inch thicker Inputs in fact let's move on to the inputs each TV has four HDMI ports but only two of those are HDMI 2.1 ports still the u8n has the edge here as both of its 2.1 ports can do 4K at 144 HZ while the qm8 only has one port capable of that its other 2.1 Port is limited to 4K at 120 HZ that's a bummer but it really only matters for the Ballers among you who have two high-end PCS connected to your TV both TV's e ports are on one of their HDMI 2.0 ports which we absolutely love as it means you don't lose one of your highspeed ports when a sound bar is connected through HDMI plus the ER ports support all major audio formats including those from DTS so you'll get access to the best possible sound no matter the connected Source aside from that the two models are very similar when it comes to Ports they each have an atsc 3.0 tuner so you can watch over the a channels in 4k there's a digital optical audio outport on both plus 3.5 mm Jacks for your headphones or other audio devices and an ethernet port they also have a composite input Port but it requires an adapter that is not included in the Box each TV also comes with Wi-Fi 6E with full support for the 6 GHz band a minor difference however is in their USB ports the high sense u8n has one USB 3.0 and one 2.0 Port while the qm8 has 1 3.0 and two 2.0 ports time to talk about Contrast the serious stuff starting with contrast are they the same when it comes to deep blacks well no not exactly but close the high sense has the better contrast of the two still they're both fantastic and in many scenes you might have a hard time telling which of the two has the worst contrast but the qmh has a trick up its sleeve sure its contrast may not be quite as deep as the high sense is but it performs better when it comes to Blooming Blooming the high sense is very good overall but there's more noticeable blooming around subtitles or bright highlights than on the excellent TCL and this trend continues with the lighting Lighting Zone Transitions Zone transitions as the TCL has the edge here in what is otherwise a very close race both TVs struggle a bit when bright highlights move rapidly across the screen but the TCL barely has any haloing well you can notice some on the u8n overall while the u8n can pull off deeper blacks the TCL has better minute control of its dimming zones leading to better motion and blooming performance overall still we're nitpicking they're both great here ready to continue HDR Brightness nitpicking because here we're comparing a product scoring a 9.7 in HDR brightness versus one scoring 9.5 yeah they're both extremely bright and both capable of fully displaying content mastered at 600 and 1,000 nits they're even capable of flexing their muscles when dealing with content mastered at 4,000 NS as they almost reached that on some smaller highlights it's really impressive stuff well the high sense is capable of sometimes looking like the brighter TV of the two overall the TCL is subtly but noticeably brighter it's especially evident in brighter scenes or at least scenes with larger highlights the high sense for its part performs better in Darker scenes with smaller highlights both TVs support HDR 10 plus and Dolby Vision so no matter the source you're going to get the best HDR image quality possible unfortunately for the PQ EOTF qm8 its high peak brightness comes at the cost of accuracy in HDR content the high sense is good but not exceptional here all scenes are slightly over brightened but the TC is just okay all scenes are noticeably too bright but if SDR Brightness you watch a ton of SDR content both TVs still deliver here if you like your content to look searing bright then the TCL has the edge it doesn't matter much though the high sense u8n can sustain 887 nits in real content which is too right for almost anyone unless perhaps your TV is in the middle of an extremely well-lit room with Windows all around and the sun blazing through in more typical viewing conditions you'll need to lower the brightness level of these two TVs when watching s strr content but if you like it when your eyes burn the TCL has the edge of course high sense Reflections has a big equalizer here in case you do indeed have your TV in the middle of a bright room it has better reflection handling than the TCL plus the TCL has some noticeable rainbow smearing when hit by glare ultimately this means that these two TVs perform somewhat the same in bright rooms one is a bit brighter with worse Reflections and the other is a bit dimmer but has better reflection handling up to this point these two TVs have been surprisingly similar we've even omitted certain categories as they performed almost identically these categories include color gamut color volume SDR color accuracy viewing angle un name it it's all the same but will this trend continue with image Upscaling: Sharpness Processing processing let's start with one thing they differ on they upscaling performance the TCL is better than the high sense here as it does a better job when upscaling low resolution cont content from DVDs standard definition cable channels and lower resolution streams details are clear enough even if some finer details and small hardcoded text can be hard to make out though these details are still hard to make out they're even less clear on the high Low-Quality Content Smoothing sense when dealing with lowquality content smoothing the two TVs are nearly the same the TCL does smooth out macro blocking better than high sense but it does lose a bit more detail in the HDR Native Gradient process the high sense in turn has slightly better HDR native gradient handling but barely there's noticeable banding in all Shades of Gray on the TCL while the high sense has some noticeable banding in saturated Blues all other colors are mostly free of banding the 24p Judder qm8 automatically removes jutter from all sources when watching movies or shows that are in 24p the high sense almost does but it doesn't remove 24p jutter from 60 HZ sources like most cable TV boxes you can use the motion enhancement setting with jutter reduction set to one to remove shutter from 60 HZ sources without introducing noticeable artifacts but it doesn't do it automatically like the qm8 does all HDR Brightness in Game Mode right here's the most notable difference between these two TVs as we've seen previously the TCL is a bit brighter than the high sense in most HDR content but it's even more so when both TVs are in their respective game modes this is a noticeable difference as you can see does this matter well it might but as the TCL is also less accurate in HDR than the high sense the end result is that some scenes end up looking almost too bright on the TCL ultimately if you're a big fan of highlights that pop out at you the TCL will scratch that itch but if you prefer a dimmer and more accurate TV the high sense fills that Niche a bit better it's not like it's dim anyway let's be realistic here the VRR TVs support all three types of vrr namely freesync g-sync and HDMI Forum vrr their vrr range caps out at 12 20 HZ or 144 HZ depending on the resolution in HDMI port used on the TCL you can also play at 1080p at 2 HZ with brr enabled which is a nice bonus the high sense should in theory be capable of doing that too but in practice 1080p at 240 HZ doesn't work correctly on the u8n when vrr is enabled the TV's built-in frame counter shows 72 HZ and there's frame skipping alongside desaturated colors and chroma 444 isn't displayed properly both TVs have peculiar response time issues with vrr enabled basically their respective response times change depending on what the frame rate is on the TCL the cutoff point is 65 HZ on the high sense it's 100 HZ that means if your frame rate fluctuates around that range there'll be noticeable overshooting and other visual anomalies so you're better off setting a static frame rate by disabling vrr or selecting graphical settings that pretty much ensure your frame rate will consistently be below or above the cutof VR Target Supported Resolutions both TVs support 4K at 144 HZ but only the u8n supports chroma 444 at that resolution and refresh rate combo with game mode enabled to boot the TCL can't have both chroma 444 and game mode at the same time so you need to choose between better text Clarity or barely lower input leg although most gamers are not likely to notice the reduced visual Fidelity in the middle of a heated match you could also just set your inputs to PC mode instead of game mode as unlike last year's model the new qm8 does output chroma 444 properly when running at 4K at 144 or 120 HZ if you're in PC mode the input lag difference between game mode and PC mode is negligible all right this comparison showed us one thing boy oh boy are these two TVs similar we've highlighted their differences here and there wasn't much to talk about the high sense has slightly better contrast but slightly worse local dimming performance the TCL is the slightly brighter TV of the two in HDR especially in game mode but it's noticeably less accurate in HDR and can't output chroma 444 with game mode enabled both TVs are about equal when it comes to image processing so the biggest differences are the two 4K at 144 Herz ports on the uad the extra USB 2.0 port on the qm8 if you know you value image pop over everything else the TCL is a bit better but if you prefer slightly more accurate TV go for the high sense if you like slower more contrasty content the high sense fits the bill but if you prefer faster moving content with highlight zipping all over the place the TCL will perform a bit better in the end really just get the cheapest one you can find Alternatives these two TVs offer the best bang for your buck in this price range they're even better than more expensive products from other brands there's no other LED TV that offers a better price to Performance value than these two products if you'd prefer something else we'd recommend considering an OLED like the lgb4 it's a bit more expensive than the TCL qm8 and high sense u8n but not by much and it offers obvious advantages in a dark room due to its even better contrast and perfect blooming without any Zone transitions it also offers obvious advantages for gaming due to its near really perfect response time and it doesn't have any vrr quirks of course the B4 is way less bright than the LED TVs so it's not the TV for you if you like to use your TV in a well-lit room well that's all for our comparison of the TCL qm8 51g and the high sense u8n if you want a more detailed write up on either TV check out the written reviews The Links are in the description below until next time I'm Abby from ratings.com where we help 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