TCL 98-Inch Q65 (98Q651G) Review: The Science Behind a Gamer's Giant Screen

There was a time, not long ago, when a television stretching nearly 100 inches across a wall was the exclusive domain of opulent mansions and high-end commercial displays. It was a fantasy, a piece of aspirational tech far removed from the average living room. That era is definitively over. With the arrival of televisions like the TCL 98-Inch Q65 (98Q651G), the scale of private cinema has been democratized, bringing an awe-inspiring, wall-filling canvas into the realm of possibility for gamers and movie lovers alike.

But a giant screen invites giant questions. How is such a colossal display made affordable? What engineering secrets are packed inside, and more importantly, what compromises are made to hit its aggressive price point? This is more than a review; it’s a deconstruction. We will peel back the layers of this behemoth to understand the science of its picture, the engineering behind its speed, and the artful balance of features that defines its very existence. This is a guide to understanding not just what this TV is, but why it is the way it is.

The Science of the Canvas: QLED and the Language of Light

At the heart of the 98Q651G’s visual identity is its QLED display. This isn’t just a marketing buzzword; it represents a fundamental manipulation of quantum physics to produce better color. Imagine a traditional LED TV’s backlight as a source of somewhat impure white light. To create colors, this light must pass through red, green, and blue filters, a process where some color information and brightness is inevitably lost.

QLED, or Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode technology, takes a more elegant approach. It starts with a highly efficient blue LED backlight. Between this light and the liquid crystal layer sits a film coated with trillions of nano-sized semiconductor crystals called quantum dots. These are remarkable particles. When struck by the blue light, quantum dots of a specific size fluoresce with an incredibly pure green light, while dots of another size emit a pure red.

The result is a light source composed of pristine red, green, and blue components before it ever hits the color filters. This foundational purity allows the TV to reproduce a vastly wider range of colors. The specification sheet mentions covering “nearly the entire DCI-P3 color space,” which is not a trivial claim. DCI-P3 is the standard used in professional digital cinema, far exceeding the color capabilities of traditional broadcast television. For the viewer, this translates to seeing the fiery orange of an explosion or the subtle turquoise of a tropical sea exactly as the director intended, with a vibrancy and depth that non-QLED screens struggle to match.

But creating a rich canvas of color is only half the battle. The other half is controlling its light and shadow. This is the domain of High Dynamic Range (HDR). The Q65 supports a full suite of HDR formats, including the advanced Dolby Vision and HDR10+. Think of standard video as painting with a limited set of crayons. HDR gives the filmmaker a vastly expanded toolkit of light and darkness.

More importantly, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ use “dynamic metadata.” A simpler format like standard HDR10 tells the TV a single set of instructions for brightness and contrast for an entire movie. Dynamic metadata is like giving the TV scene-by-scene, or even frame-by-frame, instructions. A dark, moody cave scene will be rendered with deep shadows and nuanced detail, while the next cut to a bright, sun-drenched landscape will utilize the panel’s full brightness, all automatically. It ensures you’re always seeing a picture optimized for that specific moment, making the visual narrative far more immersive and impactful.

The Reflex Arc: Engineering for Instantaneous Gaming

For a gamer, a television is not a passive display; it is the final, critical link in a chain of high-speed reflexes. Every millisecond of delay between pressing a button and seeing the result on screen can be the difference between victory and defeat. This is where the 98Q651G focuses a significant portion of its engineering prowess.

The foundation of its gaming performance is a native 120Hz refresh rate panel, capable of displaying up to 120 unique frames per second. This immediately creates a smoother, clearer image in fast-moving games compared to standard 60Hz TVs. But the true game-changer is its support for 144Hz Variable Refresh Rate (VRR).

To understand VRR, picture a game console (like a PS5 or Xbox Series X) and a TV working without it. The console is trying to output frames as fast as it can, but that rate fluctuates wildly depending on the complexity of the scene. The TV, meanwhile, is refreshing its screen at a fixed rate (say, 120 times per second). When these two are out of sync, the TV might try to draw a new frame while the old one is still partially on screen. The result is a hideous visual artifact called “screen tearing,” where the image looks like it’s been split and misaligned.

VRR creates a constant handshake between the game console’s graphics processor (GPU) and the TV. The TV abandons its fixed refresh rate and instead says to the GPU, “I will refresh the instant you have a new frame ready for me.” This perfect synchronization completely eliminates screen tearing and also reduces stutter, leading to a buttery-smooth and responsive gaming experience.

For the most hardcore PC gamers, the TV offers a special feature called Game Accelerator 240. This is a clever technical trick. It allows the TV to accept a 240Hz signal, but it does so by cutting the vertical resolution in half. While you trade some image sharpness, you gain an extraordinary level of motion clarity and an even faster response time, a trade-off that competitive esports players might willingly make. Coupled with Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which automatically switches the TV to its fastest settings when a console is detected, the entire system is primed for peak performance. The result is a measured input lag that is exceptionally low, ensuring the TV’s own processing adds almost no perceptible delay to your actions.

The Artful Compromise: Understanding the Price of Size

A 98-inch QLED TV with high-end gaming features at this price seems almost too good to be true. And this brings us to the most important part of this analysis: understanding the deliberate engineering compromises that make it possible. The single most significant of these is the absence of local dimming.

Imagine the backlight of this TV as a single, large floodlight illuminating the entire 98-inch panel from behind. It can get brighter or dimmer as a whole, but it cannot selectively dim specific parts of the screen.

Now, consider a more expensive, high-end TV equipped with Full-Array Local Dimming (FALD). This technology replaces the single floodlight with a grid of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individually controllable LED “spotlights.” In a scene showing stars in a night sky, a FALD system can turn off the LEDs directly behind the blackness of space while keeping the LEDs behind the stars brightly lit.

The result is a dramatic increase in contrast—the difference between the darkest blacks and the brightest whites. The 98Q651G, without local dimming, cannot achieve this. Its blacks will appear as a dark gray, especially when viewed in a completely dark room, because the single backlight is always on, spilling some light even into the areas that should be pitch black. This is not a defect; it is a fundamental design choice. The complex hardware and processing required for a good local dimming system represent a significant portion of a premium TV’s cost. By omitting it, TCL can deliver the massive size and core QLED/gaming features at a revolutionary price.

This philosophy of trade-offs extends to other areas. The television likely uses a VA (Vertical Alignment) type LCD panel, which is excellent for achieving a good native contrast ratio (before the backlight is factored in) but has a known trade-off: limited viewing angles. If you watch the TV from directly in front, the picture is vibrant. As you move off to the side, you will notice the colors start to wash out and the perceived contrast drops. Similarly, user reports of audio lag with Bluetooth are often not a flaw of the TV itself, but a limitation of the standard Bluetooth audio protocols, which were not designed for the near-zero latency required to sync with video. For the best audio experience, a wired connection like HDMI eARC is always the superior scientific choice.

The Verdict: Who Should Welcome This Behemoth Home?

The TCL 98Q651G is a masterclass in targeted engineering. It is a product that knows exactly who its audience is and what they prioritize. It does not try to be the absolute best television in every single metric; instead, it aims to be the best value for a specific set of desires.

This television is an outstanding choice for:

• Gamers: For anyone whose primary use case is playing on a PS5, Xbox Series X, or a gaming PC, the combination of a massive screen, QLED color, and a top-tier suite of gaming features (144Hz VRR, ALLM, low input lag) is almost impossible to beat at this price.
• Bright-Room Viewers: In a living room with ambient light from windows or lamps, the impact of its less-than-perfect black levels is significantly reduced. Its high brightness and excellent color will shine for watching sports, streaming shows, and casual movie nights.
• The Budget-Conscious Home Cinema Builder: If your dream is a truly wall-filling, cinematic screen but your budget doesn’t stretch to premium FALD or OLED models, this TV delivers 90% of the immersive experience for a fraction of the cost.

However, you might want to consider other options if:

• You are a dedicated cinephile with a light-controlled dark room: If your primary goal is to replicate a perfect cinema experience with inky blacks and subtle shadow detail, the lack of local dimming will be a noticeable compromise. A smaller OLED or a TV with a robust FALD system would be a better, albeit more expensive, fit.

Ultimately, the TCL 98Q651G is a statement piece. It declares that an immense, vibrant, and incredibly responsive viewing experience is no longer a privilege reserved for the few. It is a product defined as much by the features it thoughtfully includes as by the expensive technologies it deliberately omits. For the right user, it’s not just a good choice; it’s a brilliant one, offering a giant window into the worlds of gaming and entertainment without demanding a giant portion of your wallet.