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TCL L40FHDF12TA review: TCL L40FHDF12TA

TCL L40FHDF12TA

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
5 min read

Though it's a mouthful to say, the TCL L40FHDF12TA enjoys a reputation among Internet shoppers--namely on Amazon.com, where it's been one of the best-selling TVs so far this year--as an inexpensive television that provides a "cheap and cheerful" picture.

5.8

TCL L40FHDF12TA

The Good

The <b>TCL L40FHDF12TA</b> is one of the cheapest 40-inch televisions we've ever seen and delivers a better performance than the price might suggest. Picture processing is one of its strongest points and it's possible to get something that looks impressive at first glance.

The Bad

The "pop" you see is a result of highly crushed blacks, which means no shadow detail. The set's poor black levels and inaccurate colors make it difficult to get a decent picture. Calibrating the TV is impossible due to the poor gamma levels and lack of fine control. The set displays some flashlighting in the corners.

The Bottom Line

The TCL L40FHDF12TA is a cheap television that provides a usable picture, but that's about it.

After testing, we can confirm that the TV does perform better than you'd expect for the money, but that's not saying much. It has a deceptively "dark" picture that is actually the result of some artificial tampering to make the black levels look better than they actually are. In essence, you'll never be able to get any usable shadow detail out of this TV, and colors, though initially exciting, are unnatural.

But we've tested plenty of TVs that perform worse than this model over the years, and they were much more expensive than this one. We'd never recommend this as your primary TV, but it could be decent for use in a bedroom or a guest house.

Design
Back in 2005, Sony's newly introduced Bravia range sported a two-tone design that then became popular among TV manufacturers until it was eclipsed by piano black. TCL gives a nod to designs of yore with the black bezel and a silver strip on its L40FHDF12TA, but Sony did it better seven years ago. The TCL comes with a glass stand but unfortunately it doesn't swivel.


The TCL 40-incher isn't much to look at, in more ways than one.

The remote control looks a little more up-to-date, with a piano-black casing and friendly-looking buttons. While they are thankfully few in number, we still found the remote difficult to use in a darkened room as the numbered buttons and the menu button are the same shape and close to each other.

Key TV features
Display technology LCD LED backlight No
Screen finish Matte Remote Standard
Smart TV No Internet connection No
3D technology No 3D glasses included N/A
Refresh rate(s) 60Hz Dejudder (smooth) processing No
DLNA-compliant No USB Photo/Music/Video
Other: None

Features
Features? You're not going to get them. The TCL is more bare-bones than a Halloween decoration. There's no 3D this or Smart that; this is an old-school TV with a fluorescent backlight--not one of them fancy LEDs you might have heard of. The only modern concessions are the three HDMI ports and the addition of a USB port for displaying photos and playing MP3s.

Most of its competitors exist in the $600 range--the original price of this unit--and in that range you can expect more connectivity and even better performance. But TCL does provide full-HD (1080p) resolution, which is still uncommon in really cheap TVs, and an onboard digital tuner. While it doesn't come with any smoothing, 120Hz or so on, we've always been disappointed in budget implementations anyway, so that feature isn't missed.


The settings menu is as basic as the rest of the set.

Picture settings
If you want to buy a television you can tweak, the TCL is not for you. It provides the bare minimum of controls with only Color Temperature and Tint as standouts. A lack of Gamma control really hurts this TV, as it's impossible to get any usable shadow detail out of the set without destroying the "pop" the manufacturers were going for.

Performance
Interestingly, the TCL is exactly one-tenth of the price of the Sony KDL-V40XBR1, which debuted in 2005, and though we don't have the Sony to compare it with, we think that it's possible the two might exhibit similar picture quality.

You see, in seven years the quality of LCD televisions is now light-years ahead of where it was in 2005, but by these modern standards the TCL is only barely acceptable. We found its worst weaknesses were poor black levels, lack of shadow detail, and inaccurate color. Detail levels were as good as you'd see on any TV of its price, however, and a lack of artifacts such as smearing or blockiness meant the picture was quite watchable.

Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV's picture controls worked during calibration.

Comparison models (details)
Sony KDL-40BX420 40-inch LCD
Samsung LN46D630 46-inch LCD

Black levels: The TCL's black levels--the most important characteristic when determining what makes a "good" picture--are below par. Balancing deep blacks with full shadow detail is part of what makes a TV picture look both accurate and dynamic, and the TCL just can't do this.

After adjustment the two comparison TVs had noticeably deeper blacks. One of our test scenes for shadow detail from the recent "Star Trek" movie involves the renegade Romulan ship skulking across the screen. While not the best arbiters of shadow details, the Sony and Samsung were able to convey that there was a spaceship with lights and decks and terrifying spiny bits, while the TCL looked like someone in the distance was shining a glowworm through a cheese grater.

Color accuracy: Due to a lack of controls, we weren't able to make the colors more natural, and the secondary colors in particular stayed way outside of the normal ranges. Skies and details like the screens on the USS Enterprise looked off-color compared with the same scenes on the Sony and Samsung. A distinct lack of green in the image resulted in skin tones that were a little too rosy and skies that would look good in a catalogue but didn't resemble anything you'd see in real life.

Video processing: The video processing of the TCL was probably the most impressive thing about its performance. The TV was able to decode 1080i content without judder or moire in our sports stand test, and in our "real-world" test the TCL was the equal of the more expensive Sony and Samsung in terms of smoothness when showing the fly-by shot of the aircraft carrier. Motion resolution, on the other hand, was poor, with only 320 lines being resolved, and though this wouldn't usually be very noticeable, we did see some blurring in the faces of passersby in the closing scenes of "Mission: Impossible III."

Uniformity: Uniformity is a recurring issue on LCDs, and the TCL L40FHDF12TA is no different. There are some lighter patches in the upper corners and dark gray blobs in the middle of the screen, but as on similar TVs it's not usually noticeable.

Bright lighting: The TCL has a matte screen, and while this doesn't increase the illusion of contrast as on some TVs, at least it's viewable in brightly lit rooms with few reflections.

Read more about how we test TVs.

GEEK BOX: Test Result Score
Black luminance (0%) 0.2391 Poor
Avg. gamma 2.2591 Good
Near-black x/y (5%) 0.2602/0.2614 Poor
Dark gray x/y (20%) 0.3247/0.3347 Poor
Bright gray x/y (70%) 0.3108/0.3138 Poor
Before avg. color temp. 10120.5496 Poor
After avg. color temp. 6728.0505 Poor
Red lum. error (de94_L) 7.6771 Poor
Green lum. error (de94_L) 5.6937 Poor
Blue lum. error (de94_L) 4.5383 Poor
Cyan hue x/y 0.2099/0.2958 Poor
Magenta hue x/y 0.3425/0.1609 Poor
Yellow hue x/y 0.4382/0.4833 Poor
1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) Fail Poor
1080i De-interlacing (film) Pass Good
Motion resolution (max) 320 Poor
Motion resolution (dejudder off) 320 Poor
TCL L40FHDF12TA calibration report
5.8

TCL L40FHDF12TA

Score Breakdown

Design 5Features 5Performance 5Value 7