This popular Frontpage deal is still available.
Best Buy has
98" TCL QM7K Series 4K HDR QD-Mini LED Smart Google TV (2025, 98QM7K) +
Free TV Wall Mount Service (mount sold separately) on sale for
$1899.99.
Shipping is free or select free store pickup where stock permits.
- Note: For free wall mount service, select the "Delivery + Installation" option. Availability for pickup may vary by location.
Amazon has
98" TCL QM7K Series 4K HDR QD-Mini LED Smart Google TV (2025, 98QM7K) for
$1897.99.
Shipping is free.
TCL also has
98" TCL QM7K Series 4K HDR QD-Mini LED Smart Google TV (2025, 98QM7K) on sale for
$1899.99.
Shipping is free.
Thanks to Community Member
Champagne13 for sharing this deal.
Note: The Wall-Mount Services are for
installation only; a wall-mount is not included.
Specs:- Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (4K)
- Refresh Rate: 144Hz
- Motion Rate: 480
- Panel Type: Mini-LED QLED
- FreeSync Premium Pro (AMD Adaptive Sync)
- Dolby Vision/HDR 10+/HDR 10/Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG)
- Google TV Smart Platform
- VESA Mount: 600 x 500mm
- Ports:
- 4x HDMI (2x HDMI 2.1, 1x eARC)
- 1x USB-A 2.0
- 1x USB-A 3.0
- 1x RF Input
- 1x Ethernet
- 1x Digital Audio Optical
Top Comments
I have this very set sitting in my living room right now, and it is indeed a solid HDR television. However, for those attempting to compare it to the QM8K, I want to provide some lived context that will hopefully help people who are currently on the fence.
I've had the privilege of having access to all three of the TVs in this TCL range, and I also lived with an LG G5 OLED for a period of almost three months to compare them against. To give you an idea of my current signal chain: I have a 98-inch QM7K in the family room. For the bedroom, I first auditioned an 85-inch QM8K, transitioned to a 77-inch LG G5, and finally upgraded to my current set—an 85-inch QM9K. It has been a steady, step-by-step march through these displays over the past six months.
The QM7K's Unique Panel Advantage
The QM7K holds some unique structural advantages that I don't believe its bigger siblings achieve. Its physical native contrast ratio is unusually excellent for a TV in this price bracket. While I don't have absolute laboratory proof, I firmly believe this panel's lineage is directly tied to the Sony Bravia 9. Sony sourced its open-cell panel for that flagship from CSOT (TCL's display division), and the QM7K benefits from this orthogonally. It likely utilizes panels that didn't make the absolute top-tier Sony binning cut for that production run, but are still physically magnificent.
This deep native contrast ratio allows a level of shadow detail extraction that is terribly difficult to replicate outside of an OLED. The QM8K and QM9K—despite their significantly higher dimming zone counts—fail to match this specific native performance. As a result, the real-world HDR impact of the QM7K is incredibly solid when you consider the actual light output from the back panel. The perceived performance to the naked eye, specifically in the nit windows most people are comfortable with for daily viewing, actually outpaces its bigger brothers.
In my opinion, the QM7K is the true sweet spot of the lineup. Most people will tire pretty quickly of a "light cannon's" massive output and will inevitably reduce the settings to more manageable levels for a "set-it-and-forget-it" everyday viewing experience.
Where the Flagship "Light Cannons" Add Value
With that said, you would be fooling yourselves if you think the greater luminance of the larger brothers is not noticeable, or that it doesn't add value to the HDR experience. The ultimate job of these displays, after all, is delivering true HDR impact. The term "impact" itself has to take relativity into account when making comparisons like this.
To state it cleanly: there is a significant difference between the QM7K and its bigger brothers. You are paying for premium bright-room HDR performance and those dedicated movie nights where you sit down to truly enjoy a film with an hour of retina-bleeding joy. Some viewers will value this raw headroom more than others. There is a massive shift in light output that cannot be denied, and once you experience it, you will find it hard to go back to the QM7K.
The Ultimate Choice: Flagship Mini-LED vs. Tandem OLED
If you decide to move on from the QM7K and shift your focus to its premium siblings or an OLED, that is where the true decision-making needs to happen. To summarize it quickly for those who need a bottom line:
The QM9K is the real value target if you need true, uncompromised HDR impact in brighter rooms.
The OLED wins in darker rooms, and thanks to the new Tandem stack architecture, it still outperforms them all from a pure quality-vs.-light-output standpoint, even when ambient light is present.
The OLED ultimately lost its spot in my room solely because of near-black dithering and panel banding issues. I noticed it immediately, and once your eye locks onto that artifact, it doesn't matter how many software optimization tricks LG tries to pull—you cannot unnotice it. And no, that native panel problem is not completely gone from the newer LG G6 series either. That persistent uniformity issue is exactly why I ended up keeping the QM9K.
Community Reviews
The QM7K comes across as a big-screen mini LED TV that punches above its price, especially for bright rooms, HDR, and gaming. It is repeatedly described as close to the QM8K, with strong native contrast, solid shadow detail, and very high brightness without the oversaturated look some see on the QM8K. Several notes say it can even beat the QM8K in a few areas, making the extra money hard to justify. The main cautions are panel quality checks, possible blooming or black crush depending on settings, and the need to verify delivery, installation, and warranty terms. A strong value pick if you want 98 inches without chasing the flagship tier.
Common Questions (6)
AI-generated summary based on comments from the community. Updated ago
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56 Comments
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So just letting you know, order at your own risk.
I scheduled 6-weeks out, and they initially cancelled on me. I rescheduled and they showed up as 'Delivery Only', no 'installer'... Well they wanted to come back weeks later to install it. I said no thanks and insisted they provide something in return... it took some asking, but they eventually offered my a $200 GC (+tax) back due to the missed installation.
This TV is an excellent value at $1900... and I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. To have the HDR, solid brightness, and excellent contrast out of a TV is amazing... handily beating some friends with projector setups for less money. I bought this to replace my 85" Sony 850H, and it was a welcome upgrade!
I have this very set sitting in my living room right now, and it is indeed a solid HDR television. However, for those attempting to compare it to the QM8K, I want to provide some lived context that will hopefully help people who are currently on the fence.
I've had the privilege of having access to all three of the TVs in this TCL range, and I also lived with an LG G5 OLED for a period of almost three months to compare them against. To give you an idea of my current signal chain: I have a 98-inch QM7K in the family room. For the bedroom, I first auditioned an 85-inch QM8K, transitioned to a 77-inch LG G5, and finally upgraded to my current set—an 85-inch QM9K. It has been a steady, step-by-step march through these displays over the past six months.
The QM7K's Unique Panel Advantage
The QM7K holds some unique structural advantages that I don't believe its bigger siblings achieve. Its physical native contrast ratio is unusually excellent for a TV in this price bracket. While I don't have absolute laboratory proof, I firmly believe this panel's lineage is directly tied to the Sony Bravia 9. Sony sourced its open-cell panel for that flagship from CSOT (TCL's display division), and the QM7K benefits from this orthogonally. It likely utilizes panels that didn't make the absolute top-tier Sony binning cut for that production run, but are still physically magnificent.
This deep native contrast ratio allows a level of shadow detail extraction that is terribly difficult to replicate outside of an OLED. The QM8K and QM9K—despite their significantly higher dimming zone counts—fail to match this specific native performance. As a result, the real-world HDR impact of the QM7K is incredibly solid when you consider the actual light output from the back panel. The perceived performance to the naked eye, specifically in the nit windows most people are comfortable with for daily viewing, actually outpaces its bigger brothers.
In my opinion, the QM7K is the true sweet spot of the lineup. Most people will tire pretty quickly of a "light cannon's" massive output and will inevitably reduce the settings to more manageable levels for a "set-it-and-forget-it" everyday viewing experience.
Where the Flagship "Light Cannons" Add Value
With that said, you would be fooling yourselves if you think the greater luminance of the larger brothers is not noticeable, or that it doesn't add value to the HDR experience. The ultimate job of these displays, after all, is delivering true HDR impact. The term "impact" itself has to take relativity into account when making comparisons like this.
To state it cleanly: there is a significant difference between the QM7K and its bigger brothers. You are paying for premium bright-room HDR performance and those dedicated movie nights where you sit down to truly enjoy a film with an hour of retina-bleeding joy. Some viewers will value this raw headroom more than others. There is a massive shift in light output that cannot be denied, and once you experience it, you will find it hard to go back to the QM7K.
The Ultimate Choice: Flagship Mini-LED vs. Tandem OLED
If you decide to move on from the QM7K and shift your focus to its premium siblings or an OLED, that is where the true decision-making needs to happen. To summarize it quickly for those who need a bottom line:
- The QM9K is the real value target if you need true, uncompromised HDR impact in brighter rooms.
- The OLED wins in darker rooms, and thanks to the new Tandem stack architecture, it still outperforms them all from a pure quality-vs.-light-output standpoint, even when ambient light is present.
The OLED ultimately lost its spot in my room solely because of near-black dithering and panel banding issues. I noticed it immediately, and once your eye locks onto that artifact, it doesn't matter how many software optimization tricks LG tries to pull—you cannot unnotice it. And no, that native panel problem is not completely gone from the newer LG G6 series either. That persistent uniformity issue is exactly why I ended up keeping the QM9K.Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
1. Two Entirely Different Hardware Tier Pipelines
Most people evaluate these sets strictly on paper specs and the perceived real-world brightness delta, concluding that the QM8K is the better buy. Architecturally, however, they are built on completely different tier lines.
I discovered this when tracking down local firmware update paths. The QM8K runs on TCL's mainstream T02 chassis, while the QM9K runs on the flagship T03 chassis—making it a direct sibling to the ultra-premium X11K series, which itself is closely related to the new 2026 SQD line up from TCL.
When you buy a QM9K, you aren't purchasing a slightly upgraded QM8K; you are purchasing a modified, highly dense flagship layout. In fact, the QM9K was likely TCL's strategic vehicle to harvest high-end component inventory from a slow-selling flagship line to recoup manufacturing capital.
2. Software Branching and Long-Term Value
Because the QM9K shares software DNA with TCL's top-tier premium sets, its codebase branches differently. For "Value Hackers" who bet on hardware headroom and wait for the software to mature, this is a massive win. As firmware updates roll out over the next few years, the QM9K has thousands of additional dimming zones and heavy-duty backlight driver boards that its software team can continue to optimize, whereas the QM8K's hardware ceiling is already locked.
The Real-World Drawbacks: Why the QM8K Might Still Win
To be perfectly objective, the QM9K's flagship isolation carries some distinct short-term software negatives that might make the QM8K a safer bet for a "set-it-and-forget-it" user:
- Firmware Maturity Lag: Because the QM7K and QM8K hold the vast majority of consumer market share, TCL's software engineering teams prioritize their updates. For example, the 2026 v643 update brought Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode to the mainstream T02 platforms (QM7K/QM8K), while the flagship T03 platform (QM9K) is still waiting on that specific implementation.
- Rigid Backlight Control (Black Crush): Right now, the QM8K actually delivers a better shadow detail experience out of the box. Its backlight dimming algorithms are more fluid, allowing for finer control at low luminance levels. The QM9K's current zone-clamping math is incredibly rigid—it turns zones off too abruptly, causing noticeable black crush in dark transitions where the QM8K handles the roll-off more naturally.
- Aggressive Mid-Tone Clipping: The QM9K's early algorithmic profile can occasionally over-compensate during mixed high-brightness scenes, causing the QM8K to paradoxically look brighter in very specific HDR windows while the 9K figures out its backlight math.
The Bottom LineIf you want a display that is fully polished right out of the box, the QM8K is highly stable and performant. But if you are a value hacker looking to invest in raw physical headroom—and you're willing to live with some early software roughness while the firmware team catches up to the massive zone density—the QM9K is an entirely different class of television.
When you get beyond the technical talk of headroom, and future performance, most people will ask themselves, is it worth if for me right now. Both of these TV's are great and from an HDR Performance standpoint, you'll be hard pressed to detect the difference in their performance. I know I couldn't tell the difference except for the Gemini implementation (which means that the TV has a higher caliber microphone in place in the set itself), the automatic light sensor that the QM9K also implements, seems to be more sensitive, and it also has a pretty cool presence sensor that kicks on when you enter the room if you enable that function (this enables really cool screen savers from a distance). The current clipping in black areas was noticeable to me, but no where near as bad as when you tried to get brighter performance from the G5 OLED and had to deal with the shadow noise and dithering.
As android TV updates in the future years come into play Gemini integration may actually prove to be a game changer for when choosing between these two televisions, as Gemini has way more native control in the QM9K then you could get even from attempting to pair it with a external digital automation assistants. For those that don't care about these features the and the extra headroom from the backlight drivers, the QM8K wins, save your hard earned cash and go with whatever is the better deal. People value different things. I am a tech junkie, and I am not to certain I could walk away from a QM9K for the sake of saving 200 dollars, but its all relative.
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