I test TVs for a living and the TCL C8K was one of the best I used last year — it's a brilliant option for the World Cup and just dropped back to a record-low price ahead of Prime Day | Tech Radar
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I test TVs for a living and the TCL C8K was one of the best I used last year — it's a brilliant option for the World Cup and just dropped back to a record-low price ahead of Prime Day
A mini-LED that offers tremendous price v performance
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Prime Day kicks off tomorrow, running from June 23-26, but we’re already seeing some early deals. One of these is on the TCL C8K (known as the QM8K in the US), one of 2025’s best mini-LED TVs. The 65-inch C8K is down to £1,079.10 (was £1,199) at Currys. This is a model that I've personally tested, and it’s easily one of the best-value mini-LED TVs I’ve used, over-delivering in terms of features and performance vs price. Get the discount by applying code TV10 at checkout.
• Browse Currys full epic deals sale • Browse the full Amazon Prime Day US sale
If you’re in the US, the equivalent 75-inch QM8K is back down to its record-low price of
While the step-down TCL QM7K/C7K tends to be one of the big stars of Prime Day, the 8-series delivers that extra brightness and punchiness to its picture, plus a meatier built-in sound system. Amazon Prime Day will bring about more TV deals, but you may not even need to wait that long with this offer already live.
The TCL 65-inch C8K has dropped to a record-low price of £1,079.10 at Currys. It's a brilliant option for a World Cup upgrade, delivering serious brightness and bold colors, as well as solid motion handling. It also has a decent built-in sound system and great gaming performance.
The 75-inch TCL QM8K has dropped back to a record-low price of $1,397.99 ahead of Prime Day. If you're looking for a TV for the World Cup, the QM8K delivers the bright, punchy picture quality you need, plus a solid built-in sound system.
While affordable mini-LED should sometimes come with a warning label (as what’s on paper can be too good to be true), this wasn’t the case when I tested the TCL C8K.
Its picture quality is up there with the best TVs. It delivers punchy, vibrant colors that looked sensational when I watched Elemental, really giving the reds, oranges and purples of Ember and her vase serious pop on screen. High brightness also makes this an excellent TV for watching in a bright room. With figures measuring 3,417 nits HDR peak brightness in Standard mode and 3,050 nits in Movie mode, this TV is seriously striking.
With a measured full screen HDR brightness of 776 nits and full screen SDR brightness of 791 nits, both in Standard mode, this TV is an excellent candidate for the World Cup — especially if you’ve been holding off on an upgrade. Coupled with its excellent colors and solid motion handling (after setting judder reduction to 5 and blur reduction to 3 in the settings), this is a great TV for enjoying the rest of the World Cup.
The C8K also impressed me with its contrast and backlight control. Often the kryptonite of cheaper mini-LED TVs (as they don’t have good enough local dimming to deliver accurate contrast), the C8K made high contrast scenes from movies such as The Batman look great. Its backlight control was also superb, showing very little blooming compared to similarly priced rivals.
Sound quality can be hit-and-miss on TVs, but the C8K’s was better than I thought it would be. With audio by Bang & Olufsen, the C8K supplied surprisingly hefty bass, perfect for the rumble of the Batmobile engine in The Batman.
The C8K is also up there with the best gaming TVs, offering 4K 144 Hz, Free Sync Premium Pro, Dolby Vision gaming and ALLM support. With a 13.2ms input lag time, you can expect smooth gameplay. When I played Battlefield V, chaotic battle sequences were well-handled and never felt like a strain for the C8K.
Check out our full review of the equally brilliant TCL QM8K in the US, which we described as 'TCL's best mini-LED yet'.
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James is the TV Hardware Staff Writer at Tech Radar. Before joining the team, he worked at a major UK based AV retailer selling TV and audio equipment, where he was either telling customers the difference between OLED and QLED or being wowed by watching a PS5 run on the LG 65G2. When not writing about the latest TV tech, James can be found gaming, reading, watching rugby or coming up with another idea for a novel.
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