TCL and Hisense have been neck-and-neck for the midrange TV battle, and it really comes to a head during sales events like Cyber Week. I’ve been living with the 2024 Buy at Amazon for a couple of months, and for my money, it’s the best midrange TV to get during the holiday sales. It’s incredibly bright, blasting out over 4,000 nits of peak brightness, which makes it a fantastic choice for a sunlit living room like mine. That brightness is paired with great local dimming performance that limits blooming to a great degree and delivers excellent contrast (especially for a mini-LED TV). Every size of the QM8 is on sale during Cyber Week, including the 65-inch for just under $1,000.
The QM8’s closest competitor, the Hisense U8N, is also on sale during Cyber Week. You can find the Buy at Best Buy for $1,300, so a couple hundred less than the QM8, but I prefer the picture image on the TCL. The Hisense’s processing can add a red border to some fast-moving images, and while the U8N is a great TV in its own right, there were some bugs with the EOTF Caleb ran into during testing that I experienced as well. That makes the TCL QM8 a preferable choice for me.
If you opt for the Buy at Amazon (which is right now $4,000), you’ll be entered in a contest to win a trip for two to New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX on February 9.
If 98 inches isn’t big enough for you, TCL also has a 115-inch monster that our very own Caleb Denison classified as “the most exhilarating television money can buy, full stop.” It’s important to note, however, that the 115-inch QM89 has some distinct differences from the smaller sizes despite sharing the QM8 name, including the processor. While it’s currently $10,000 off MSRP, that still puts it at $17,000, so a significant investment for sure.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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