TCL P6L, P7L and P8L: what they ship with and what can come off

These three series are the affordable part of TCL's 2026 catalogue, and all three run Google TV. In a shop they look almost identical: same styling, same system, consecutive names.

Inside they are three fairly different televisions, and the differences are not where you would expect them. Let us go through them before talking about apps, because if you are still choosing, this matters more.

The difference nobody will explain to you: colour#

Let us start with the one you notice most while watching a film and that appears least in the brochures.

The P8L and the P7L claim to cover 93 % of the DCI-P3 space, which is the standard cinema is mastered in.

The P6L claims 72 % of NTSC, which is a different scale and a far more modest one: it comes down to ordinary basic colour, with no wide-gamut extension.

That they use two different measuring sticks is already a clue. Translated into what you see: on the P6L deep reds, the oranges of a sunset and the greens of a landscape come out muted next to the other two. It is not a subtle difference, and it is not fixed with settings.

And there is a second consequence chained to it: the P6L does not support Dolby Vision. Its spec sheet says so with a blunt «No» in that field, while the P7L and the P8L do carry it.

The refresh rate, where the P8L pulls away#

The P8L is the only one of the three with a high refresh panel, and TCL states it without hedging: its highlights read, literally, «144Hz Native Refresh Rate». Native refresh, with that word in it.

It is worth pointing out because it is not the norm even within TCL itself: the C7L, a considerably more expensive model, does not use the word "native" anywhere on its page, and its European energy label declares 120 Hz. Here, by contrast, they say it plainly.

The P7L and the P6L run at 60 Hz. The P6L adds that it reaches 120 through DLG, the technique of splitting the image and doubling lines at the cost of vertical resolution. That is not the same as a 120 Hz panel.

If you game, the P8L is the only one of the three that makes sense.

Brightness, step by step#

• P8L: 450 nits typical.
• P7L: 400 nits typical, and 450 on the 85-inch.
• P6L: between 270 and 330 depending on the size, with 280 as the usual figure.

None of the three is a real HDR television; these are entry and mid-range numbers. But the distance between the P6L and the P8L is real, above all in a living room with daylight.

The sound, and a trap by size#

Here you have to read the small print, because the sound system is not the same across every size of the same series.

On the P8L, TCL puts it like this: the Onkyo 2.1 system is on the 85, 75 and 65-inch sets, and the 55 uses 2.0 speakers. That is, the small P8L does not carry the subwoofer the series advertises.

On the P7L it is more restrictive still: the Onkyo 2.1 is only on the 85-inch. The 75, 65, 55, 50 and 43 use 2.0.

So if you buy a P7L for its Onkyo sound and you do not take the 85, you are not buying it. Power scales too: from 2 × 10 W on the small ones up to 2 × 10 W plus a 20 W subwoofer on the large ones.

What TCL publishes for none of the three#

Neither RAM nor storage. They appear in no source. And in the entry range this weighs more than it does higher up: when storage fills, apps stop updating and in the end the television cannot apply its own system update.

You can find out yourself, and you should before installing anything else. With ADB connected, df -h /data tells you how much there is and how much is free, and cat /proc/meminfo | head -1 gives you the total memory. If you have less than two gigabytes free, the clear-out this page explains stops being optional.

The Android version. They say "Google TV" and that is where it ends.

One more note: all three carry Wi-Fi 5, not Wi-Fi 6. That is what you would expect in this bracket, but it is worth knowing if the router is far away.

A detail about where they are sold#

TCL's spec sheet has a field called "main market", and on these three series it does not say Europe: the P8L gives Latin America, the P7L Latin America and Asia-Pacific, and the P6L Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa.

They appear on TCL's European site, so they are sold here. But they are not series designed with this market first in mind, and that sometimes translates into fewer shops, less stock and warranties handled differently. It is not a reason to rule them out; it is a reason to buy them where you can complain comfortably.

How to tell whether this page is about your set#

Under Settings → System → About you will find the model and the Android version. With ADB, getprop ro.product.model gives the same without wandering through menus.

The series name comes at the end of the model: 55P8L, 43P7L, 65P6L. All three share the same system, so from here on everything applies equally to the three.

What they ship with#

Google's. The launcher (com.google.android.tvlauncher), the recommendation engine (com.google.android.tvrecommendations), voice search (com.google.android.katniss) and the services (com.google.android.gms). That is the layer deciding what you see when you switch on.

TCL's. Its own channel apps and some setup assistant. The exact names change between firmware versions, so list your own rather than trusting a list copied off the internet.

Everybody else's. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and the rest ship installed by commercial agreement, not because the television needs them.

What comes off without much thought#

The streaming apps you do not use. On a television whose storage you do not know until you look at it, each one is space you may need. If you subscribe to one tomorrow, it reinstalls from the store in two minutes.

The free content channels that fill the home screen are the second clear case.

What to look at first#

The recommendation engine. Taking it off leaves the home screen clean, but it also empties the "continue watching" row, which in a house with several people is missed.

And before touching a single package, go into the privacy settings and look at what the television is sharing. A fair amount can be cut back from there, with no ADB and no risk at all.

What not to touch#

Google Play services. They are the foundation of the store, of accounts and of a good share of the apps. Without them the television boots and little else.

The launcher, as long as you have no other one installed and working. A television with no launcher switches on to a black screen, and fixing that with only the remote in your hand is far harder than having thought about it beforehand.

Anything starting with com.android. that you cannot identify: com.android.systemui is the system interface and com.android.settings is the settings app itself.

And anything to do with HDMI and the control of external devices, which is where the eARC all three series carry runs through.

What you actually notice#

On these sets, more than on the expensive ones. With an entry-level processor, every single thing that stops running in the background shows when you move through the menus and in the seconds after switching on.

What does not change: colour, brightness, refresh rate or sound. None of that depends on the apps installed, and no clear-out is going to give the P6L the Dolby Vision it does not have.

If the hardware falls short for you#

If after cleaning it up it still struggles, the sensible way out is to leave it as a screen and put an external player in front of it. The panel will still be the same one, which is what you paid for, and the interface becomes one you can choose.

All of this comes undone#

Packages disabled over ADB come back with one command, and a factory reset returns the television to exactly the state it left the box in. Nothing here touches the system: you are only telling the set not to load something that was already installed.

If you own one#

From these three series what is missing is what TCL does not tell: the output of df -h /data and of cat /proc/meminfo. These are affordable-range televisions, which is exactly where memory decides how many years they last, and today there is not one published figure. With two or three replies per series, this page could say it.