Samsung Q7C 65" (QN65Q7C) vs TCL S517 49" (49S517)

The Samsung Q7C is an excellent option for sports fans because the TV can display fast and dynamic content very clearly. This is achieved by the TV’s fast pixel response time which almost eliminates the motion-blur effect. The TV has a full pixel response time of 8.1 ms which means each pixel can fully change its color in less than 1/100th of a second, so even fast-moving objects don't leave trails. Regarding response time, the Samsung Q7C performs much better than the majority of its competitors on the market.

Additionally, the Samsung Q7C is especially good for watching outdoor sports, like football, rugby or golf, because the TV has high color uniformity which makes sports fields look more realistic and consistent.

The Samsung Q7C is a good gaming TV because of its relatively small input lag, and excellent motion blur handling.

The TV’s input lag is only 24.2 ms, which allows you to experience smooth and immersive gameplay without noticeable delay between the press of a button and the corresponding action on the screen. Here, the Q7C outperforms its biggest competitor: the Sony X930E.

The overall picture quality of the Samsung Q7C is decent as the TV can reproduce deep dark scenes because of its panel's high native contrast ratio and proper black uniformity. The Samsung Q7C does a much better job with dark scenes than its competitors, including the VIZIO P-series.

This TV works very well with all the current generation gaming consoles, such as the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U.

The Samsung Q7C comes with an eye-catching remote. It’s made from metal and has shiny metal finish. Apart from being stylish, the remote offers some extended functionality, like a microphone and voice control.

The Samsung Q7C has all the bits and pieces needed to process and display HDR content because of the TV’s wide color gamut, acceptable HDR peak brightness, good native contrast ratio, and uniform blacks.

The main feature of the Samsung Q7C is its curved panel which can give you that immersive feeling as it is curved in such a way that it feels like the screen surrounds you if you sit front and center. However, if you are not a fan of curved TVs, there is an equally-priced flat version of the Samsung Q7C called the Samsung Q7F.

The TCL S517 is a decent option for pretty much everything, be it gaming, movies, sports, or HDR content. It has noteworthy picture quality, good all-around responsiveness, decent smart features, nice motion handling, and, most importantly, a great price.

The mobile remote app for both iOS or Android can fully and comfortably substitute the real remote – launch apps, input text in apps, control most TV settings, etc.

Also, colors can easily be adjusted close to perfection thanks to the app’s calibration menu.

The S517 comes with the Roku TV smart platform, which provides a comfortable interface and a big app selection.

The interface is quite basic and easy to overlook. It’s smooth and simple to swap to your favorite apps.

Roku TV offers a vast app store with all the most popular apps – Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant, HBO Go, Vudu and much more. Some apps are even absent from other TV manufacturers Smart TV platforms and unique to Roku.

The S517 is fit for all gamers because it offers a clear, lag-free experience. The TV is very responsive - it has struck a good balance between decent refresh rate, solid input lag, and good response time.

The TV is an ideal choice for console gaming in terms of its native refresh rate. It caps at 60Hz, which is perfect since most games won't benefit from anything higher than this.

The S517 is fast. An action shows on the screen in around 18 milliseconds, which can make the difference between managing to get a frag or waiting for a respawn. The time doesn't substantially increase when gaming in HDR or 4K either - it goes up to roughly 20.5 milliseconds. The only thing to remember is to keep "Game" mode enabled for the lowest possible input lag.

The TCL S517 also handles motion and fast-paced content quite well, it has a good response time. This makes sure you can keep up with fast-moving objects and a lot of action without it all appearing blurry. A full pixel color transition takes only 15.8 milliseconds.

The picture quality when you first open the TV up is quite decent. The only settings that could potentially require tweaking are grey inaccuracy and color inaccuracy. Either way, these are things that most people won't even notice.

The S517 offers a pleasant PC monitor experience not only due to the good responsiveness but also because of the video signal's compression.

The TV won't make text appear blurry while connected to a PC because the signal has no compression and transports color data and luminance fully. This is also known as chroma 4:4:4, and the “Computer” and “Game” modes display it properly at 60Hz.

All of the inputs are conveniently placed on the side of the S517, so you won't have to worry about leaving space between a wall and the TV.

The S517 offers the possibility to represent motion in videos smoother, also known as the "soap opera effect". This is done by making the TV take two frames and try to guess what would a frame in between of those look like, also known as motion interpolation. The frame rate can interpolate up to 60 frames per second.

The S517 does a reasonably good job with upscaling most content to 4K quality, be it 480p DVDs, HDTV or full HD Blu-rays.

The S517 is a much better fit for HDR content and HDR gaming than its competitors due to the wide color gamut, decent color depth, and high contrast.

The TV can display a lot more colors than its similarly-priced counterparts. The coverage of the Digital Cinema P3 color space is very good - 90%.

The color depth is on par with competing options. The S517 has 10-bit color depth, which means that it can display approximately 1.07 billion colors in total. This is important for HDR content because HDR media takes advantage of 10-bit.

The S517 can display deep blacks in the HDR mode because of its high native contrast ratio of 6000:1, which is easily one of the best in the given price range.

The TV can also play all HDR content because it supports both standard formats of HDR - HDR10 and Dolby Vision. They enhance the viewing experience by editing the metadata, that is, the extra information that tells the TV how to display HDR. The formats differ in the way they deal with it, however - Dolby Vision edits the picture on a per scene basis, whereas HDR10 edits everything at the start of the video.

In terms of picture quality, the S517 is comparable to high-end TVs. It displays remarkably deep blacks due to its great contrast and reproduces details in color very well due to its good color gradient.

The 6000:1 native contrast ratio allows the TV to reproduce dark scenes particularly well. It is easily one of the best in this price range – it’s often compared to high-end counterparts.

The S517 has superb black uniformity and contrast that create pleasant, deep blacks. They are much better than those of the similarly-priced competitors. The maximum deviation sits at around 1.02% .

The TV is good at capturing small differences in color such as skin tones, green colors in nature, details in shadows, etc. This is because of the color gradient, which is on par with other options of the same price. There is almost no banding and the standard deviation of color doesn't go past 0,11%.