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ranked #161,315 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★☆
Good Potential, But Defective (TWICE!) (UPDATE)
UPDATE #2: Rather than send the second TV back to Amazon, I decided to work with TCL's Director of Customer Advocacy, who monitors these Amazon reviews and reaches out to dissatisfied customers. He promptly shipped me a new TV (#3), along with a prepaid shipping label to send TV #2 directly to him. TV #3 looked great when we powered it on. No light leaking anywhere around the screen. However, a new problem presented itself. We had no luck connecting it to the Wi-Fi. The first two TVs gave us minor problems connecting initially, but ended up connecting just fine after a router reboot and perhaps a TV reset or two. Then they functioned fine except for the piercing white light. TV #3, variably, failed to find the Wi-Fi, or found the Wi-Fi but failed to connect, or connected and then lost the connection while trying to activate the Roku, or, on a few occasions, completely locked up while looking for the Wi-Fi and rebooted itself. After more than an hour of factory resets and router reboots, we had made no progress. Several other devices were connected to the Wi-Fi without issue, so we were confident that the signal was plenty strong. And the freezing/reboots were troubling enough to us to reach out to TCL again.
Again, a new TV was shipped promptly. TV #4 behaved similarly to the first two, in that it took a little effort to get connected to the Wi-Fi. In fact, it took probably an hour, with a few factory resets and a couple of router reboots. This one always found the Wi-Fi and always passed connection step 1 (connection to wireless) and connection step 2 (connection to local network), but was failing step 3 (connection to Internet). But after an hour, it suddenly connected, and it has remained connected for a week now. We're now happy. Exhausted, but happy.
In the end (we hope it's the end), I'm not 100% convinced that the TV doesn't have a problem with its wireless functionality. Especially since others have reported connection problems. But, luckily, TCL stands behind it's product unlike any electronics manufacturer I've ever dealt with. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one knowing that, in the event I had problems, Chris at TCL won't stop until the problem has been resolved.
UPDATE #1: Just hooked up replacement and it has the exact same problem as the first one! Don't know what I'm going to do. I'm tempted to give up on it and order a different one, but with all the good reviews and Amazon's willingness to keep sending them maybe it's worth taking a shot on a third one. I'll sleep on it....
ORIGINAL: TV looks great for the price, and Roku functionality seems well-integrated. BUT....an eye-piercing white light is being emitted from the top center of the screen. It's about 18 inches wide and extremely distracting/annoying. I'm returning it for a replacement in hopes I just got a bad one. If this is normal and the new one does the same thing I'll be shopping for a different brand.
August 2015 · Electronics · verified purchase