If You Have a Mini-LED TV, You Need to Enable This Setting.
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I tested the TCL QM7 a year ago and am still impressed by the quality and value of this mid-range QLED TV. Along with Hisense, TCL has raised the bar for QLED TVs, and both brands are battling it out for the title of best value QLED TV.
One of the QM7’s biggest features is its incredible brightness — up to 2,400 nits thanks to the display’s mini-LED backlight. However, when watching TV at night in a dark bedroom, it can be unbearable, especially if you’re about to go to sleep (or someone else in the room is already trying to sleep). However, I found a setting that allows me (and my wife) to coexist with this TV in our bedroom — and your QLED TV is probably that bright, too.
Enable adaptive brightness
Having to manually dim my TV every night got old pretty quickly (despite the “quick settings” button on the remote that immediately gave me access to the brightness settings), so I started looking for a way to do it automatically. Luckily, my TCL TV has a setting for this—and yours probably does, too.
Most modern smart TVs have a setting called Adaptive Brightness, which allows the screen to automatically adjust its brightness based on the ambient light. This is a good setting to turn on to avoid blinding yourself if you want to watch TV before bed.
Here’s how to enable the feature on the QM7; the process is likely similar for other makes and models:
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Press the Settings button (gear icon) on your TCL remote control.
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Go to Settings and select Display & Sound .
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Select Smart Settings .
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In the Smart Settings menu, find Smart Picture .
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Turn on the Adaptive Brightness setting.
The QM7 has a light sensor that detects the light levels in the room and uses it to adjust the TV’s brightness. My TV also has a feature called Adaptive Content , which automatically adjusts picture settings based on what’s happening onscreen. For example, in dark scenes, the TV dims the image to preserve shadow detail, while in bright scenes, it boosts highlights to make the picture sharper.
Not all QLED TVs offer these exact settings, but most have something similar. Look in the menu and try turning them on if you sometimes find the super-bright screen a little overwhelming.