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TCL 27C2A Pro 27-inch QD-Mini LED 4K gaming monitor review: Extreme color and brightness
Stand issues aside, the TCL 27C2A Pro delivers a colorful and bright image with fine pixel density and smooth gaming performance. With broad contrast and vivid color, it’s the next best thing to a premium OLED.
Extremely bright with broad contrast and vivid color
Excellent video processing with smooth panel response
Extras like LED lights, USB ports, KVM and internal speakers
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You’ve probably heard TCL’s name associated with jumbo TVs sold in big-box stores, but it also makes a line of gaming monitors that offer excellent performance for the money. It’s also one of the few companies putting effort into Mini LED panels where others have gone all-in with OLED. Mini LED delivers the brightest imagery you can buy among the best gaming monitors, with HDR peaks of 2,000 nits or more.
TCL’s 27C2A Pro is such a panel, with an honest 2,000 nits from a 3% window in HDR mode and 650 nits full field for SDR. It also sports a full-array local dimming (FALD) backlight with 2,304 zones, which delivers tremendous contrast. A Quantum Dot layer pushes the color gamut past 100% of DCI-P3. And a set of accurate picture modes promise precise color rendering. It’s speedy too, with 160 Hz in 4K and 320 Hz in FHD resolution, with available overdrive and MPRT backlight strobing. This fully loaded package can be yours for $600 as I write this. Let’s take a look.
The 27C2A Pro’s core tech is an IPS variant TCL calls HFS Shoot. It combines an ultra-bright FALD backlight with Quantum Dot color and very quick response. Native resolution is 4K 3840x2160 pixels for a density of 163ppi. This is about as fine as it gets unless you move up to 5K or more. And those panels are still quite rare and expensive.
Brightness is honestly reported here, with my tests matching TCL’s claims. I saw almost 650 nits from a full white field pattern in SDR mode with the dimming turned off. HDR ran that up to almost 1,700 nits when I measured a 25% window with dimming on High. At that setting, I couldn’t measure the black levels at all. With 2,304 dimming zones, you won’t see any halo artifacts like panels with just a few hundred zones.
The Quantum Dot layer delivers just over 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut. You also get accurate picture modes with presets for DCI-P3, sRGB, Rec.709, and Adobe RGB, which is something rarely found outside the professional realm. Accuracy is superb with little to no need for calibration. I found similarly good performance in HDR mode, where you can adjust grayscale tracking and brightness if you wish.