TCL 43P7K

Price

Given that TCL’s premium TVs don’t cost nearly as much as you’d expect, it’s not exactly shocking to find the relatively entry low-level 43P7K costing just £249 in the UK. There are also 50-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch P7Ks available for £279, £349, £499 and £599 respectively.

These really are very aggressive prices for TVs that still retain Quantum Dot colour systems and Google TV smarts – especially when you’re looking at the 65- and 75-inch prices.

There isn’t a direct US equivalent to the 43P7K (though the Q651G appear broadly similar).

Rival TVs would be Sharp’s GK4245K UK series, which includes a 70-inch model that currently only costs £469, or TCL’s own step-up C6KS series, which brings Mini LED lighting and local dimming to the picture quality party but only kicks in at 50- rather than 43-inch screen sizes. The 50-inch 50C6KS is widely available for £349 at the time of writing.

Design

• Chunky rear and quite lightweight build quality
• Sits on two separate feet rather than a central plinth
• Screen bezel is slender and nicely finished

As you might expect with such a cheap TV, the 43P7K isn’t going to be turning up in any classic product design exhibitions.

The ease with which you can move it around while attaching its feet and setting it in position in your living room reveals its bodywork to be comprised pretty much exclusively of uninspiring plastic; its rear protrudes further than those of most modern TVs; and its feet look basic and functional rather than making any attempt to inject a bit of style into proceedings.

The best that can be said about the design is that TCL has at least managed to keep the screen frame looking quite narrow, while also dressing it in a slightly textured finish that hides its fundamentally plastic nature reasonably effectively.

The remote you get with the 43P7K looks and feels as plasticky as the TV. While its heavy button count initially looks daunting, though, it turns out to be quite easy to use.

Connectivity

• Three HDMI ports
• Two USB ports
• Optical digital audio output

The 43P7K carries a very respectable array of connections for such an affordable TV. Starting with a trio of HDMI ports which, much to my surprise, can take in 120Hz Frame Rates (despite the TV’s panel only being natively 60Hz) if you activate TCL’s Game Accelerator system. There are limits to this rather cool feature that I’ll cover in the Gaming section.

One of the HDMI inputs supports eARC to pass sound, even lossless Dolby Atmos tracks, from the TV to an eARC-capable soundbar, and the HDMI inputs are joined by a pair of USB ports for media playback from USB storage devices, an optical digital audio output, satellite and aerial tuner inputs, and an Ethernet port.

Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi are provided, too, as wireless content source options.

User Experience

• Google TV smart system
• Plays whatever HDR format you feed it
• Built-in hands-free Google Assistant voice support

As usual (though not absolutely always) with TCL, the 43P7K turns to Google TV for its built-in smart system. This is a decent choice for providing a seriously expansive range of video streaming services, gaming apps and infotainment sources, and I was pleased to note that cramming Google TV into a model as relatively basic as the 43P7K didn’t seem to cause any sluggishness or crashes.

More good news finds TCL integrating the BBC iPlayer, ITVX, All 4 and Channel 5 UK terrestrial broadcaster catch up apps into the 43P7K’s online services, despite Google TV’s usual issues with at least some of these popular catch up TV platforms. The brand’s localisation efforts don’t extend to the Freely service that lets you live stream the TV channels mentioned above.

As noted earlier, the 43P7K’s remote control might not look or feel particularly attractive, but its layout and button labelling are clear enough to make it straightforward to use. You can avoid the remote altogether, too, thanks to the 43P7K unexpectedly carrying built-in hands-free Google Assistant voice control.

Features

• 4K VA panel with direct LED lighting
• Supports all four HDR formats
• AiPQ processor

Let’s first put the 43P7K into context with a couple of things it doesn’t have: Mini LED lighting, or local dimming. This means it can’t deliver anything like the same degree of local light control that step-up TCL models can – especially from the C6KS range up.

It does deploy a global dimming system where the general brightness of the image is continually optimised. The LCD panel used is a VA type, which experience shows usually deliver significantly better contrast performance (but narrower effective viewing angles) than the IPS alternative.

As mentioned earlier, the 43P7K retains a Quantum Dot rather than basic colour filter system, and even this diddy man of the P7K series manages to cram in a 3840 x 2160 pixel count. Unlike many vastly more affordable TVs, the 43P7K can take in and play all four of today’s most important high dynamic range formats: the ‘core’ HDR10 and HLG formats, and the more advanced Dolby Vision and HDR10+ formats with their extra scene-by-scene image data. In other words, the 43P7K will always take in the best available version of whatever content you feed it.

The 43P7K even manages to carry a version of TCL’s AI-bolstered AiPQ picture processing engine. This seems to be a fairly laid-back version, but it does have options that extend into almost every facet of picture quality, from HD upscaling to colour rendering, general sharpness, backlight control and even motion compensation processing.

Purists will be pleased to note that most of AiPQ’s processing touches can be switched off if you don’t like what they do.

The 43P7K’s audio is not a product of one of TCL’s recent collaborations with Onkyo or Bang & Olufsen. It still delivers a potentially quite healthy 2 x 10W of power, though that experience suggests TCL won’t be shy about trying to milk for all its worth.

Gaming

• Quick input lag
• 120Hz support
• VRR compatible

An ultra-affordable 43-inch TV clearly has lots of potential appeal as a gaming monitor – and TCL has tried to push that potential further than you would expect for £249.

The biggest surprise is the TV’s ability to take in 120Hz gaming feeds despite actually only having a native 60Hz panel. While this may sound appealing to online FPS players, I should clarify the feature comes with a pretty big string attached: 120Hz can only be achieved with an HD resolution. You can’t have 4K at 120Hz.

You really feel this loss of resolution; the results are not the same as playing an HD game upscaled to the screen’s 4K resolution, for the avoidance of doubt. This is absolutely only HD, and a slightly rough looking HD at that.

The 43P7K takes only 10.8ms to render 60Hz games, which is only a fraction longer than some of the year’s most premium TVs, and the set even supports variable refresh rates – including in the AMD FreeSync Format.

A dedicated Game Bar menu can be called up, via which it’s possible to both see information on the incoming gaming feed and activate a few basic but handy gaming aids, such as a superimposed aiming crosshair.

Thanks to the screen’s responsiveness, general crispness and vibrant colours by budget TV standards, gaming on the 43P7K is an enjoyable experience. Even if like me you ultimately opt to stick with 60Hz frame rates at 4K resolution rather than taking advantage of the eye-catching 120Hz trick.

Picture Quality

• Bright performance for the money
• Good with dark scenes
• Some backlight bleeding

The 43P7K’s pictures don’t quite rewrite the TV value rulebook as spectacularly as some of TCL’s other TVs this year, but they’re still a cut above the budget norm.

They’re brighter than most, for starters. Measurements taken with Portrait Displays’ Calman Ultimate software, G1 signal generator and C6 HDR5000 spectrometer record 315 nits of brightness that holds rock solid across every HDR window size, from 1% to 100%.

This consistency of brightness does remind that this TV has much more limited backlight controls than other TCL TVs I reviewed in 2025, but it also adds up to a typically unusually consistent brightness performance – though there is a rider to this I’ll come to later.

While 315 nits might not sound like much, many budget TVs actually struggle to get beyond 250 nits or so. Plus the way 43P7K tackles its pictures, possibly its use of Quantum Dots, makes it look brighter than the measured 315 nit figure.

Plus TCL’s set somehow manages to give HDR highlights an extra feeling of intensity beyond the already quite high baseline brightness level. It’s limited HDR, certainly, but it does still feel like HDR – an impression helped, no doubt, by the 43P7K’s Calman-confirmed ability to portray more than 93% of the HDR P3 colour spectrum.

The 43P7K retains a consistent sense of colour volume from the darkest to the brightest picture moments, with no sense of tones starting to desaturate at either end of the luminance scale. 

There’s more subtlety in the image’s shading than I’d normally expect to see at this price point, too, which helps pictures look more three-dimensional and natural, as well as contributing to a sense of fine detailing and texture that does good justice to 4K content.

The 43P7K’s pictures generally look exceptionally sharp with native 4K feeds, in fact, as the screen’s strong colour range and subtlety is joined by impressively clean motion by budget TV standards. Even without motion processing in play, the screen suffers with surprisingly little hardware judder or lost resolution when showing moving objects, and there’s no smearing behind even really fast-moving stuff.

Actually, the motion processing options provided, while really not bad for the 43P7K’s money, didn’t feel necessary to me, even when watching 24 frame a second film content.

For the most part the 43P7K’s impressive eye for detail extends into dark scenes, as enough subtle, shady details are retained to give dark scenes as much depth as bright ones. This actually very impressive shadow detail talent by budget TV standards is down to less interference from low contrast greyness in dark scenes than we often see at the 43P7K’s price point, but also decent intelligence in the workings of the TVs’ backlight control mechanisms, limited in scope though they might be.

In fact, it’s clear that the core panel here, which is one of TCL’s extensively reworked new HVA panel types, is clearly capable of delivering a better level of native contrast than most budget rivals.

This is all reading so far like the 43P7K should be getting a full 5/5 score for such an affordable TV. There are, though, enough niggles with its picture performance to bring it up short of budget classic status.

First, with HDR sources in particular your eye can be distracted by little invasions of extraneous backlight creeping into the image’s bottom corners. Also, while getting the most convincing dark scenes, black colours and shadow detailing requires you to use the 43P7K’s Dynamic Contrast feature, this feature can also occasionally cause minor flickering effects as it struggles to settle on the best backlight set up for marginal brightness shifts within dark shots.

Finally, in a pretty typical budget LCD TV way, the 43P7K’s pictures can become a bit greyer and a bit less vibrant if you have to watch the screen from much of an angle.

Be in no doubt, though, that while the 43P7K isn’t quite as immaculate or dramatic a picture performer for its money as some of TCL’s more premium 2025 sets, its picture strengths still handsomely outweigh its weaknesses. 

Upscaling

The one area where the 43P7K’s budget nature arguably makes itself most clear is upscaling of HD to the screen’s native 4K resolution. Upscaled images look a little soft and noisy compared with the best upscalers in town, especially in comparison with the TV’s actually very effective native 4K playback.

It’s not bad enough to make HD or even SD sources remotely unwatchable – but it did lead to me spending a bit more time than I would otherwise try to reassure myself that things I wanted to watch definitely were only available in HD, without a 4K version tucked away somewhere.

Sound Quality

• Limited bass
• Relatively large sound

For most of the time the 43P7K sounds really quite respectable for its money. As I hoped, TCL’s knack for getting plenty of volume and projection out of even quite limited on paper speaker set ups helps the TV push sound comfortably beyond the screen’s left and right edges.

This relatively large soundstage is then populated with clear and well-placed details that actually manage to get at least a little benefit from the Dolby Atmos tracks the TV is capable of decoding. Especially as there’s a little genuine forward impact from the speakers to help create a sense of Dolby Atmos’s 3D sound space.

High pitched sounds don’t tend to become shrill or harsh either, and while bass is limited, it’s not completely absent.

Keeping the 43P7K’s sound, like its pictures, in 4 out of 5 territory, though, are the way vocals can start to become a bit overwhelmed during very dense, layered soundtrack scenes, and the way very deep, sustained low frequency sounds can succumb to pretty strident distortions – especially at the sort of volume levels you’ll want to use during movie nights.

Luckily the sorts of low frequency sounds that can trigger this don’t crop all that often unless you live exclusively on a diet of war movies and Jurassic Park.

Should you buy it?