China shipped 90 per cent of the world’s humanoid robots in 2025 and has more than 150 companies in the sector, but only 23 per cent of surveyed enterprises are satisfied with the products available. Morgan Stanley warns of a shake-out as billion-dollar IPOs collide with two-hour battery life and a market that delivered just 14,000 units last year.
TL;DR
China has more than 150 humanoid robot companies. It shipped roughly 90 per cent of the world’s humanoid robots in 2025. Its two largest makers, Unitree and AgiBot, are preparing initial public offerings that would value them at a combined 13 billion dollars. Morgan Stanley doubled its delivery forecast for the Chinese market this year to 28,000 units, a 133 per cent increase over 2025. And yet, when Morgan Stanley surveyed the companies that are supposed to buy these robots, only 23 per cent said they were satisfied with the products available. Battery life tops out at two to three hours per charge. Most deployments remain confined to exhibitions, showrooms, and Spring Festival galas where robots perform kung-fu routines for television cameras. The technology has arrived. The customers have not. China’s humanoid robot industry is the most capitalised, most productive, and most overpopulated robotics sector in the world, and it is heading for a reckoning that its government has already warned is coming.
In late 2025, China’s National Development and Reform Commission issued a rare public statement about the humanoid robot sector. Spokesperson Li Chao noted that the number of companies had climbed past 150 and was still growing, with more than half being startups or cross-industry entrants. The NDRC warned of redundant products, duplicated investment, and compressed space for genuine research and development. The language was measured. The implication was not. Beijing’s top economic planning agency was telling the market that it saw a bubble forming in the industry it had designated as one of ten priority sectors in the 15th Five-Year Plan, backed by a one-trillion-yuan state fund.
China’s smartphone supply chain has already begun pivoting to humanoid robot production, with companies like Lingyi iTech, a Foxconn supplier that assembles iPhones, targeting 500,000 humanoid units by 2030. The manufacturing infrastructure is real. The component ecosystem is deep. The problem is that the robots being produced are not yet generating the revenue their valuations imply. Unitree, which filed for a 608 million dollar IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, saw humanoid robot revenue surpass its quadruped robot business for the first time in 2025, but the company’s total scale remains modest relative to its targeted seven billion dollar valuation. AgiBot, which is aiming for a six billion dollar listing in Hong Kong, is in a similar position: significant technological capability, significant government backing, and a commercial market that has not yet materialised at the scale the IPO price demands.
The Morgan Stanley survey, led by China industrials analyst Sheng Zhong, found that 62 per cent of Chinese companies said they were likely to adopt humanoid robots within three years. That willingness, however, collided with a set of practical constraints that the industry has not resolved. The 23 per cent satisfaction rate reflected shortcomings in dexterity, functionality, and pricing. Ninety-two per cent of respondents said robots needed to fall below 200,000 renminbi, roughly 28,000 dollars, before mass adoption became viable. Only about 10 per cent of companies surveyed were currently evaluating or running pilot projects. The demand exists in theory. In practice, the robots are too expensive, too limited in capability, and too short on battery life to justify the investment for most industrial applications.
UBTech, one of the sector’s largest players, offered 18 million dollars to recruit a chief AI scientist, a salary that reflects both the intensity of the talent war and the recognition that the engineering challenges remaining are substantial. The Walker S2, UBTech’s latest industrial humanoid, entered mass production in early 2026 with orders exceeding 800 million yuan, and the company is building a factory in Beijing targeting 10,000 units per year by the end of 2026. But production capacity and commercial demand are different things. Morgan Stanley’s Zhong described 2026 as “a critical year as humanoid integrators strive to reach commercialisation and build up their ecosystems,” and warned of an impending shake-out. Production, he noted, is likely to be materially larger than sales, because major players are manufacturing robots internally for training and verification rather than shipping them to paying customers.
In April, a humanoid robot called Lightning, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, won the Beijing E-Town Half-Marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human world record by nearly seven minutes. More than a hundred robots competed. The event was covered globally. An engineer on the winning team said the achievement enabled technology transfer into structural reliability and cooling that would eventually benefit industrial applications. Robotics experts were less certain. The skills displayed during a half-marathon, sustained bipedal locomotion on a flat surface, do not translate to the manual dexterity, real-world perception, and adaptive problem-solving required for factory work, logistics, or the service applications that the industry’s business plans depend on.
The gap between spectacle and substance defines China’s humanoid robot moment. The Spring Festival Gala performances, the marathon records, and the viral videos of robots doing backflips generate the attention that attracts capital. The capital funds the next round of development. The development produces more impressive demonstrations. But the cycle does not produce revenue at the scale needed to justify the valuations being assigned. China’s industrial model has historically excelled at commercialising technology faster and cheaper than any Western economy, turning solar panels, electric vehicles, and batteries into globally dominant export industries within a decade. The question is whether humanoid robots follow that pattern or whether they represent a category where the gap between demonstration and deployment is structurally wider than the manufacturing advantage can close.
China’s dominance in humanoid robot shipments has not gone unnoticed. Boston Dynamics began commercial production of its electric Atlas robot in January 2026 and announced plans to deploy tens of thousands of units at Hyundai Motor Group factories, with a manufacturing facility near Savannah, Georgia, targeting 30,000 units per year by 2028. Figure AI, the leading American humanoid startup, holds a 39 billion dollar private valuation after its September 2025 fundraise, despite shipping a fraction of the volume Chinese companies manage. Tesla’s Optimus is performing basic tasks in its own factories, with Elon Musk projecting mass production and a price point of 20,000 to 30,000 dollars, though the robot is, by Musk’s own admission, “not in usage in a material way.” The Pentagon has awarded 24 million dollars in contracts to Foundation Future Industries for humanoid robot soldiers tested in Ukraine, opening a military market that Chinese companies cannot access but that validates the strategic importance governments are placing on the technology.
The pricing dynamics favour China. Unitree’s H2 is positioned below 30,000 dollars. Kepler, another Chinese maker, is targeting the same range. At CES 2026, the sheer number of Chinese humanoid robots on display, and their aggressive pricing, made clear that the supply-side economics are already competitive. The question is whether demand at those price points exists in sufficient volume to sustain an industry with 150 companies competing for it.
Zhong’s prediction of a shake-out is not a minority view. The NDRC’s warning, the Morgan Stanley satisfaction data, the IPO inspection of Unitree just twelve days after its STAR Market application was accepted, and the simple arithmetic of 150 companies chasing a market that delivered roughly 14,000 units in China in 2025 all point in the same direction. The companies that survive will be those that solve the commercialisation problem: identifying repeatable, scalable use cases where the economics of a humanoid robot are superior to the alternatives, whether those alternatives are purpose-built industrial arms, wheeled platforms, or human workers. The companies that do not will have burned through their funding producing impressive machines that no one outside a trade show needed to buy.
China’s humanoid robot industry has the manufacturing base, the component supply chain, the government support, and the engineering talent to lead the world. What it does not yet have is the market. The one-trillion-yuan state fund and the 15th Five-Year Plan designation ensure that capital will continue to flow. The NDRC warning ensures that Beijing is watching how it flows. Somewhere between the billion-dollar IPOs and the 23 per cent satisfaction rate, between the marathon records and the two-hour battery life, is the answer to whether China’s humanoid robot boom produces the next great Chinese export industry or the most expensive collection of trade show demonstrations the technology sector has ever funded. The robots can run a half-marathon faster than any human alive. They cannot yet work an eight-hour shift.
ai and ml
It’s not just gas prices skyrocketing. Frontier-model pricing keeps climbing too
It’s getting more expensive to use the latest models. OpenAI last month bumped the version number of its GPT model family to 5.5, and per-token prices rose too, in some cases doubling compared to its predecessor.
For 1 million tokens, GPT-5.5 is priced at $5 (input), $0.50 (cached input), and $30 (output). Its predecessor GPT-5.4 charges $2.50 (input), $0.25 (cached input), and $15 (output) per 1 million tokens.
The AI biz claims that the cost increase is offset to some extent by token processing efficiency – delivering better results using fewer tokens.
“While GPT‑5.5 is priced higher than GPT‑5.4, it is both more intelligent and much more token efficient,” the company said during the rollout.
But the cost is still going up, more than efficiency improvements are reducing costs. According to an analysis conducted by OpenRouter, GPT-5.5 is anywhere from 50 percent more expensive to nearly twice as expensive, depending on prompt length.
“Our analysis shows that GPT-5.5 actual costs increased 49 percent to 92 percent,” OpenRouter said. “Longer prompts, over 10k tokens, saw costs offset by shorter completions. Shorter prompts, under 10k, experience a higher cost increase where completions did not get shorter.”
That range – 49 percent to 92 percent – factors in the model’s token efficiency improvements, which are more relevant for longer prompts. According to OpenRouter’s measurements, GPT-5.5 generates between 19 percent and 34 percent fewer completion tokens for longer prompts (10,000 tokens and up).
If reports of OpenAI’s projected $14 billion loss in 2026 prove accurate, costs will have to rise much more to balance its insistent spending. But this is a problem also faced by rival Anthropic, set to lose a reported $11 billion in 2026.
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 arrived without a visible list price change amid claims about an improved tokenizer. The result, according to OpenRouter, is potential savings for shorter prompts but larger bills for longer ones.
“Our study of real Opus 4.7 usage shows that actual costs increased 12–27 percent for prompts above 2K tokens when cache absorption is taken into account,” the biz said. “Short prompts under 2K were the exception, where significantly shorter completions offset the tokenizer overhead entirely.”
Expect further price increases for premium models. ®
Cloudflare previously announced plans to hire more than 1,000 interns to ‘ramp up’ AI use.
Cloudflare is cutting 20pc of its workforce after AI usage at the company grew 600pc in the last three months. The company said that it is cutting more than 1,100 employees, and expects restructuring costs to range up to $150m.
Shares at Cloudflare fell by more than 16pc in after-hours trading despite the company announcing a stronger than expected quarter, with first-quarter revenue growing 34pc year-on-year to nearly $640m. It expects second-quarter revenue to hit between $664m and $665m.
“We have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era”, an email sent to employees read.
“Today’s actions are not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance – they are about Cloudflare defining how a world-class, high-growth company operates and creates value in the agentic AI era.”
In its earnings release yesterday (7 May), Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said: “AI is driving a fundamental re-platforming of the internet and a paradigm shift in how software is created and consumed – it’s shaping up to be the biggest tailwind we’ve ever seen in Cloudflare’s history.”
Cloudflare has offices in a number of European countries, including the UK. When queried on country-specific layoffs, the company redirected SiliconRepublic.com to the official announcement on its website.
The IT service provider is the latest to join a growing list of well-performing tech companies laying off human workers in preference for AI. In recent times, Coinbase has cut 14pc of its workforce; Meta, about 8,000 jobs; Block, 4,000 jobs; Oracle, about 10,000; Amazon, 30,000; Atlassian, 10pc of its workforce; and Snap, about 16pc – with the trend largely attributed to changing technology at the workplace.
Company leaders, who were previously apprehensive of linking layoffs to AI, have recently begun embracing the shift in work culture, with Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong noting AI is “changing how we work” and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg commenting that projects that previously required larger teams now only need “a single, very talented person”.
Block’s co-founder, head and chair Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, said earlier this year that a “majority of companies” will reach similar conclusions around smaller teams and make similar structural changes “within the next year”.
Cloudflare, however, is also tapping a younger, more AI-literate workforce, with plans to take on 1,111 interns by the end of 2026. The interns are expected to “ramp up the creative and widespread application of AI with a fresh approach”, the company wrote in a blog last September.
The company – which claims to interface with around 20pc of the web – had a turbulent final quarter last year with two major outages affecting websites across the globe. Sites and platforms such as Zoom, LinkedIn, Shopify, Canva, Substack and Coinbase, as well as X and OpenAI, were reportedly affected in the disruptions.
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Updated, 8 May, 10.41am: The article has been updated with a response from Cloudflare.
Is it me, or did PC gaming used to move faster? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a graphics card could feel outdated within a year, and major platform jumps arrived so often that upgrading became part of the hobby. Today, things are different.
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Barespace Capital’s new system gives salon owners direct access to growth funding through the platform they already use.
Start-up Barespace, an Irish AI-powered OS provider for the hair and beauty sector, has launched Barespace Capital, an embedded finance platform enabling salons to access funding within already utilised platforms.
Barespace and Barespace Capital aim to follow a shift towards embedded finance across vertical SaaS platforms. According to Barespace, the hair and beauty sectors often deal with traditional lenders who struggle with risk assessment and variable cash flow, as standard finance systems often rely on documentation and processes designed for other types of business.
Established in Dublin in 2022 by co-founders Conor Moules and Glenn McGoldrick, Barespace works with more than 300 salons across Ireland, the UK, France and Spain, and recently secured significant seed funding of €2.9m to support further expansion.
The platform stated that Barespace Capital “represents the latest step in the company’s evolution from a booking platform into an AI-powered operating system for the beauty industry”. So far, the company has raised €4.68m in funding.
Commenting on the announcement, CEO Moules said: “Salons run on tight margins and unpredictable cash flow. Traditional banks don’t understand the business and most salon owners either go without or jump through hoops for a loan that can take months to approve.
“Barespace Capital changes that. Because we already live inside the salon, managing bookings, product inventory, staff and payments, we have a real-time picture of the business that no bank ever sees. When you can see the talent and the traction in real time, backing them is not a risk. It’s obvious.”
In March of this year, Sifted released its annual list of the 100 fastest-growing Irish and UK start-ups; Barespace made an appearance, coming in at 56th position as the highest ranking seed start-up on the list. Other high-profile Irish entries included Dublin’s Kota, which placed in the top 10, and Protex AI, which ranked 21st.
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Looking for a different day?
A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Friday’s puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Friday, May 8 (game #796).
Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… Garden variety
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
• Spangram has 13 letters
First side: left, 8th row
Last side: right, 8th row
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
The answers to today’s Strands, game #797, are…
I initially thought I was playing yesterday’s game again but the themes are subtly different — yesterday it was “garden variety” as in commonplace and today it’s “garden varieties” as in the many vegetables one may grow in an actual garden, specifically in springtime.
That sorted out, I spotted ARTICHOKE almost immediately. Well, that’s a lie, I spotted “choke” immediately and then wondered if it could actually be ARTICHOKE.
After getting LETTUCE it was all pretty rudimentary, as each word was layered over each over in a growing heap — a bit like compost I suppose.
Strands is the NYT’s not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
This week was the best of times for Akamai and the worst of times for Cloudflare.
On the same evening, content delivery network mainstay Cloudflare announced it was cutting about a fifth of its staff in a realignment around AI, its competitor Akamai announced a seven-year, $1.8 billion deal with a leading LLM provider that Bloomberg identified as Anthropic.
Akamai CEO Tom Leighton said this was the largest deal in the company’s history and that it came after another large, unidentified frontier-model developer signed a $200 million deal last quarter.
“These leaders in AI have chosen Akamai because their AI workloads need the scale, performance and reliability that our cloud platform provides,” he said during the company’s first quarter earnings call on Thursday.
Akamai, which has 4,300 locations in 700 cities across 130 countries, won the deal against stiff competition from hyperscalers and neoclouds. He said Akamai’s ability to manage and scale complex distributed systems, as well as its low latency, tipped the scales in its favor.
Given the supply chain constraints in datacenter space, especially as it relates to memory costs and the infrastructure needed inside of large datacenter buildouts, one analyst asked if Akamai planned any increase to its capital expenditures this year to pay for it. Akamai executive vice president and CFO Ed McGowan said that was not likely.
“We’ve been able to get the supply chain ready. We anticipate receiving all the goods that we need to deliver this services over the next seven years within the next 12 months,” he said. “Now there’s always potential for slippage and delays, but we have mechanisms in our contracts to deal with, if, in say six months from now, prices were to go up. So we’ve taken that into consideration.”
McGowan said it is a consumption-based contract over seven years, so as soon as Akamai ramps the necessary capacity, it will start taking revenue, which he expects to begin happening later this year.
Winning this deal and ones like it has been Akamai’s goal in the AI era, Leighton said.
“This has been the strategy all along. So we’re very pleased to be executing against it,” he said. “The goal has been to be deploying a distributed inference platform, distributed compute platform that would be desired by enterprises across the spectrum … The platform is to a point where we can do that, and I think you’ll see more of this going forward.”
On the same day, across the country, Cloudflare was spelling out the bad news to its employees that it planned to cut the workforce by 1,100, roughly 20 percent. Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn said it was not about cutting costs, but about building a company that meets the AI moment.
“We have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere,” they wrote in a blog post.
Cloudflare’s revenues grew 34 percent year over year to reach $639.8 million in the first quarter. It posted a net loss of $22.9 million. It expects to pay up to $150 million in severance and benefit payments related to the layoffs.
While Akamai’s stock price surged 26 percent on Friday, Cloudflare dropped 23 percent. With a market cap of over $69 billion, Cloudflare still has more than three times Akamai’s market cap. ®
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The TCL QM8L SQD-Mini LED TV may be technically the company’s third-tier TV this year, but it’s good enough to give you a flagship-type experience for a very reasonable price.
In my time with the TCL QM8L, I was very impressed across the board — almost as much as my dad, who’s probably stole even more time using it than me during testing. Its bright screen makes daytime watching easy even in bright rooms, and TCL’s backlight tech does a great job of offering a clean image with no blooming, highlighting detail no matter how bright or dark the picture is.
In fact, I think that everything this TV has to offer not only makes it really strong contender among the best TVs of 2026, as well as one of the best gaming TVs thanks to its four HDMI 2.1 ports and broad current-gen gaming features.
There’s plenty more to like about the 75QM8L (I received the 75-inch size for this review). The hands-free control is always a nice feature and having Google Gemini’s conversational interaction is mostly lovely, though I did find issue with some of the information it would offer up during use.
And I also found it to not quite measure up to the best of the best when it comes to color accuracy, or for color coverage compared to what TCL claimed it would be capable of.
That said, if you were to watch this TV and not look at any benchmarks, you would — like me — not think about any of that and just be enthralled with the sharp, smooth, and bright image (and brightness is a key area where the benchmarks look pretty good).
If you’re looking for an excellent mini-LED TV that comes in big sizes, and can hold up to even the brightest rooms while still delivering nuanced picture quality, I can recommend the TCL QM8L strongly.
TCL has taken a go-big-or-go-home approach this year, releasing impressive updates for its top couple of lines of TVs, including the QM8L series reviewed here. While the TV was on show at CES, it wasn’t available for purchase until April 2026.
It sits below the TCL X11L (which is this year’s flagship) and the TCL RM9L TVs in this year’s line-up, but it uses the same SQD-Mini LED panel technology as the X11L. (The RM9L uses a new RGB LED panel, just to confuse things.)
As far as actual pricing goes, the pricing is not for the faint of heart, despite being third in the list. I’ll discuss how it stacks up to the competition later (and TCL does offer good value), but that doesn’t change the fact that a price of $1,999.99 for the 65 inch, the smallest size available for the QM8L, is a lot of money to throw at a TV.
It’s less than the likes of LG G6 OLED TV, but is still undeniably premium — though it’s already dropped massively in the few weeks since its launch, and will drop further — as is always the case with TCL TVs.
I think adding a couple hundred bucks to upgrade to the next size up, the 75-inch reviewed here, is reasonable if you’re already considering dropping that kind of cash on a TV.
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Screen type: |
SQD-Mini LED |
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Refresh rate: |
144Hz |
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HDR support: |
HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision IQ |
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Smart TV: |
Google TV |
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HDMI ports: |
4x HDMI 2.1 |
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Built-in tuner: |
ATSC 3.0 |
The TCL 75QM8L has a good amount of features, as it should for TCL’s almost flagship TV. It has all the various HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and DTS support one could need, which no rivals from LG, Sony or Samsung offer in their entirety.
The TV also utilizes some proprietary features to improve picture quality. For instance, the TCL Deep Color System is meant for a wider color range, to get up to a claimed 100% BT.2020 color coverage.
I’ll go into our test results in the next section, but I’ll briefly mention that the TV does decently but doesn’t actually get to that 100% color coverage for either BT.2020 or DCI-P3 in our measurements. Still, this technology does boost the colors beyond what’s been normal for mini-LED in the past (and TCL says there are multiple ways to test for BT.2020 coverage).
Available in 65-, 75-, 85-, and 98-inches (my test unit is the 75-inch model), these TVs come with up to 4,000 local dimming zones featuring precise array full local dimming thanks to the SQD-Mini LED panel, and up to 6,000 nits of peak brightness to really make the most of HDR content.
For reference, the flagship X11L claims up to 20,000 local dimming zones and 10,000 nits of brightness. Considering the 75QM8L is much more affordable (in comparison), its specs are pretty impressive.
The ‘Enhanced Halo Control System’ in the LED backlight promises to minimize blooming, partly by using 26-bit backlight controllers. Having spent a good amount of time looking at this screen with HDR content on (as well as some test videos with colorful objects against black backgrounds), I haven’t noticed much if any in the way of blooming for real-world use.
Colorful or bright objects kept their shape against darker backgrounds without spilling over, so to speak, to those darker sections.
The WHVA panel 2.0 that TCL hopes will make you forget about OLED TVs also sport a 144Hz refresh rate, and a 178º viewing angle.
A TSR AI Pro processor powers the TV, with its processing focused partly on Google’s AI-powered voice assistant Gemini. And Wi-Fi 6 is on hand for a more responsive TV – realistically, your Wi-Fi is going to be the biggest bottleneck on a newer TV so this is a welcome upgrade.
If you’re like me, the hands-free voice control, using the Google Gemini AI voice assistant, will be the most impressive and most noticeable. Every time I say “Hey Google,” I find the TV to be responsive, even when it’s off and I’m asking it to turn back on.
I can open apps and a good deal of content just by speaking to it. I can also ask out more general knowledge-type queries that one would with a voice assistant (weather, sports scores, news, etc.).
Of course, there are some limitations in that it doesn’t always lead me to the right streaming location for certain content (more on that in the smart TV section).
Beyond the voice assistant, the AI capabilities, powered by the TSR AI Pro Processor, include an AI art gallery as a screen saver, AI news briefs, and AI picture-related settings.
For gaming, you’ve got 144Hz at 4K and variable refresh rate support across all four HDMI ports, plus the option for a 288Hz refresh rate at 1080p (still with VRR).
I spent a few weeks with the TCL 75QM8L, sharing time in control of the screen with my dad, which means a combination of Phillies games, British murder mysteries, blockbusters, 90 Day Fiancé and Leave It To Beaver — as well as some next-gen gaming. I’ll go into detail on that last bit in the gaming section, but it’s instructive for how the screen looks too.
During use, the TCL QM8L is a stunner. What I think puts this TV above other so many other options are the color and halo control systems I mentioned above, combined with the total HDR support, meaning images look gloriously rich.
We measured 3,719 nits of peak HDR brightness in a 10% window in Filmmaker Mode, which is absolutely stunning – but the over 2,000 local dimming zones in the model I tested helped to keep clear separation between light and dark areas despite the brightness.
There’s no bleed from one color to the next, and I’m able to see details in shadows clearly thanks to high dimming capability of each section.
Fullscreen HDR brightness in a 100% window is also colossal, reaching 760 nits in Filmmaker Mode and 790 nits in Standard (which is what you’re more likely to use for sports).
Even in SDR in Standard mode, it hit 518 nits. That blows away any TV I’ve tested so far, and means the screen will only have reflection issues in dark scenes — watching sports in the day won’t be any kind of problem.
Also useful for sports, or family room viewing, is that it has a pretty wide viewing angle, so I can watch something at a very sharp angle and still see the picture impressively clearly.
Speaking of sports, the motion handling is smooth. Whether it’s watching NBA basketball, or even a sweeping drone shot, the screen doesn’t show much in the way of judder. And of course, movies come across as buttery smooth.
Regardless of what’s happening on the screen, the TCL QM8L still manages to reproduce all the detail of the image. Whether it’s the fine lines of a petal in one of those hi-res screen tests or the crowd in the background of a game, it all looks clear and natural.
Even lower resolution content looks plenty sharp with a decent amount of detail. I never knew Leave It To Beaver could look so good, thanks to the “super resolution” AI upscaling (which is optional, but is enabled out-of-the-box).
When it comes to color, TCL’s purported 100% BT.2020 rating is a little overblown, because the best we measured was 90%. (TCL told us there are multiple ways to measure BT.2020, and that it makes a difference.)
DCI-P3 color coverage is incredibly strong for a mini-LED TV at 98% — this is what we get from the most elite OLED TVs normally, with mini-LED falling further behind.
A little more concerning is the color accuracy. We measure how close the color reproduction is to ‘perfect’, measured in a ‘Delta E’ score, which means how far the picture is from the signal it’s trying to recreate. We look for a score below 3, because at that point the human eye can’t distinguish any difference from the reference pattern.
In Filmmaker Mode, the TCL QM8L score 3.7, which is a little disappointing for a premium TV, but not a dealbreaker. But in Standard, we measured a score of 9.9, which is shockingly high for something in this price range.
This is out of the box, of course, but most people don’t calibrate their TV. As I said above, I found the colors to be really impactful and involving, but Filmmaker Mode is definitely the way to enjoy things if you want an accurate, more natural look — Standard isn’t where we’d expect it to be.
The sound quality on the TCL 75QM8L is pretty impressive, as it should be, considering the price and the fact that the sound system is branded as being by Bang & Olufsen.
I’ve tested everything from blockbuster movies to reality TV to various games and music, and I believe the audio here is good enough for you to skip adding a soundbar as long as you’re not looking for a home theater-type listening experience.
The high-end has plenty of presence while not being ice-pick brittle, letting sounds like flutes, strings, cymbals, and anything one might consider ‘sparkly’ (think chimes) come through with full clarity.
The mid-range is full in a way that many TVs aren’t able to produce, and is, in my opinion, the main reason to typically add a soundbar to a setup. When listening to music, vocals and guitar have the appropriate amount of aggressiveness, while dialog has a weight to it in movies the helps it to stand out clearly.
There’s a decent amount of mid-bass, so you’ll still get a little thump when listening to music or watching an action movie, but the two built-in woofers aren’t able to reproduce the frequencies typically the responsibility of a subwoofer. If you really want to feel the audio, you’ll need to add one.
Happily, TCL does have a wireless subwoofer that can be added for that purpose, but it does require an additional purchase. Likewise, though the TV supports Dolby Atmos and DTS, you’ll have to get TCL’s Dolby Atmos FlexConnect speakers to actually hear any surround sound if you don’t want to purchase or build a whole home theater system.
The TV does, however, manage to reproduce some spatial audio without any add-ons. Turning it on does add a sense of height to whatever I’m watching, so you should definitely give it a try.
I also appreciate the fact that there are some other audio options to fine tune, such as a bass boost, a dialog enhancer (admittedly subtle), an auto volume control that works somewhat like night mode in that it compresses audio volume, and an AI sonic adaptation feature that works to offset the reflections of your room for a more pure sound.
That last feature works, though not quite as well as something like Dirac, so don’t expect audiophile-level audio.
The ‘zero edge’ bezels on the 75QM8L make me almost feel like I’m watching on a floating screen — there’s almost no frame.
The centered stand, which can be height-adjusted during installation to accommodate a soundbar, makes the TV feel more balanced and stable than many TVs that I test (and we typically get 65-inch models for testing).
The stand also has cable management built into it — it has a back panel that pops out to hide the cables — which we always appreciate.
I also like the fact that all four HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1, meaning you don’t need to think about which one you’re going to use and fiddle around. Well, mostly: there’s still only one HDMI eARC port, so if you connect that one of the best soundbars or an AV receiver, you need to know which it is.
Lastly, the remote is actually a bit bigger than I’m usually used to, which some might like. It’s heftier and so easier to keep track of and the bottom is angled to fit snugly in the hand. It’s also backlit and has a talk button, though you can also communicate with the TV via Google Gemini.
The Google TV interface is one I’ve gotten accustomed to after reviewing a number of TVs and streaming devices that use it. The way it’s implemented on the TCL 75QM8L is essentially the same, with the only noticeable difference to most TVs being the inclusion of Google Gemini.
Google Gemini is a very robust voice assistant. Since it’s AI-powered, it’s conversational and quick, but also prone to mistakes the way generative AI generally is.
For example, I had Gemini look up the movie Swept Away, and while it offered correct information on the fact that there are two versions, it was wrong on where it was available to stream. Strangely, when I just used the interface’s search function, I was sent to a landing page that suggested it was available to stream on Tubi, which still only hosted the newer, more maligned, 2002 version.
Gemini is nice to use, though, with a selection of different timbres of voices that sound natural when speaking. I’m able to ask about much more than movies of TV, because it is a full-blown voice assistant. It even brings up a neat little graph when talking about the weather.
For some reason, it did default to pulling up relevant YouTube videos when I asked more general questions. For instance, I asked ‘Recommend a movie to me based on my viewing habits’ and it just pulled up a bunch of YouTube videos (I was not in the YouTube app, mind you) related to must-see movies.
The rest of the Google TV interface is more standard fare. A rotating banner covers the top of the home page, followed by rows of recommendations including ‘Must Watch’, ‘Continue Watching’ and more, not to mention a row of apps if you want to open one and browse.
Still, many will appreciate being able to browse much of the available content from the home page. Just be aware, it’s not comprehensive, as the interface may not pull information from certain apps.
As every manufacturer does these days, there’s a good amount of free content available. Google FreePlay, in particular, has a good deal of content and works much like a cable guide interface. Who knew that Google would be able to quench my dad’s thirst for Leave It To Beaver — there was a whole channel streaming episodes.
When you first go to the settings option via the remote or navigating the screen, a breakout box of quick settings appear at the top right corner of the screen. You have to still click once more to get the full list of settings — sometimes this is useful, sometimes it feels like it’s just adding a step.
There’s a lot of fine tuning available, especially for the display, so I can imagine the menus to be a little overwhelming for anyone digging in for the first time. But it’s good to have more options than not, especially with as good of a TV as this.
Great news for gamers this year is that all four of QM8L’s HDMI inputs are of the full-fat HDMI 2.1 variety, meaning that they all support 4K at 120Hz or 144Hz. Just make sure to enable faster refresh rates in the TV’s menu.
Speaking of menus, if you press on the hamburger symbol (the three stacked lines) on the remote while gaming, the TCL 75QM8L will pull up a specialized menu that the brand calls the Game Bar, enabling you to turn on things like an FPS counter, Aim Assist, Game Accelerator 288 (which doubles the perceived refresh rate to 288Hz, but drop the resolution to 1080p), and Overdrive, which is a kind of motion blur that can’t be used as the same time as high refresh rates.
To test the TV for gaming, I used a Playstation 5 and had no problem running compatible games at 120 fps. All of them looked crisp thanks to the 4K resolution with good HDR contrast despite the more limited processing you get in the gaming mode.
The 9.5ms latency is excellent for a TV, and is basically as good as you get from any of the best gaming TVs — and helps everything feel fast and snappy when playing.
Lastly, not only can the TV switch inputs automatically when a console is turned on, but the TCL QM8L will automatically switch the picture mode to game mode.
The 75-inch TCL QM8L is about two grand (which is a drop from the $3k is cost right at launch) — that’s not cheap and it’s out of reach for many consumer.
However, compare it to LG’s mid-range OLED offering, the LG C6, and the TCL is not looking so bad. That comes with a price tag of $3,699 for the 77-inch. The TCL has a big price advantage, but the two TVs are comparable overall for features.
The big threat to it is really last year’s TCL QM8K. That’s now available for around $1,500 for a 75-inch size, and is a really excellent TV without question at that price — the QM8L’s better color range, improved backlight and four HDMI 2.1 ports mean that it’s worth the upgrade in my opinion.
It may not be the bargain of the year at this price, it represents a great value overall, and is above average when it comes to bang for your buck.
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Features |
Excellent picture and audio format support, plus hands-free AI-based controls that can be really useful. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Picture quality |
Stunning brightness and extremely impressive contrast control for a mini-LED. We wish the colors in Standard Mode were more accurate. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Sound quality |
The audio sounds good enough to skip a soundbar, though there’s not much in the way of low-end. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
The adjustable center stand with cable management is great, as are the zero edge bezels. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Smart TV and menus |
Google Gemini is conversational and easy to use though not quite reliable, while the Google TV interface is fairly intuitive to use. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Gaming |
Four HDMI 2.1 ports and super-rich HDR images make this a pleasure to game on. |
5 / 5 |
|
Value |
The TCL QM8L is a strong value compared to similar-tier TVs from other brands, but is still pricey. |
4 / 5 |
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
TCL QM8L |
Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED (2025) |
Hisense U65QF |
LG C6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Price (65-inch) |
$1,799 |
$849 |
$999 |
$2,699 |
|
Screen type |
SQD-Mini LED |
QLED |
QLED w/ mini-LED |
OLED |
|
Refresh rate |
144Hz |
60Hz |
upt to 144Hz |
165Hz |
|
HDR support |
HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision IQ |
Dolby Vision/HDR10+ Adaptive/HDR10 |
Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG |
Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG |
|
Smart TV |
Google TV |
Fire TV |
Fire TV |
WebOS 26 |
|
HDMI ports |
4 HDMI 2.1 |
4 HDMI 2.0 |
4 (2x HDMI 2.1) |
4x HDMI 2.1 |
I used the TCL 75QM8L regularly for a couple weeks. I tested it using streaming shows, movies, music, and games (via PS5). I went through the various features, particularly the hands-free AI voice assistant, to see if they work as advertised. I also spent time listening to the audio as well as paying attention to the picture quality.
The objective data measurements were taken by Future Publishing’s TV testing lab, which uses the Klein K-10A colorimeter and Jeti 15VA spectroradiometer, Murideo Six G 8K Metal test pattern generator, and Portrait Displays’ Calman color calibration software to record the results.
I’ve tested a lot of tech gear over the years, from laptops to keyboards and speakers, and so have been able to use my expertise towards giving an honest and fair opinion, not to mention a critical eye, to any product I test.
You can read an in-depth overview of how we test TVs at TechRadar at that link.
Some Netflix subscribers are encountering a server error that prevents them from cancelling their memberships, at a time when the streaming platform has just raised prices across all of its US plans.
The error, identified by the code NSES-500, appears on Netflix’s standard “Something went wrong” page and has persisted for affected users across multiple devices and browser changes over at least a week, suggesting the problem lies within Netflix’s backend infrastructure rather than individual account settings.
One suggested workaround circulating in the same threads involves switching the account’s payment method to an expired card before attempting to cancel, a step that some users report bypasses the error screen where the conventional cancellation route continues to fail.
Reports of the issue have gathered significant traction on Reddit, where a thread on r/Anticonsumption documenting the cancellation block has drawn over 1,500 upvotes, with further threads on r/netflix showing a consistent pattern of subscribers hitting the same wall regardless of the workarounds attempted.
The price rise that preceded this error affected every tier of Netflix’s US subscription offering, a broad adjustment that pushed the Premium plan to $26.99 per month for 4K streaming and represented one of the more aggressive rounds of pricing changes the platform had pushed through in a relatively short window, giving subscribers fresh motivation to assess whether to stay.
That context makes the cancellation fault considerably more aggravating for those it affects, since any subscriber unable to complete the process before their billing date rolls over faces the prospect of being charged for another full cycle before they can exit the service.
Some users in the Reddit threads have reported that calling Netflix’s customer service line directly produced a successful cancellation where the online process had failed entirely, though this route requires navigating a support queue rather than using the standard account management tools.
Netflix has not acknowledged the error publicly, and no timeline has emerged for when the self-service cancellation flow is expected to return to normal working order.
When to watch Man City vs. Brentford
Where to watch
Nothing less than a win looks likely to do for title-chasing Man City on Saturday as it hosts a Brentford side looking to build on its London derby win last weekend.
Second-placed City has a game in hand over title rival Arsenal. However, the team comes into this weekend’s action five points behind the Gunners, having played out a tremendously entertaining 3-3 draw at Everton on Monday.
Brentford enters this game in seventh place and with renewed hope of qualifying for Europe for the first time in its history following last weekend’s 3-0 win over London rival West Ham.
Manchester City takes on Brentford on Saturday, May 9, at the Etihad Stadium, with kickoff set for 5:30 p.m. BST. That makes it a 12:30 p.m. ET or 9:30 a.m. PT start in the US and Canada, and a 2:30 a.m. AEST kickoff in Australia in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Jeremy Doku scored a last-second equalizer against Everton to rescue a point on Monday night.
Saturday’s clash at the Etihad Stadium will be broadcast on NBC and streaming service Peacock. To catch the game live on Peacock, you’ll need a Peacock Premium or Premium Plus subscription. NBC Sports Network is available on platforms like YouTube TV.
Peacock offers two Premium plans, and after recent price increases, the ad-supported Premium plan costs $11 a month and the ad-free Premium Plus plan costs $17 a month.
If you’re traveling abroad and want to keep up with Premier League action while away from home, a VPN can help enhance your privacy and security when streaming.
It encrypts your traffic and prevents your internet service provider from throttling your speeds, and can also be helpful when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks while traveling, adding an extra layer of protection for your devices and logins. VPNs are legal in many countries, including the US and Canada, and can be used for legitimate purposes such as improving online privacy and security.
However, some streaming services may have policies that restrict VPN use to access region-specific content. If you’re considering a VPN for streaming, check the platform’s terms of service to ensure compliance.
If you choose to use a VPN, follow the provider’s installation instructions to ensure you’re connected securely and in compliance with applicable laws and service agreements. Some streaming platforms may block access when a VPN is detected, so verify whether your streaming subscription allows VPN use.
Price $78 for two yearsLatest Tests No DNS leaks detected, 18% speed loss in 2025 testsJurisdiction British Virgin IslandsNetwork 3,000 plus servers in 105 countries
ExpressVPN is our current best VPN pick for people who want a reliable and safe VPN, and it works on a variety of devices. It’s normally $120 a year for its most popular plan (Advanced), but if you sign up for an annual subscription for $90, you’ll get three months free. That’s the equivalent of $6 a month.
Note that ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
This Saturday afternoon clash is exclusive to Sky Sports and will be shown on its Sky Sports Main Event channel. If you already have Sky Sports as part of your TV package, you can stream the game via its Sky Go app. Cord-cutters will want to set up a Now account and a Now Sports membership to stream the game.
Sky’s standalone streaming service Now offers access to Sky Sports channels with a Now Sports membership. You can get a day of access for £15 or sign up to a monthly plan from £35 a month right now.
If you want to livestream EPL games in Canada this season, you’ll need to subscribe to Fubo. The service has secured exclusive rights to the Premier League and is broadcasting all 380 matches live.
Fubo is the go-to destination for Canadians looking to watch the EPL, with exclusive streaming rights to every match. It currently costs CA$27 for the first month, then CA$31.50 per month thereafter.
Livestreaming rights for the EPL are now with Stan Sport, which is showing all 380 matches live, including this game.
Stan Sport will set you back AU$20 a month (on top of a Stan subscription, which starts at AU$12). It’s also worth noting that the streaming service is currently offering a seven-day free trial.
A subscription will also give you access to Premier League, Champions League and Europa League action, as well as international rugby and Formula E.
As the Nintendo Switch 2 still doesn’t have access to the YouTube app, owners have managed to find a workaround on the console.
This workaround is via the free-to-play title Super Animal Royale and takes advantage of the news section embedded within the app. As shared by Reddit user JampyL, the news section surfaces YouTube videos that open inside the console’s browser and enables gamers to search for and watch any YouTube content freely.
Nintendo Switch 2 owners have found a workaround to access YouTube on the console through the free-to-play title Super Animal Royale, filling a gap that Google has yet to address with an official application.
Undoubtedly it’s a clever workaround, however it’s not without its compromises. Firstly, the browser-based playback caps resolution at just 360p which makes longer or detail-heavy content much harder to watch on a TV. In addition, users won’t be able to sign into their YouTube accounts which means there’s no access to personal playlists or recommendations.
The absence of a native YouTube application on the Switch 2 is a notable gap given that the original Nintendo Switch shipped with a dedicated YouTube app that remained available to users throughout the console’s life cycle, with that same legacy app remaining downloadable on Switch 2 hardware for owners who want a stopgap while waiting for a purpose-built successor.
Google confirmed during an earlier period that a YouTube application for the Switch 2 is in active development, though more than a year has passed since that acknowledgement without any further update on timing or availability, leaving the console without streaming video support that competing platforms have offered as standard for well over a decade.
The Switch 2 launched earlier this year to strong demand, with Nintendo reporting significant early sales figures, making the continued absence of a fully functional YouTube experience on the platform increasingly conspicuous among the broader library of missing media applications at this stage of the hardware cycle.
Google has not confirmed when a dedicated YouTube application will arrive on the Nintendo eShop, leaving Switch 2 owners reliant on workarounds for a feature the platform’s predecessor supported from relatively early in its own life cycle.
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