TCL has just been told its QLED badge is not worth the sticker it is printed on.
A court in Munich ruled the firm broke Germany’s unfair competition law by pushing QLED sets that “do not deliver the colour reproduction expected from QLED TVs.”
According to the Korea Times, that decision means TCL can no longer advertise or sell certain QLED models in Germany, with the QLED870 series cited as one of the affected lines.
Samsung brought the case, calling the marketing deceptive, and similar legal scraps are lining up in other countries, including the US.
The complaints share the same blunt point: TCL’s “QLED” does not match what buyers are led to expect from a quantum dot LED set.
In late 2024, South Korean outlet ET News detailed tests that allegedly failed to detect key quantum dot materials in TCL televisions.
It said: “no indium (In) or cadmium (Cd) was detected in three TCL QD TV models. Indium and cadmium are essential materials that cannot be omitted for QD implementation… if neither is present, QD technology cannot be said to have been applied.”
The tests were commissioned by Seoul chemicals firm Hansol Chemical, carried out by Geneva’s SGS and UK tester Intertek, with Hansol loudly promoting the results while suing.
TCL disputed the claims, saying “The QD content may vary depending on the supplier, but it definitely contains cadmium,” it said.
TCL then produced its own test results, including work by SGS, but its evidence focused on quantum dot films rather than finished televisions.
The wider mess exposes how fuzzy TV branding has become when there is no single, independent certification that everyone agrees to follow.
Germany’s TÜV Rheinland has certified both Samsung and TCL, but with different labels that read more like marketing slogans than technical definitions.
Samsung got “Real Quantum Dot Display” while TCL was handed “Realistic Visual Experience”, and the lawyers are clearly not done arguing about what any of it means.
