TCL’s new Z100 speakers are the first with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, which promises to make surround sound setup super easy
There is a certain type of day in Los Angeles which seems to be classified as color for Dolby Vision, whether or not. Bringing a walk early in the morning along the Palisades park, the navy layer is soft like gauze, palm trees contrasting with the Pacific which touches low and slow against the sand. Perfect conditions for a pilgrimage. But I did not steal until Santa Monica for watching the gradients of the sky or even the screens. I am here for another Dolby technology, stretching my legs before heading to Universal Music Group Studios to see how immersive audio mixtures are made, and how TCL plans to undo your hypotheses on the living room sound with its Z100 speakers – the first Dolby FlexConnect wireless sound system.
Leaving behind the sounds and stories swirling around the pier, I arrive from an immersive experience in search of another. Inside the lounge of the recording installation, small gray columns dressed in tissue occupancy occupy all the areas available along the perimeter. But before we have time to explore their meaning, we are inaugurated in one of the mixture rooms. It is a tuxedo of a space, impeccably tailor -made, PMC monitors threaded along the walls and the ceiling precisely to measure.
This is a piece of 9.1.4, which means that nine loudspeakers map a horizontal step, a lfe channel manages the verification of the intestine, and four general costs draw the Z-with regard to sound for sound. Nick Rives, UMG registration engineer nominated for Grammy Awards, facilitates the format: Atmos is based on objects. You don’t live a guitar has a rear environment; You place this guitar in space. You are not only pan; You paint. The rendering translates this through the speakers, then keeps it there through extremely different systems-models like this, 5.1 Soundbars, headphones and headphones-so the intention is translated even if the number of speakers does not do so. This creative latitude, he explains, means fewer “sound sacrifices” than stereo; With more real estate, conflict frequencies can be separated instead of flowing for the same seat. There will always be a place for the filtering of the comb and the EQ compromises, but it is when more elements coexist appropriately without spreading the character of the other.
Shores indicates a mixture. The visualizer on the screen – green spheres that follow each element – looks like an audio orrery: a synth brush passes on the horizon, a whisper ramps behind us, as if the singer slipped through a dimensional rift. Solos shores a room and just … moving it effortlessly from the front at the back at the back. The lesson landed as the sound flee: the instruments and the effects are not locked on the tracks; They are placed in coordinates in a three -dimensional field.
If you are new in this field, a rapid compression of history: we have become mono in stereo at 5.1 (and its surround cousins) in Atmos, which cracks the ceiling. Atmos appeared in the cinemas in the 2010s, propagates in streaming and music, and is now everywhere from televisions to cars; Dolby’s role is not only an emblem on a box, but a pipeline of tools, from DAW plug-ins to renderings that recompose a mixture for your specific speakers. While various equipment manufacturers have their own interpretations and virtualizations, the basic technology is less “special effect”, more “faithful”.
We exchange a few questions, discuss the dynamic head space and the creative head space, then we are taken to another room to see how all this console choreography is reproduced in the real world – where the low tables, libraries and sofas could worry less about the corners of canonical speakers. We take our seats in a simulated living room, a sofa and stools placed in front of an QD-min LED TV, flanked by two of the obelisks previously seen, another on the side behind us.
We are then presented to the Z100, that Scott Ramirez, vice-president of TCL product marketing, described as “not just a new introduction of products; This is in fact a new category introduction ”. These coffee table cylinders do not advertise themselves – they look more like an interior decoration than to professional equipment or a new paradigm – but they have the distinction conducive to being the first product on the market with flexConnect.
The Arc FlexConnect can be read as a tour route of a group which continues to have the sites improve: unveiled with TCL in IFA 2023; Hisense announced his own plans in 2024; The deployments began in China; Mediatek showed bar integrations in January 2025; TCL announced American support in May; And now systems have landed in the United States. We get a little more why before we know if it is not part.
As Chris Turkstra of Dolby explains, FlexConnect takes on the object coordinates of a film or music and becomes them again according to two things he learns: where your devices In fact are and what every device is able of. Small television speakers? FlexConnect knows and attributes the work they can do gracefully while unloading punch and the presence at the Z100, which, when connected to a compatible TCL TCL (currently 2025 QM6K, QM7K and QM8K), report their own characteristics to the table. Consider FlexConnect as a conductor who knows not only the scoring, but also the pulmonary capacity and the strength of the grip of all those who play.
If atmos map maps intention and flexConnect card reality, the Z100 invites them to meet in the middle. Each Z100 speaker is an autonomous acoustic structure of 5 pounds 1.1.1 (main separate, bass and height conductors) evaluated at a 170 W muscular RMS. A silk tweeter was seated behind the grille, an average driver wore the body and a discreet driver on the top with height effects manipulated at 15 degrees. The components inside include premium parts such as neodymium magnets and deeply wrapped vocal coils co-coated with Dolby, therefore “wireless” should not mean “in weightlessness”. You can connect up to four of the $ 399 speakers, or three plus a wireless 130W subwoofer with a 5.25 -inch driver – a cap influenced by chipsets and bandwidth, but not by an inherent ceiling in Dolby Tech. Although the demo of today is TCL-TCL, FlexConnect itself is Switzerland, not a silo.
This is the configuration of satellite -one subwoofer that we hear, which offers a 45 -hz – 20 kHz frequency range. We start with the “Nature’s Fury” freezing coil of Dolby, then a contemplative scene of The two popesSO Top Gun: Maverick For the crowd “we get it, you like it very much”. Finally, a spectral track Billie Eilish plays, followed by the atmospheric of Elton John “Rocket Man”, a chestnut atmost. The wind revolves around our shoulders while thunder cracks above. Jets attach the sofa. A ghost singer manifests. Billow backup vocals. The movement remains continuous and the central image locked, despite the speakers perched on the side tables.
Admittedly, it is always possible to locate the rear speaker with it to our right, so we wonder if it can be moved more centrally, which can also give us a chance to see if the “simple” in “simply spatial” height is more than marketing confetti. Basic configuration East Simple: plug in power speakers; Your leading device, in this case, a TCL TV, detects them on Wi-Fi; A contextual window offers to configure; Intelligent optimization takes place via the integrated micro table of the TV – no microphones grouped, no science fiction sweeping. A user interface (illustrated below) displays a card of the place where the TV thinks that you have placed everything for the visual confirmation and the necessary adjustments; If someone stood in front of one during calibration (this happens), Remaps in a few seconds.
You can migrate furniture, or not want to move the Ficus, and the system should easily adapt to where you have located the Z100 speakers. Should being the word operating. Connected audio demos are not without their Gremlins. With any rearranged, a speaker refuses to be recognized. Cue the universal correction: Off / ON. A calibration polished later, and we are back to rain showers and missile strikes at low altitude at high risk. It can happen to you, it can happen to them. Technology forgives, he therefore hopes that you are too.
Z100 speakers also present Bluetooth 5.3 for direct music streaming, although this is a secondary quest-the main story is the Wi-Fi link to the TV, which meets the Dolby Latence / Quality requirements. Thus, you can use native applications, play space audio on Apple Music or even broadcast AirPlay content on your TV and have sent it to the system, knowing that everything will be synchronized, whether you have two, three or four speakers.
No, it will not replace the discreet components of a personalized installation. He will not convert audiophiles and housekeepers to read the forum reading. But it is not designed for this. The main objective of a Plug-And-Play system is to release the average living room of tyranny from sweet spot symmetry. It is an ambient presence, which makes the room that you have improbably greater than its dimensions without taking up space that you cannot save. No diagrams, no measurement in degrees, no dread. No more dopamine. With the Z100, TCL and Dolby Atmospons FlexConnect, want to add loyalty and eliminate friction, treating your room as full of resources, not restrictions.
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