Philips 55POS901 UHD 4K OLED TV Review & Comments

I will be interesting to see how samsung reacts to all these new OLEDS coming out, they claim their new QLED is the business but they've said that every year, the only company who have actually performed as well as they've gloated are LG with their OLEDS.

I think Samsung are going to start seeing their higher end model sales dropping off, unless they start undercutting OLED by a marge margin.


Perhaps well see another Samsung built OLED at some point, that would really put the cat among the pigeons, the industry badly needs some competition to bring OLED prices down and LED just doesn't cut it anymore.
 
I will be interesting to see how samsung reacts to all these new OLEDS coming out, they claim their new QLED is the business but they've said that every year, the only company who have actually performed as well as they've gloated are LG with their OLEDS.

I think Samsung are going to start seeing their higher end model sales dropping off, unless they start undercutting OLED by a marge margin.


Perhaps well see another Samsung built OLED at some point, that would really put the cat among the pigeons, the industry badly needs some competition to bring OLED prices down and LED just doesn't cut it anymore.
I think that is Samsungs reaction to OLED. By renaming thier top of the range edge lit lcd tvs as Qled. Trying to fool the masses into thinking it's some new tech.
 
I think that is Samsungs reaction to OLED. By renaming thier top of the range edge lit lcd tvs as Qled. Trying to fool the masses into thinking it's some new tech.

Yup- just like they tried to fool everyone touting their "state of the art" audio lab in California where their rubbish Atmos soundbar was developed.

I may be in the market for a new 4K tv in 2017 and will look closely at what Samsung is offering, but have never trusted them 100%.
 
Latency is too high, why can't we have an instant mode that bypasses the crap? My monitors total combined latency according to Tftcentral is 5ms in instant mode, but in standard it's 20ms.. why can't we have the same for TVs?
 
Latency is too high, why can't we have an instant mode that bypasses the crap? My monitors total combined latency according to Tftcentral is 5ms in instant mode, but in standard it's 20ms.. why can't we have the same for TVs?

..because they put the money into the disco lighting instead.
 
You say

There was absolutely no sign of any vignetting, which has affected OLED panels in the past and the same goes for discolouration and visible banding on things like football pitches. It would seem that Philips are choosing their panels carefully and the results are impressive.

I disagree with that last section, Philips only have a 55 inch version. The 55 inch OLED panels have much better uniformity with no banding and vignetting, which cant be said about the 65 inchers. So i doubt they where choosing the panels carefully

Also i cant even imagine them selling one at that price tag.Not when you can get a 65 B6 for that
Largely agree, but even my 65" B6 has only very minor Vignetting on the right and absolutely no banding at all. This review is naturally just based upon one example as well and the next one may suffer from some panel uniformity issues.

Completely agree with the price. Just madness for a 55" using a 2016 panel, when like you say, you can get an LG 65" 2016 panel for that price. You'd have to be a bit mental or a huge Ambilight fanboy to even consider this TV at anything around the RRP. Should be a grand cheaper IMO.
 
What about nits Steve, will the 2017 TVs with more nits only 200 more on the Panasonic and 400 more on the LG, will you be able to tell a big difference? Or does it require an increase of at least 600 on an Oled to be able to see a clear difference? Thanks
LG's claim of 1,000nits is in the horribly inaccurate Vivid mode, whereas Panasonic's claim of 800nits is based on an accurate picture. So both LG and Panasonic (and presumably Sony) can reach 1000nits but if you want your HDR image to actually look accurate that's going to be more like 800nits. That extra 200 nits will certainly help these new OLEDs deliver HDR with greater impact and produce more of the colour volume. The demos I've seen from Sony and Panasonic using 2017 LG panels certainly looked impressive in HDR, with better peak highlights.
 
There is no doubt that even it is the same panel as the LG B6 the Philips 901F is way better than the latter.Having owned both televisions and returned the LG within a week, I spent the last month fiddling with the Philips and here as follow my finding.
To start with motion handling been far from perfect it is not near as bad as the LG.I am very fond of judder free image whatever program I am watching and the Philips does a good job as long you leave the motion setting to medium otherwise is very likely to create artefact during fast moving seen.
Issues I'd like to point out is the amount of noise that display have especially when playing a BLURAY and it would be interesting to know if any other owner out there had the same problem.(adjusting the gamma to +2 and implementing more or less sharpness and NR fixed that).Also at time when accessing setting menu setting when viewing a bluray the audio go out of sink and requiring to stop and play the viewing again.Also Ambilight factory setting totally mismatched (brightness 100 on the left 62 and 55 on the top and 88 on the right)which make use ion the wall not very enjoyable.(fixed that with aluminium foil to boost the top side brightness and now the glow is even on all 3 side).Upgraded to all 4 side with 2 light strip at the bottom.Expensive but worthy every penny if you have your tv on the wall for the ultimate viewing.
Colour accuracy is very good I have been told by the calibrator guy and quite frankly I could see that from myself and save some quid as the picture after calibration is not as near as the potential of this tv set.Now,without diminish what are the parameter the come into play when calibrating at display I truly believed those parameter are out of date and belongs to a old display technology not taking into consideration the infinite contrast of modern display such as OLED and QLED.
The calibrator setting suggested by the technician are almost identical to the ones submitted and presented by Steve of AVForums but those setting have left me with a picture looking more like a plasma or projection screen washed out image and feeling very disappointed about my purchase.
However I had plenty of time and patient (if you own a Philips you know what I mean)to fiddle about and reconsider my perception of the Philips I own.
I am well aware of the "picture as director intended" but I would rather to have the perception of a window on my wall, therefore a realistic dimensional picture than a washed out image,especially when watching planet hearth and after paying a 3000 pounds price tag on a television capable in doing so.
Last but not least if you think Ambilight is a gimmick you probably never owned a tv set with it so you not missing out but if you have it is worthy (but expensive about 200 pounds) to upgraded the bottom side with 2 Philips+hue light-strips not evenly placed (1/3 and 2/3) as splitting them in half does produce an unnatural distracting effect.
Here a link of my set up.Bottom strips have been since then moved to produce a better and even glow.

UPDATE 8/4/17
My perception of the calibrated tv set been very poor wasn't wrong after all.The calibrator guy got it all wrong.Today, after my display developed a fault for the second time (every time red colour was displayed flickering grey line appeared randomly only on the red) I phoned Philips costumer care and with great surprise I was told the the HDMI port 1 and 2 should be used only for UHD sources as they implement high transfer rate for the reproduction of colours.Only HDMI port 3 and 4 should be used for HD content.No wonder after calibration I was left with the green look like radioactive and the red was glowing and I was just about to loose my mind in trying to get it right when the fault appeared for the second time and contacted costumer care.I followed the technician instruction (standby,unplug tv set and HD box for at least 3 minutes,change HDMI to port 3,switch all system on )to allow the tv set to recognise the HD box on the designated port after rebooting and there you have it,everything looks like it should even without calibration.
What an unpleasant and costly experience I had with the calibrator guy.He arrived six hours late very tired and rushed into the calibration leaving to me to copy the setting to one of the source.No follow up on how picture looked like after calibration on HD receiver (only for me to find out after he left).He did try one of his blu-ray on my player and even himself wasn't convinced of the result at least judging from his reaction but he was in so much hurry he left the CD in my player asked to be paid and left.To make thing worse after requesting by email the calibration files a week later I had to retain his CD 3 more weeks before he bother to send them and once I sent it to my expenses not even a thank you coming from him.What a shamble especially considering the cost of 235 pounds.I d like to point out that he had NOTHING TO DO with AVFORUMS technicians.
 
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LG's claim of 1,000nits is in the horribly inaccurate Vivid mode, whereas Panasonic's claim of 800nits is based on an accurate picture. So both LG and Panasonic (and presumably Sony) can reach 1000nits but if you want your HDR image to actually look accurate that's going to be more like 800nits. That extra 200 nits will certainly help these new OLEDs deliver HDR with greater impact and produce more of the colour volume. The demos I've seen from Sony and Panasonic using 2017 LG panels certainly looked impressive in HDR, with better peak highlights.

Do we have any Idea of panel life with HDR? This is why LCD is going nowhere I guess, being that we are hitting the 1000 level....just. OLED is never going to hit the Dolby Vision highs of 4000 nits, let alone 10k one day, unless they can work out a way not to fry the panel.
 
Also Ambilight factory setting totally mismatched (brightness 100 on the left 62 and 55 on the top and 88 on the right)which make use ion the wall not very enjoyable.(fixed that with aluminium foil to boost the top side brightness and now the glow is even on all 3 side).Upgraded to all 4 side with 2 light strip at the bottom.Expensive but worthy every penny if you have your tv on the wall for the ultimate viewing.

There is NO setting to adjust individual ambilight LEDS; no idea what your talking about. There are 8 LEDs on each side and 40 along the top on the 901F.

Using the Hue+Ambilight functions to buy a Hue light strip and sync it with the TV is a very interesting method of getting 4 sided ambilight on the TV. It wouldn't benefit me as its on a stand but on a wall it is an interesting idea and it looks good.

(For anyone not sure what I am talking about you can sync Philips Hue lights with Ambilight so they respond with the image like the TV does and you can adjust the position of the lights in the room to adjust the effect. I doubt Philips imagined anyone would use the light strip to create a 4th side of ambilight but it does obviously work.)
 
There is NO setting to adjust individual ambilight LEDS; no idea what your talking about. There are 8 LEDs on each side and 40 along the top on the 901F.

Using the Hue+Ambilight functions to buy a Hue light strip and sync it with the TV is a very interesting method of getting 4 sided ambilight on the TV. It wouldn't benefit me as its on a stand but on a wall it is an interesting idea and it looks good.

(For anyone not sure what I am talking about you can sync Philips Hue lights with Ambilight so they respond with the image like the TV does and you can adjust the position of the lights in the room to adjust the effect. I doubt Philips imagined anyone would use the light strip to create a 4th side of ambilight but it does obviously work.)

Does it have a Perfect Clear Motion setting? A French review seemed to indicate so ...

If the mentioned ISF mode is close to 6500 Kelvins it's useful. A light (at correct color temp) behind the tv not only reduces eye strain but can make the image appear to 'pop' more. There

If I recall correctly it (normally) has two ISF Ambilight settings: one is indeed ~6500K and the other is a warmer white ...

(edit: added ~ like I should have originally)
 
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"There is NO setting to adjust individual ambilight LEDS; no idea what your talking about. There are 8 LEDs on each side and 40 along the top on the 901F."

Hi Spinstorm I am sorry to say there is a way to individually set brightness of the 10 zone of Ambilight (and therefore to check the factory setting). Unfortunately for some reason once performed the procedure is not retain by the tv set once is switch off.I may missing something once I exit the setting for that I don't really know.
Here how ...type 062596 and press OK.You will be able to access restricted menu.It would be interesting to see what are the Ambilight values on yours.Regards
 
Does it have a Perfect Clear Motion setting? A French review seemed to indicate so ...



If I recall correctly it (normally) has two ISF Ambilight settings: one is indeed 6500K and the other is a warmer white ...

Warm white on the 901EF is what should be but is not 6500K.I had mine calibrated to that colour by a professional calibrator.Here the value....

RED 95
GREEN 93
BLUE 85

on the picture only the original Ambilight are set to 6500k the strips have yet to be set
 

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Here how ...type 062596 and press OK.You will be able to access restricted menu.It would be interesting to see what are the Ambilight values on yours.Regards

I did not know this (also its an engineering menu); however maybe Philips did this as that is the best performance? There are more LEDS on the top than the sides. I can't say I have felt it was unbalanced.
 
I did not know this (also its an engineering menu); however maybe Philips did this as that is the best performance? There are more LEDS on the top than the sides. I can't say I have felt it was unbalanced.

I guess is well less obvious on the stand as the space between tv set and wall is greater. Doesn't really make sense the left and right discrepancy doh. On the wall is a real eyesore.Is the same on your tv set ?
 
LG's claim of 1,000nits is in the horribly inaccurate Vivid mode, whereas Panasonic's claim of 800nits is based on an accurate picture. So both LG and Panasonic (and presumably Sony) can reach 1000nits but if you want your HDR image to actually look accurate that's going to be more like 800nits. That extra 200 nits will certainly help these new OLEDs deliver HDR with greater impact and produce more of the colour volume. The demos I've seen from Sony and Panasonic using 2017 LG panels certainly looked impressive in HDR, with better peak highlights.
Thanks Steve.
 
I did not know this (also its an engineering menu); however maybe Philips did this as that is the best performance? There are more LEDS on the top than the sides. I can't say I have felt it was unbalanced.

I had a look and those settings are confusing. It shows 10 modules under ambilight; no idea what they represent but the numbers you said were showing on my TV too. I can't see any issues myself with the LED brightness so I left it as it was.
 
Warm white on the 901EF is what should be but is not 6500K.I had mine calibrated to that colour by a professional calibrator.Here the value....

RED 95
GREEN 93
BLUE 85

on the picture only the original Ambilight are set to 6500k the strips have yet to be set

I hope you didn't pay whoever plastered your wall, it looks like he used a lego block as a trowel :D
 
Only thing I am interested with this TV, is the motion on it, good review, but you do not say a lot about the most important thing with this OLED, that makes it different to other OLED's, it looks like it has BFI black frame insertion, does it have black frame insertion when using the clear motion mode? Does the BFI mode look better than OFF? or is it very dim and flickers too much to be any use?
 
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Hi, as this is your latest review i'm adding this comments here but this goes for all TV reviews.

I dont know if you remember a while back I mentioned your apparent lack of attention to black response on your reviews, I seem to remember you saying you'd address that but I cant see you have.

When buying a TV these days I think black response has to be up there with the most important features and yet it hardly gets a look in on here and never ever gets a picture. You mention it, you mention clouding etc but there are no pictures and no mention what the lighting conditions were. Its great you are doing a full technical metered response review but I think you need to balance this with real world viewing.

I really think you need a complete section on black response with pictures so we can properly compare picture quality. 5% near black slides would be really usefull, If then you got a really poor performance on a 5% black you could also add a 10% to see if problems persisted.

I always find your reviews useful but less so for buying these days, without a detailed black response section I cant help feeling there is something very important missing.

Also a picture in a pitch black room so people could see how the TV deal with the black bars top and bottom, these are horrific on IPS panels for instance.
 
I agree about the black response, but really with OLED there is not a lot to worry about, would like to see more info on motion options.
 
I agree about the black response, but really with OLED there is not a lot to worry about, would like to see more info on motion options.

OLED have banding and vignetting issues near black, pictures would also be useful here. They are getting better so at some point they might not be required but I think that it will be along time before any TV shows a perfect 5% slide.
 
OLED have banding and vignetting issues near black, pictures would also be useful here. They are getting better so at some point they might not be required but I think that it will be along time before any TV shows a perfect 5% slide.

Yes it would be better to have that. I thought you meant 0% black, which on OLED is just black.But for example the philips OLED, is basically the same as every other 2016 OLED, except for the motion options (and ambilight), would have been good to have some more info on the motion options. For example the video would be good if demonstrated some of the motion options or showed some slides etc.
 
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Totally agree with Mclingo....reading last years reviews on the 2016 Lg Oleds you'd have thought there were no issues near black but that certainly wasn't the case when it came to people buying the sets....in fairness all reviewers of different sites in the uk and across the pond have being guilty of this omission.
Given near black performance could show big differences between the different brands on this years Oleds....hopefully this will be addressed in this years reviews.
 

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