G a f f e r
Prominent Member
Just sitting back and watching the TV day to day and enjoying it for what it is, here are my thoughts after about a month:
55" vs 65" - Initially I fully planned on buying the 65" but it ended up being £800 more than the 55" and that saving easily allowed me to purchase the Tumble Dryer I also needed along with the mountain of other things for the house (seeing as I've only recently moved in and there's a lot of stuff still to buy).....55 is within the range for my viewing distance and it made SWMBO easier to placate too .
Ambilight - Never having had this before I loved it at first. Then I noticed that for about the first 2 weeks I was actually looking at the Ambilight more than the actual picture on screen. Forward wind to now and when focusing on the content, I don't really notice the Ambilight anymore, save a couple of things. Firstly it does provide a tad more immersion imo (I think it does this by tricking my brain into thinking the screen is larger than it is) and secondly it looks great at night with all the other lights off. However, it's not the "game changer" it's cracked up to be and I'd be OK without it on any future set I owned.
Sound - I had to start from scratch so, apart from the spare sub I had lying around, had no audio system. Meaning for me this TV was great VFM - B&W sound bar built in along with OLED. The audio is very clear and the Atmos appears to provide a good "surround effect" that most TVs have in their settings. It in now way measures up to a dedicated 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system but is still the best in built audio I have heard on a telly.
Sub Out - Which brings me on to the sub out. Due to the soundbar, this is one of the few TVs to offer this and boy does the sound improve immensely with a properly calibrated subwoofer in tow (I'm using it with a DSPeaker 8033C with outboard power supply). Gives a very cinematic experience with one caveat - poor firmware programming from Philips. Every time you cycle the TV, it forgets the sub out setting and reverts to turning it off. Meaning at EVERY switch on you have to navigate through a clunky UI to switch it back on again - 19 button presses in total.....E V E R Y T I M E Y O U S W I T C H I T O N.
A combination of these mean I'd give the sound a good 7/10 - would score higher but is let down by the dumb firmware bug that I have an inkling that Philips will never bother fixing.
PQ - Fantastic. On it's own one of the very best I've seen and it only gets better with higher quality content (4K looks stunning). It doesn't quite reach the heights of my previous calibrated Kuro but It's excellent all the same. Some things worth mentioning are:
ABL. Not noticeable on most images but very much so on white background logos (like at the end of a JL or currys advert for instance). Overall therefore not a problem for 99% of viewing that others seem to make out imho.
Motion is actually an issue in that the higher the smoothness setting, the more the following problem manifests. Around any moving object there appear small blocks of "blurriness". It's tricky to describe but once you notice it, you'll keep noticing it. It's definitely the "Perfect Motion" setting because the lower you have this setting, the more it disappears, with "Pure Cinema" (none) and "Movie" (minimum interpolation) settings making this effect disappear, but "Smooth" (heavy interpolation) making it appear with a vengeance. To see what I mean, navigate to Amazon Prime Video and select Pink Fong's Baby Shark (before you say it, I have a 3yo) which is a good quality HD version. At the point where the small fish are intro'd, they swim in a circle. It looks like a complete mess with "Perfect Motion" set to most smooth. Reduce it's intensity (to Movie or PerfCinema) and it goes away.
Luckily, on most Film watching (where it's on Movie setting) it's unnoticeable and other TV watching I'd say it's obvious maybe 50% of the time then only, but that does make it worth mentioing.
I would give the picture 9/10 - yes it's dependant on source with 4K and HD looking brilliant but SD is still very watchable on this telly
GUI - I was excited to try out my first Android TV but I must say it's not a good UI. Why is there no dedicated "settings" button? Instead press what you think is the Settings button for a right hand menu to appear - then a second set of presses to navigate to Frequent Settings. Press this. Now a Left hand menu appears. Now more button presses down to "All settings". Press this option. NOW you are in what you SHOULD have been in with a single button click at the beginning. Really Philips? Seriously? One of the most poorly thought out GUIs I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing recently (eclipsed by LGs woeful WebOS 2.0, but still not good in of itself). Otherwise it at least appears snappy enough and the app store has enough content to not warrant me buying a separate Apple TV for it.
Remote - The GUI is made worse by the terrible remote. All flat with flush, non-distinct buttons that all flow into each other meaning that you can no longer "feel" your way around the remote to press what you want, now you have to physically look at the remote first. Not only that but it's VERY easy to press the wrong button by mistake (e.g. the Blue button as opposed to the program up button) and the buttons themselves don't have a satisfying give to them. It's almost like going from a normal keyboard to Apple's first incarnation of it's terrible butterfly KB. Fine if you'd never experienced better before but horrible to use if you're used to better (which unfortunately in this case appears to be 99% of any other remotes ever made). It's genuinely terrible from an ergonomic perspective and I'm seriously considering buying a AllforOne Philips remote to replace it.
The backlight is also a bit of a miss in that in a dark room you have to press it first for it to light up and it doesn't stay lit for very long so you're forever pressing unnecessary buttons in order to get it to light up enough to see the button you wanted to press initially.....
The remote is part of the interface to the GUI so together I'd score the GUI a 6/10
So that’s my initial thoughts. Excellent PQ, Great SQ (let down by poor firnware) and clunky GUI (that could/should be better) made worse by a terrible remote.....but overall still happy for the price I paid for it
55" vs 65" - Initially I fully planned on buying the 65" but it ended up being £800 more than the 55" and that saving easily allowed me to purchase the Tumble Dryer I also needed along with the mountain of other things for the house (seeing as I've only recently moved in and there's a lot of stuff still to buy).....55 is within the range for my viewing distance and it made SWMBO easier to placate too .
Ambilight - Never having had this before I loved it at first. Then I noticed that for about the first 2 weeks I was actually looking at the Ambilight more than the actual picture on screen. Forward wind to now and when focusing on the content, I don't really notice the Ambilight anymore, save a couple of things. Firstly it does provide a tad more immersion imo (I think it does this by tricking my brain into thinking the screen is larger than it is) and secondly it looks great at night with all the other lights off. However, it's not the "game changer" it's cracked up to be and I'd be OK without it on any future set I owned.
Sound - I had to start from scratch so, apart from the spare sub I had lying around, had no audio system. Meaning for me this TV was great VFM - B&W sound bar built in along with OLED. The audio is very clear and the Atmos appears to provide a good "surround effect" that most TVs have in their settings. It in now way measures up to a dedicated 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system but is still the best in built audio I have heard on a telly.
Sub Out - Which brings me on to the sub out. Due to the soundbar, this is one of the few TVs to offer this and boy does the sound improve immensely with a properly calibrated subwoofer in tow (I'm using it with a DSPeaker 8033C with outboard power supply). Gives a very cinematic experience with one caveat - poor firmware programming from Philips. Every time you cycle the TV, it forgets the sub out setting and reverts to turning it off. Meaning at EVERY switch on you have to navigate through a clunky UI to switch it back on again - 19 button presses in total.....E V E R Y T I M E Y O U S W I T C H I T O N.
A combination of these mean I'd give the sound a good 7/10 - would score higher but is let down by the dumb firmware bug that I have an inkling that Philips will never bother fixing.
PQ - Fantastic. On it's own one of the very best I've seen and it only gets better with higher quality content (4K looks stunning). It doesn't quite reach the heights of my previous calibrated Kuro but It's excellent all the same. Some things worth mentioning are:
ABL. Not noticeable on most images but very much so on white background logos (like at the end of a JL or currys advert for instance). Overall therefore not a problem for 99% of viewing that others seem to make out imho.
Motion is actually an issue in that the higher the smoothness setting, the more the following problem manifests. Around any moving object there appear small blocks of "blurriness". It's tricky to describe but once you notice it, you'll keep noticing it. It's definitely the "Perfect Motion" setting because the lower you have this setting, the more it disappears, with "Pure Cinema" (none) and "Movie" (minimum interpolation) settings making this effect disappear, but "Smooth" (heavy interpolation) making it appear with a vengeance. To see what I mean, navigate to Amazon Prime Video and select Pink Fong's Baby Shark (before you say it, I have a 3yo) which is a good quality HD version. At the point where the small fish are intro'd, they swim in a circle. It looks like a complete mess with "Perfect Motion" set to most smooth. Reduce it's intensity (to Movie or PerfCinema) and it goes away.
Luckily, on most Film watching (where it's on Movie setting) it's unnoticeable and other TV watching I'd say it's obvious maybe 50% of the time then only, but that does make it worth mentioing.
I would give the picture 9/10 - yes it's dependant on source with 4K and HD looking brilliant but SD is still very watchable on this telly
GUI - I was excited to try out my first Android TV but I must say it's not a good UI. Why is there no dedicated "settings" button? Instead press what you think is the Settings button for a right hand menu to appear - then a second set of presses to navigate to Frequent Settings. Press this. Now a Left hand menu appears. Now more button presses down to "All settings". Press this option. NOW you are in what you SHOULD have been in with a single button click at the beginning. Really Philips? Seriously? One of the most poorly thought out GUIs I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing recently (eclipsed by LGs woeful WebOS 2.0, but still not good in of itself). Otherwise it at least appears snappy enough and the app store has enough content to not warrant me buying a separate Apple TV for it.
Remote - The GUI is made worse by the terrible remote. All flat with flush, non-distinct buttons that all flow into each other meaning that you can no longer "feel" your way around the remote to press what you want, now you have to physically look at the remote first. Not only that but it's VERY easy to press the wrong button by mistake (e.g. the Blue button as opposed to the program up button) and the buttons themselves don't have a satisfying give to them. It's almost like going from a normal keyboard to Apple's first incarnation of it's terrible butterfly KB. Fine if you'd never experienced better before but horrible to use if you're used to better (which unfortunately in this case appears to be 99% of any other remotes ever made). It's genuinely terrible from an ergonomic perspective and I'm seriously considering buying a AllforOne Philips remote to replace it.
The backlight is also a bit of a miss in that in a dark room you have to press it first for it to light up and it doesn't stay lit for very long so you're forever pressing unnecessary buttons in order to get it to light up enough to see the button you wanted to press initially.....
The remote is part of the interface to the GUI so together I'd score the GUI a 6/10
So that’s my initial thoughts. Excellent PQ, Great SQ (let down by poor firnware) and clunky GUI (that could/should be better) made worse by a terrible remote.....but overall still happy for the price I paid for it