PHILIPS 55OLED856/12 55inch 4K UHD OLED SMART TV WiFi Dolby Atmos Ambilight

Product Information

When it comes to buying a television there are plenty of things to think about. The first is likely to be size, to ensure that the TV will fit into your room. If you're looking at buying a Philips TV, the company hasn't yet moved into 8K TVs, but will offer 4K TVs up to 86 inches. If you prefer, you can always mount it on the wall – the 58-inch version that we tested is compatible with VESA wall mounts 200 x 300mm. However, the PUS8506 is on the chunkier side at almost 8cm deep, so will stand a little proud from the wall if this is the route you choose. The pixel pitch shows the distance from the centers of two neighboring pixels. In displays, which have a native resolution (the TFT ones, for example), the pixel pitch depends on the resolution and the size of the screen. Dimensions, weight and color Information about the dimensions and the weight of the specific model with and without stand as well as the colors, in which it is offered to the market. Width

Throughout my viewing experience I kept find the Philips’ sound quality catching me off guard. The 856 has a 2.1 speaker array powered by a 50W amp and the extra subwoofer on the rear of the TV makes a huge difference over the competition. Most OLED TV’s would benefit from an additional soundbar but the Philips presented a good argument for trying at home first before making that leap. Dialogue was clear and didn’t disappear in busy scenes, while not surround sound quality, it’s certainly better than average. The downside of OLED is its potential longevity, as it's an organic material that can decay and it's typically can't reach the peak brightness of LED panels - which means that HDR effects can be greater from a LED-based panel. The 5th Gen P5 AI engine powers the show and includes the Film Detection feature, as well as working with the set’s light sensor to tweak images depending on room brightness. In terms of gaming, this Mini LED is up to date with the latest trends and adds AMD’s FreeSync Premium Pro for reducing tearing and stutter. The Auto Game Mode should help reduce latency compared to the 2020 TVs.Interestingly, and despite the HDR Vivid setting on most TVs usually being a big no-no from a reviewer’s perspective, it’s actually not too bad here, and worth a look if you like your pictures with real punch. While colours are certainly bolder than is natural, it gives a richness to HDR images that can work really well with movies… just don’t even think about it for SDR content.

One of the attractive things about Philips TVs is the Ambilight system. This provides illumination from the rear of the television that can spread the colours across the room. This can be coordinated with other Philips Hue devices, with the TV driving the colour show based on what's on the screen. The latest models offer four-sided Ambilight which is great for wall mounting, some older models are only three sided.

Philips OLED856 Preview

We make big reductions to the Colour, OLED Contrast, Sharpness and Brightness settings, and turn off Perfect Natural Reality, Perfect Contrast and Ultra Resolution. You may well find that using one of the other presets as your starting point results in fewer adjustments being necessary. The Philips has a clear advantage over most rivals when it comes to definition and detail resolution, though. The image is crisp and solid to a degree that makes these other sets look a little flat by comparison. What’s most impressive is that this detail and definition doesn’t look forced or artificially enhanced – the set’s crispness doesn’t come at the expense of naturalism. The OLED854 features the P5 Pro Picture Engine for picture processing performance along with both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic metadata HDR formats along with claims of 99% Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) coverage. Unique to Philips TVs is the Ambilight system that uses three sides of the OLED854 to provide mood lighting, motion effects or accurate bias lighting behind the TV. Smart TV is provided by Android TV (Oreo) at the time of our review. Let’s cut to the chase – the PUS8605 offers a great picture for the money. This is a midrange set, so it isn’t going to bother the likes of the OLEDs and flagship LCDs, nor is it aiming to. Its focus is creating an enjoyable picture that’s going to appeal to the majority of TV buyers. That means sharp outlines, punchy colours and good contrast are top of the bill, to create as striking a picture as possible for the price. The 55OLED806 also adds HDR10+ Adaptive support to the HDR10+, Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision IQ premium HDR systems the OLED805 TVs carried last year, enabling automatic adjustment of HDR10+ content to better suite ambient light levels.

Some will accept these occasional flaws as a fair trade for what is otherwise excellent processing. For others, those flaws will be too distracting and, if so, the new Pure Cinema motion setting could be for you. This results in slightly smoother and sharper motion than is produced by simply turning the processing off entirely (the only option on last year’s sets) with none of the shimmer you get from the more aggressive processing options. It's still not perfect, though, and the long and the short of it is that some rivals, particularly Sony and Panasonic, still offer better overall motion processing.Switching to the 4K Blu-ray of 1917, also in Dolby Vision, the Philips proves that it’s just as capable with more subtle source material. There’s a fine line between delivering the film’s muted palette and draining the life out of the picture, and it’s one that the Philips treads with confidence. Of course, the picture is only as good as the processor managing the image and the new P5 AI picture perfect engine did a great job during my viewing time. It controls image sharpness, motion handling and colour realism and unscaled ITV1 from standard definition to 4K in amazing quality. Lesser 4K panels suffer from poor quality upscaling but this wasn’t a problem here, programming was sharp and smooth as you would expect from a top end television. In previous years, Philips has employed rather heavy-handed detail enhancers to create an impressive but slightly artificial feel of sharpness. This time we find we don’t need them at all. Watching Deadpool in We do, and it remains a big strength in Philips’ corner. The three-sided Ambilight here works wonders with TV, movies and games. Don't buy it if...