Philips 65 4k Ultra Hd Led Smart Tv Review
For all this year's noise virtually the dawn of 4K Telly, the consumer market is still very much in its infancy. As such, it can be difficult to know what to look for when considering a purchase. With its flagship 55PUS7809, Philips is hoping factors such equally HD upscaling, Ambilight and price will help it to stand out from the crowd.
Information technology's of import to contextualize just how embryonic the UHD TV market is. Currently, the only way to watch 4K TV content is via Netflix, and even then there are only a handful of shows available. YouTube has a 4K channel, just playing the content requires a powerful computer. Information technology's possible to find bits and pieces of sample content to download, simply on the whole it's few and far between.
People who are both selling and ownership UHD TVs in this environs, therefore, are working somewhat in the nighttime. Without a market to sell to, there'southward a relative famine of information on which to base your designs or, in turn, your buying decisions. With the 7809, Philips has sought to minimize this run a risk by having existing technology act as a fallback for any shortcomings of its new technology. This review volition look at how well it's achieved this goal, and if indeed there are whatsoever shortcomings.
Build
Offset things start, the 7809 is a stunning-looking piece of kit. The frameless pattern with aluminum edging gives the TV a sleek, make clean-looking pattern and a real feel of build quality. The picture doesn't quite fill the 55-in screen, with nearly a 1 cm (0.4-in) black border around the outside when it's switched on, merely this is not something that detracts from viewing. The slight bezel running forth the bottom of the screen, including the raised mount for the Philips badge, is understated. Even the stand up is rather handsomely designed, whilst remaining sturdy.The rear looks much the same as any other modern Television, with a variety of inputs and connection sockets. In that location are four HDMI inputs in full, simply none of these support HDMI 2.0 and so there'southward no mode of showing 4K content with a frame-rate of above 30 fps via HDMI. This is i criticism about the 7809 that has been fairly widespread.
Elsewhere, there are three USB ports, a mutual interface slot and an aerial input. An ethernet port is available for hardwiring the Idiot box rather than connecting it to a Wi-Fi network. A mesomorphic-looking speaker is too mounted in the rear of the TV, despite its ultra-sparse 35-mm (1.4-in) depth, which is remarkable in itself and would have been unthinkable until relatively recently. Up each side of the rear is a strip of Ambilight LEDs, which we'll talk over afterwards.
User experience
Interacting with the 7809 is unequivocally not as slick every bit the Television receiver'southward pattern and build. When switching the TV on, there's a 10-second delay between pressing the ability button on the remote, and a aqueduct loading up. That alone wouldn't be also much of a business, but along with the other quirks of the Goggle box'south user experience it becomes quite frustrating.
The 7809 has perhaps the longest lag between pressing buttons on the remote command and annihilation actually happening on-screen of any Tv set I've used. I found myself regularly thinking that button-presses hadn't been registered, only to repeat the action and have the Idiot box register both. Thus, aqueduct 1 becomes channel 11, and trying to admission any carte results in your coming directly dorsum out of it.
That is, of form, if the push does register that you lot've pressed it. To misfile matters more than, the remote control is not the near responsive. This ways that on occasion, y'all are left waiting for the Idiot box to respond to a request information technology hasn't received. All this is terribly infuriating – and all the more so considering this is an expensive and powerful piece of equipment. A thing and so simple as the interaction with it should be barely noticeable. I would be dubious about buying whatsoever Television receiver to utilise on a daily basis with this declining.
The menus themselves are intuitive and easy to apply. Menus and the TV guide are conspicuously laid out and straightforward to navigate. The smart Television set carte du jour could mayhap be a little easier to utilise. It presents a host of service logos, such as YouTube and Spotify, with piffling context about how the services might be used or, indeed, what they are. This is not and so much of an issue for YouTube and Spotify, but for lesser-known services users are left to find out what they do by exploring them. On the whole though, most users will find the smart features pretty familiar and understandable.
Philips should exist given credit for building a QWERTY keyboard into the rear of the remote command. With TVs increasingly requiring text input, such equally for searches or passwords, it's a sensible and helpful addition, albeit one that also suffers from the Television/remote slow response.
Motion picture
The 7809 doesn't come with native back up for H.265, which is needed in club to play back 4K content on Netflix. Philips explains that its 880 Media Player volition provide this support when information technology's released early next year, but there's no doubt that this is a bad miss. Having paid good money for a 4K Boob tube, users can reasonably experience aggrieved at being asked to beat out out for an boosted slice of hardware to scout 4K content.
Pleasingly, things option upward dramatically once you lot actually start watching something on the 7809. The demo 4K content provided by Philips is, of grade, designed to show the TV in its best light, but nonetheless the image quality is exceptional. I found the standard picture too dark, merely with a bit of trial and mistake it was possible to find a more agreeable setting. There are 6 from which to choose, depending on what type of content you're watching.
Colors on-screen are well counterbalanced and are accentuated by Philips' Ambilight technology. Although it isn't new, Ambilight is maybe one of the more than enduring Tv set innovations of contempo times. There'due south no doubt it makes for a more immersive feel and, coupled with a 4K picture, it is especially constructive hither.
The provided timelapse footage of landscapes (which seems to be standard for this sort of thing) was really an oversight in one sense. Philips has been very vocal about the smoothness the 600 Hz screen of the 7809 can reach with moving images, and timelapse footage isn't the best for this. Watching the same HD motion-picture show side-by-side with my Samsung HD Television, nonetheless, the smoothness almost which Philips boasts was fabricated obviously. The Samsung was so jittery in comparison, despite being a great piece of kit itself. Philips tin can certainly be proud of this.
That comparison was in an effort to run into what the upscaling was similar for standard HD content. Indeed, there's a marked increased in sharpness and picture quality that'due south farther improved by the motion smoothness. The 7809 actually suffers from a common complaint nearly Hd and UHD TVs, in that they can look "too real" during movies. Fortunately, setting the 7809's motion-picture show way to "moving picture" was enough to nullify this. Watching an HD nature documentary on the TV, meanwhile, was a revelation. There'southward no such thing equally "too real" where such documentaries are concerned and it looked breathtaking on the 7809.
Audio
As with pic mode, there are six audio profile options to choose from, depending on your preference and the type of content you are playing. In addition to standard and personal settings, there are modes for watching news, watching movies, gaming and listening to music. It does feel like more options could exist provided, but anyone serious about sound volition probable add together their own audio-bar or speaker system and the options provided are certainly acceptable.
Verdict
The 55PUS7809 shows just what Philips is capable of in terms of UHD TVs. Information technology handles both existing HD and 4K content superbly and for £1,500 (Usa$ii,420) is well-priced for a 55-in UHD screen. For me, the poor user experience would be as well irritating to live with on a mean solar day-to-day basis and the lack of native H.265 support is the terminal blast in the coffin. Having said that, the 7809 does bespeak to what Philips is capable of producing and, if you're in no rush to buy a 4K Idiot box, information technology would be well worth waiting to see what its adjacent models take to offering.
The Philips 55PUS7809 is available to buy at present in Europe and Russia.
Product page: Philips 7800 series 4K UHD Goggle box
Source: https://newatlas.com/philips-55pus7089-4k-uhd-led-tv/34434/