PHILIPS Ambilight 65PUS8545/12 65-Inch LED TV (4K UHD, P5 Engine, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, HDR 10+, Freeview Play, Works with Alexa, Android TV) Light Silver/Silver Chrome (2020/2021 Model)

Product Information

Thanks to its combination of a beautiful metallic finish, super-thin panel design, external speaker enclosure (complete with Bowers & Wilkins’ distinctive ‘tweeter on top’) and a new and improved, four-sided version of Philips’ Ambilight technology, the 65OLED937 is arguably the most dramatic-looking ‘mainstream’ TV around today. Voices are clean, clear and well-contextualised at all times, avoiding the ‘hummy’ feeling with deep male voices or the shrillness with high-pitched female voices that so many TV sound systems suffer with. Gaming is supported by two HDMI 2.1 ports (in addition to two HDMI 2.0 ports), with support for 4K 120Hz and Variable Refresh Rate, plus Auto Low Latency Mode so it switches to its Game Mode when you fire up a console.

Disney+ subscription required. Subject to terms at https://www.disneyplus.com (c) 2020 Disney and its related entities. Disney+ is available in selected languages and countries. To put it simply, Ambilight is a proprietary TV technology exclusive to Philips TVs, and in a saturated market full of near-identical goggle boxes, it really does help Philips stand out from the crowd. Ambilight is essentially the inclusion of an LED array around the side of a television, which projects color onto the wall behind a TV.

Conclusion

Philips also supports the HGiG system that lets you use set up menus built into your console to establish the best gaming HDR experience, rather than the TV trying to figure out on the fly how best to handle incoming HDR game graphics. The OLED807’s smart features are provided by Android TV - the 11th generation of Android TV to be precise. This version of Android TV is far superior to any previous version in its presentation, stability and features, displaying a much greater understanding of how to deliver an interface that’s suited to TVs rather than personal smart devices. It’s still a little dictatorial and low on customisation options, but at least it no longer feels like it was designed to actively put you off using it. The size of the soundstage the 65OLED937 can produce, for starters, is both bigger and, more importantly, more accurately defined than that of its predecessor. This is especially noticeable when it comes to height/vertical effects in a Dolby Atmos mix, but the whole soundstage has a more effective, accurate, three-dimensional and immersive presence.

Philips has got its Game preset input lag time down for the OLED807 to 15.1ms with 1080p/60Hz feeds. That’s still 5ms or so higher than the fastest results we’ve seen this year, but you’d have to be a more competitive gamer than us for 5ms to make a serious difference to your performance. Immerse in legendary and exclusive titles from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic available on Philips Android TVs. With the 65OLED937’s motion processing in play, meanwhile, its outstanding sharpness remains completely intact when the 65OLED937 has to cope with lots of movement – even during 24p movies. As ever with Philips TVs, some of the motion processing options can overcook things, causing either too much over-smooth ‘soap opera effect’, or too many distracting processing side effects. Here again, though, Philips has become much more pragmatic than it used to be, now offering Pure Cinema and Movie motion processing options that are gentle and intelligent enough to take the ugly edge off 24p judder without causing any significant unwanted side effects

Scores

That said, it’s seriously welcome to find the 65OLED937 providing the latter two picture options (along with support for the third-party IMAX Enhanced‘format’) for viewers who really do like a more restrained, ‘authentic’ look to their TV pictures. Philips no longer takes the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to picture quality it could perhaps have been accused of a few generations ago. Compatibility depends on Wi-Fi Miracast certification and Android 4.2 or later. For more details please refer to your device documentation. We are reviewing the 65-inch OLED807 in this review, which is almost identical to the 48-inch previously reviewed, just with a slightly different panel, but performance was very similar indeed. As such most of the points made with regards to the 48-inch are the same for the 65-inch model. And there's Ambilight. This unique-to-Philips technology spreads light that matches what's on-screen across the walls, making the TV feel even bigger, and helping with eye comfort and atmosphere. We'll talk more about it later, but it really is a compelling addition.