Model-owner TP Imaginative and prescient’s makes an attempt to re-establish Philips as a significant participant on the European TV scene are progressing very properly certainly, with some actually excellent Philips OLED TV units on the excessive finish of the market.
That stated, the Philips 55PUS6753 4K TV, reviewed right here, is making an attempt to make a top quality mark on the decrease finish – and it’s just about succeeded.
Regardless of costing lower than £600, this Philips mannequin boasts a local 4K decision, assist for prime dynamic vary, and Philips’ eye-catching Ambilight know-how.
So long as you do not count on an all-singing, all dancing HDR image, the 55PUS6753 is definitely a fairly superior effort for its lowly sub-£600 value.
Design
Reasonably priced TVs don’t are typically lookers. The Philips 55PUS6753, although, is the exception to the rule … so long as you don’t look too carefully at it.
To assist distract you from just a few imperfections is Philips’ Ambilight system. This makes use of LEDs ranged across the rear of its left, proper and high edges to forged a large halo of coloured mild onto your partitions across the display. This mild halo may even be set to correlate – with startling accuracy – to the colours within the image you’re watching.
In addition to being enjoyable to point out off at events, Ambilight could make darkish room viewing much less tiring in your eyes, as you’re not gazing such a comparatively small space of shiny mild as you’ll in any other case.
We might suggest, although, that for the Philips 55PUS6753 you solely run the Ambilight characteristic on one in all its decrease brightness settings. It is because the display’s brightness isn’t potent sufficient to ‘sustain’ with the brighter Ambilight settings – that means you may find yourself watching Ambilight greater than the image on the display.
The spectacular narrowness of the display body helps to promote the Ambilight impact too, whereas its gray end delivers at the least a touch of a metallic impact that leaves most funds rivals wanting low cost and never particularly cheerful by comparability.
The surprisingly skinny and glossy open bar stand is engaging too, although it’s noticeable throughout setup that it isn’t particularly effectively made. The display body is extra plastic than it seems too. However from regular viewing distances you received’t significantly discover both of those points.
Connectivity is barely compromised by the TV’s value focus. There are solely three HDMIs fairly than the 4 discovered on most excessive finish TVs. Solely two of those HDMIs assist 4K HDR at 60 frames a second, too; the opposite tops out at 30 frames a second (although that’s nonetheless sufficient for many 4K Blu-rays, which ship content material at 24 frames a second).
There are additionally two USB ports fairly than the same old three, although we don’t see this as a large limitation for typical households.
Design TL;DR: Though its construct high quality is in reality a contact flimsy, you actually don’t discover this from any type of distance. In truth, it seems very stylish in contrast with most funds TVs. And that’s even earlier than you flip it on and Ambilight begins to do its factor.
Sensible TV Options
Unexpectedly the 55PUS6753 doesn’t be part of Philips dearer TVs in carrying the Android TV smart platform. As an alternative it makes use of a much less formidable ‘SAPHI’ system constructed on a Linux OS. Whereas this doesn’t assist practically as many apps as Android, it’s way more pleasant to make use of – particularly the way it solely fills up half of the display, and runs stably and rapidly fairly than being buggy and torpid.
Really, even the truth that SAPHI offers fewer apps isn’t a nasty factor, because it makes it simpler to seek out the video streaming platforms that basically matter. (In SAPHI’s case, these video platforms are YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Rakuten and Freeview Play.)
The Netflix app helps 4K and HDR, although on the time of reviewing Amazon solely performs in 4K, whereas Rakuten solely helps HD and SDR. YouTube didn’t work in 4K or HDR for us both, although Philips claims that YouTube 4K, at the least, ought to work by the point you learn this.
Freeview Play offers a pleasant portal to the catch up TV companies of all of the UK’s fundamental terrestrial broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel four and Channel 5.
Sensible Options TL;DR: The shortage of Android TV assist on the 55PUS6753 proves to be no loss in any respect. The substitute SAPHI system is simpler to make use of and fewer susceptible to crash, whereas nonetheless offering a good collection of video streaming choices.
HD/SDR Efficiency
The Philips 55PUS6753 is excellent for its cash relating to upscaling HD sources to its native 4K decision. That is mainly as a result of Philips’ lengthy video processing legacy means it’s now capable of present a set as low cost because the 55PUS6753 with the model’s Pixel Exact Extremely HD system.
Whereas not as highly effective, far reaching and environment friendly as the brand new P5 processor Philips offers on its high-end TVs, Pixel Exact Extremely HD is nonetheless far more potent than the processors usually present in sub-£600 55-inch 4K TVs.
One in all its specialities is calculating the output of the entire further tens of millions of pixels that should be added to HD footage to make them cross as 4K. The result’s upscaled footage that look sharper, extra detailed but in addition cleaner than these of many 4K TVs costing twice as a lot.
There generally is a little haloing round very high quality, sharply delineated traces and object edges, however the instruments are there to minimise this in Philips’ complete (if convoluted) Superior Image Settings menus.
The 55PUS6753’s upscaling of HD additionally advantages from some spectacular movement processing – offered, anyway, that you simply stick to the Good Pure Movement facility’s Low energy setting (at most, Mid). These settings cut back judder and blur with out making the image look too unnaturally fluid or inflicting too many undesirable distracting negative effects.
The Philips 55PUS6753 additionally does a beautiful job with customary dynamic vary photographs that the majority of us nonetheless spend the lion’s share of our TV time watching. Black ranges look impressively deep for such an inexpensive TV – aided, little question, by Philips’ direct backlight system, the place the LEDs sit proper behind the display fairly than round its edges.
There’s a good quantity of shadow element in darkish SDR areas too, and black ranges stay impressively constant, largely avoiding the distracting brightness ‘leaps’ that many reasonably priced LCD TVs exhibit when making an attempt to repeatedly alter their backlight to optimise distinction.
The impressively deep, impartial black tones additionally reveal that the 55PUS6753 is utilizing a VA sort of LCD fairly than the low-contrast IPS sort – which Philips sadly utilized in its 2017 equal fashions.
Colours look refined, steady and nuanced with SDR content material too, becoming a member of forces with the set’s impeccable sharpness to remind you simply how delicate and even lovely good SDR image can look.
HD/SDR Efficiency TL;DR: Impressively highly effective video processing signifies that HD sources map fantastically to the display’s native 4K decision. And it handles the distinction and colour vary of SDR sources effortlessly.
4K/HDR Efficiency
The sharpness the 55PUS6753 achieves with HD sources had us anticipating nice issues of its native 4K footage too – and we weren’t disillusioned. 4K Blu-rays and broadcasts look spectacularly sharp and clear, leaving you in little question, even on a 55-inch display, that you simply’re seeing footage with tens of millions extra pixels in them than you get with HD.
Textures look refined and minutely detailed, and the sense of depth in massive scale 4K photographs is profound. So sharp are the 55PUS6753’s footage, the truth is, that they go away many equally reasonably priced 4K TVs wanting merely HD by comparability.
The distinctive sharpness can barely exaggerate grain from lower-res sources. If you happen to expertise this, although, you may at all times tame it by turning off the TVs decision boosting system. Or possibly by light use of the offered noise discount techniques (although these can soften the image and trigger movement smearing, so it is best to positively deal with them with care).
In any case, the occasions when the intense sharpness helps the image far exceed the occasions the place it causes any points.
Philips’ movement processing continues to impress with 4K content material too, regardless of the additional challenges related to dealing with so many pixels in actual time. Good movement dealing with is particularly vital with 4K sources, since any decision loss that judder or blurring may trigger is particularly apparent when it’s working towards the pristine purity of a crisp 4K picture.
The Philips 55PUS6753’s HDR efficiency is fairly much less emphatic than its native 4K one. Mainly as a result of the display simply isn’t shiny sufficient to get the impression from HDR’s enormously expanded brightness vary.
Measurements present that Philips’ set is barely able to at most 350 nits of brightness on a 10% white HDR window. Most HDR 4K Blu-rays are mastered to peaks of 1000 nits by comparability, whereas the top-end HDR TVs are actually delivering brightness in extra of 2000 nits.
It sort of goes with out saying within the face of these kinds of numbers that the Philips 55PUS6753 simply can’t present that explosive dynamism and punch versus customary dynamic vary that I actually like HDR to serve up.
The brightness limitation additionally causes some element and delicate firming to vanish from the very brightest elements of HDR footage, and means the 55PUS6753 can’t attain the type of colour volumes that HDR and huge colour applied sciences can ship in tandem from innovative sources.
Darkish HDR scenes endure only a fraction, too – because the TV’s makes an attempt to seek out the optimum brightness level results in some misplaced shadow detailing.
None of that is to say that the Philips 55PUS6753 delivers no impression with HDR playback. Footage do nonetheless look barely brighter and richer, in addition to extra dynamic and ‘strong’. Daylight scenes take a look at least a contact extra lifelike, whereas the direct lighting system permits the 55PUS6753 to maintain a lid on backlight inconsistencies and greyness.
The Philips 55PUS6753’s processing is nice sufficient, too, to make 4K HDR sources look much more detailed and three-dimensional than they do in SDR. Colours look strong and wealthy as effectively, regardless of not attaining the vary of tones related to brighter TVs.
One bit of recommendation we’d give right here is to keep away from the Film image preset when watching 4K HDR sources. This may sound like an odd suggestion, however really the Film setting turns off a lot of Philips’ image processing, leaving the picture wanting muted and gentle versus different presets.
It’s a pity, maybe, that Philips isn’t on board with the Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR format, full with its dynamic metadata, as that may have unlocked a contact extra dynamism within the 55PUS6753’s footage. Nonetheless, whereas there’s a fairly particular restrict to what the 55PUS6753 can do with HDR, it nonetheless tends to look fully watchable – which is greater than might be stated for HDR on many different equally reasonably priced TVs.
There are two ultimate image factors to cowl: one unhealthy, one good. The unhealthy one is that whereas Philips’ choice to make use of a VA sort of LCD panel has led to huge distinction enhancements in contrast with final 12 months’s equal TVs, it additionally signifies that footage lose distinction and colour if seen from angle of greater than round 30 levels.
The great one is that whereas operating in its Sport preset, the Philips 55PUS6753 information solely 18ms of enter lag – an impressively low determine that makes it an unusually responsive display for avid gamers.
4K/HDR TL;DR: Exceptionally sharp 4K footage are joined by a sophisticated strategy to HDR – even when the brightness lags behind.
Sound
Regardless of not wanting chunky sufficient to pack a lot speaker energy, the 55PUS6753 does get some audio issues proper. Voices sound clear and properly built-in into their setting, for example.
The mid-range within reason highly effective and dynamic, offering entertaining quantities of treble detailing with out sounding screechy or skinny, and delivering simply sufficient bass to cease motion scenes sounding wimpy. The TV’s bodywork doesn’t begin to hum and buzz at larger volumes, both.
Actually deep bass, although, is just about non-existent, that means that there’s no possible way for the sound to broaden when, say, a T-Rex’s foot slams into the bottom.
Sound TL;DR: The 55PUS6753 will get the audio job finished – particularly relating to detailing and vocals. It lacks the bass, although, to sound fully convincing with motion movies.
Different panels to think about
The Sony 55XF8505 can go a good bit brighter than the Philips 55PUS6753, giving it extra punch with shiny HDR scenes. Nevertheless, Sony’s set makes use of an IPS sort of LCD panel, that means that it seems extra grey throughout darkish scenes than the Philips set.
Perhaps the closest rival to the 55PUS6753 is the Hisense HE55U7A1WTSG. This delivers sharp, punchy footage and barely higher connectivity. It solely makes use of an edge LED lighting system, nevertheless, so its distinction efficiency is barely restricted.
Though we haven’t examined one but, expertise means that Samsung’s 55NU7100 will present step up in brightness and HDR ‘impression’ for round £800 – even when using edge-based LED lighting will doubtless restrict its black degree efficiency.
Verdict
The Philips 55PUS6753 isn’t going to provide you an all-singing, all dancing HDR image – it simply doesn’t have sufficient brightness. Supplied you may handle your expectations in that respect, although, the 55PUS6753 is definitely a fairly superior effort for its lowly sub-£600 value.
Colours, distinction and sharpness all look sturdy for the cash, and its Ambilight-inspired design actually helps it stand out from the funds crowd.