An irresistible combination of spectacular pictures, potent audio and Ambilight design
55in OLED TV | £2199 | whf.cm/55OLED907
It’s pretty tough to stand out from an increasingly talented crowd in the OLED TV world these days, but the Philips 55OLED907 manages it with aplomb.
At first glance its £2199 price tag looks a little steep considering you can now get Sony’s XR-55A95K QD-OLED TV for the same price, while Samsung’s QE55S95B (also QD-OLED) currently costs just £1599. However, Philips has a proven track record of getting more punch and dynamism out of ‘traditional’ WOLED tech (the ‘W’ is for ‘White’, as these OLED panels have a white sub-pixel that QD-OLED panels do not) than most rivals, and the 907 benefits from one of Philips’ “royal” panels, where premium ‘EX’ technology combines with a heat sink to unlock more brightness.
The 55OLED907 is a gorgeous bit of kit. The frame around the screen is so skinny you can barely see it, and the set’s rear is incredibly slim. Build quality is outstanding too, for both the lovely metallic finish to the OLED panel’s rear and the heavy duty but slim, dark grey metal stand. The star of the 55OLED907’s show, helping to justify its price tag, is Ambilight. LEDs are ranged around three of the TV’s rear sides casting out coloured light that can be set to deliver either ambient effects or track the colour content of the images you are watching. The image tracking feature of Ambilight has been enhanced here by enabling each individual LED to output its own light level and colour, rather than the same light and colour being output by groups of LEDs.
The OLED907 manages to define itself fairly clearly against other models in Philips’ latest range. It improves on Philips’ cheaper OLED807 by a) adding a heat sink to its premium EX panel, which should enable it to run even more brightly, and b) integrating a more powerful 80W Bowers & Wilkins sound system. It differentiates itself from the more expensive OLED937, meanwhile, by not using that flagship model’s dual chipset processor, and by not deploying such a large, powerful and externalised speaker system. The 55OLED907 does join its siblings in using Philips’ latest P5 Gen 6 picture processing engine, though its use of a single-chip processor means it lacks the OLED937’s Advanced HDR frame by frame tone-mapping feature, as well as a few other AI-related bells and whistles.
The P5 processor continues with its usual focus on improving what Philips defines as the five key pillars of picture quality – colour, contrast, sharpness, source detection and motion –
