Professionals
- Vibrant, contrast-rich photos
- Surprisingly few backlight distractions
- Robust worth
- Would not meet Extremely HD Premium requirements
Cons
- Difficult to make use of
- On this case nice to look at photos would not essentially equate to very correct photos
Key Specs
- Evaluate Value: £1999.00
- 65-inch LCD TV
- Direct LED lighting with native dimming over 128 zones
- Three-sided Ambilight
- Native 4K decision
- HDR suitable
What’s the Philips 65PUS7601?
The 65PUS7601 is essentially the most thrilling TV I’ve seen from Philips for years. Its 65-inch display screen carries a local 4K decision. It helps excessive dynamic vary (HDR) playback by way of a direct LED lighting with native dimming, which is by far the very best LCD lighting answer for HDR. It’s bathed within the glory of Philips’ distinctive Ambilight know-how. It boasts the Android TV good system. And maybe better of all, it prices lower than £2,000.
Philips 65PUS7601 – Design and Construct
Philips has impressed just lately in the case of design, and the 65PUS7601 doesn’t let the facet down. Its display screen border is exceptionally trim, whereas its gleaming metallic end feels opulent and futuristic. Its silver legs, in the meantime, are so skinny and sit so near the display screen that you simply barely discover them.
Associated: Greatest TVs 2016
Construct high quality is excellent, too. Nonetheless, the star of the present needs to be Philips’ Ambilight know-how. On the 65PUS7601 this sees colored mild radiating from the display screen’s high, left and proper edges.
If you happen to’re not aware of Ambilight, it includes an array of individually controllable LEDs on the TV’s rear outputting colored mild that may be set to trace the color content material of the picture you’re watching – with startling tonal and positional accuracy.
The 65PUS7601 ships with a sensible distant management that encompasses a full QWERTY keyboard on its reverse facet. It is a much better answer than having to make use of an on-screen keyboard to kind passwords and search engine phrases into the TV, for instance. The distant even is aware of which manner up you’re holding it as a way to’t by chance press one of many buttons on the alternative facet.
Philips 65PUS7601 – Setup
Philips has by no means been one to observe the herd in the case of image options, and with the 65PUS7601 the corporate continues in that vein. This isn’t essentially a foul factor in efficiency phrases, as we’ll see later, however it could possibly make the 65PUS7601 advanced to make use of.
My first tip is to ensure the Ambilight system isn’t working on its most aggressive settings, both when it comes to responsiveness or its brightness. A comparatively light strategy makes the distinction between Ambilight enhancing your immersion and turning into a distraction.
Additionally ensure that all noise-reduction options are turned off for native UHD viewing, and deal with the set’s UHD Decision “upscaling” characteristic with warning: with some content material, it tends to magnify image noise.
The 65PUS7601 makes use of Philips’ strongest image processing engine, generally known as Good Pixel Extremely HD. This produces much more usable movement processing than Philips’ step-down processing engines, though I nonetheless wouldn’t advocate utilizing it on something larger than its lowest energy setting. If you happen to do, the image can begin to look unnaturally clean. The best two motion-processing choices also can introduce undesirable uncomfortable side effects similar to shimmering halos round shifting objects.
The only most complex setting it’s good to wrap your head spherical, although, is Good Distinction. Philips has created this mode to supply management over the steadiness between brightness and clipping within the image – the latter being the lack of detailing you will get within the brightest areas of HDR photos.
If you’d like content material to seem because it was mastered to seem, it’s good to set the Good Distinction system to off, however I believe this leaves the 65PUS7601’s photos wanting somewhat flat. Turning the characteristic on produces a punchier picture, however one the place the brightest areas might lack element. I counsel you select a very brilliant HDR scene (the primary arrival by boat into Neverland in Pan, as an example) and take a look at the assorted choices to see which fits you greatest.
Philips 65PUS7601 – Options
The 65PUS7601’s headline know-how is its supply of HDR and native 4K pictures by way of a direct-lit LCD panel with native dimming. Checks have constantly proved the direct LED/native dimming mixture to be a extra passable answer for HDR than the cheaper edge LED lighting possibility, because the former reduces the quantity of backlight air pollution you see with high-contrast HDR photographs.
Philip claims the 65PUS7601 makes use of 128 separate dimming zones too – an impressively excessive quantity that makes the set’s £2,000 value seem severely aggressive.
Nonetheless, the 65PUS7601 doesn’t meet the specification necessities of the Extremely HD Premium normal laid out by the AV business’s Extremely HD Alliance. It peaks at round 700 nits moderately than the required 1,000 nits, and solely covers round 76% of the so-called DCI-P3 color spectrum moderately than 90%.
The 65PUS7601 affords first rate connectivity. 4 HDMIs (solely two provide full HDR/4K help) are joined by three USBs and community choices. The community choices help web streaming and multimedia file playback from networked DLNA-enabled gadgets.
Day-to-day use of the 65PUS7601 brings you into contact with Philips’ personal TV setting menus and the Android good TV system. Sadly, neither delivers a very pleasant consumer expertise. Philips’ menus are full of submenus and interwoven complexities, whereas Android frustrates by at all times taking up the entire display screen, losing area with a pointless suggestions system, and failing to supply an honest degree of customisation choices.
Android does at the very least remedy Philips’ outdated drawback of lagging behind rival manufacturers with the variety of apps at its disposal. There are a whole lot of them. Nonetheless, there’s nonetheless no help for Amazon Video or the vast majority of the UK’s catch-up TV providers.
Luckily, Philips’ personal non-Android good TV “space” now helps Amazon, however you continue to solely get half of the UK’s primary terrestrial broadcaster catch-up TV providers.
The highly effective Good Pixel Extremely HD processing within the 65PUS7601 has tendrils that reach into primarily each a part of the image. Color, distinction, brightness, HDR modes, movement… the 65PUS7601 covers fairly each side of TV image efficiency you may consider.
Having such management at your finger suggestions is welcome, though the quantity of flexibility on provide will be fairly daunting. Particularly since a few of the options can truly make photos look worse.
Sure kinds of hard-line AV purist will most likely dislike nearly all of Philips’ TV processing choices on precept. That might be an issue given that you simply actually do want to make use of a few of the color, distinction and movement processing instruments if you would like the TV to look its greatest.
And at last, the 65PUS7601 doesn’t characteristic 3D help. Philips has joined Samsung in proscribing all of its TVs to 2D for 2016.
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We take a look at each TV we evaluate completely over an prolonged time period. We use business normal exams to match options correctly. We’ll at all times inform you what we discover. We by no means, ever, settle for cash to evaluate a product.
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Used as the primary TV for the evaluate interval
Examined for greater than per week
Examined utilizing business calibrated instruments, discs and with actual world use
Examined with broadcast content material (HD/SD), video streams and demo discs
