Brighter OLEDs, richer colors and a new sound in Philips televisions

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Philips has presented its TVs for the new year, including four OLED TVs and two LCD TVs with mini-LEDs in the backlight. There were also innovations in sound and Ambilight wall lighting. TP Vision, the Taiwanese company behind the Philips brand, has reorganized its line-up. The top model OLED+ 950 no longer has an explicit sound bar, which is reserved for the OLED+ 910 below it.

TP Vision is once again working with Bowers & Wilkins, but has opted for a restrained TV design with a sound bar integrated into the TV housing. In older high-end models, the soundbar floated as a solitaire below the display. This was probably also due to price pressure in the TV market. In an initial listening test, the sound was no longer quite as nuanced and voluminous, but still better than many other flat-screen TVs.

Brighter …

Both the OLED+ 950 and the OLED+ 910 model use LG's new Evo panel Meta 3.0. LG no longer installs microlenses (also known as MLA) in Meta 3 panels, but instead integrates additional organic light layers to produce “white” light. With such tandem cells, the organic displays achieve higher luminance with the same power consumption, or they require less energy for the same light output – In the Meta-3 panel, Philips takes advantage of the higher luminance.

Philips claims a peak luminance of 3700 cd/m² on a screen that is 10 percent white, while a completely white screen achieves up to 350 cd/m². The significant difference between peak luminance and maximum luminance on a completely white screen is common with OLEDs: the more bright image components an OLED panel displays, the more the power supply per pixel must be reduced. Otherwise the panel will overheat.

… and more colorful

As Philips technology expert Danny Tack explained, the Meta-3 panels also allow richer colors to be achieved. Because the red, green and deep blue light layers of the tandem cell have narrower color spectra, the basic RGB colors can be filtered out of the white light in a more targeted and loss-free manner. In addition, a new Vanta polarizer is designed to suppress reflections on the screen even better in bright surroundings.

Apart from the sound, the main difference between the two top models is the processor: the OLED+ 950 uses Philips' own P5 Dual Engine of the latest generation for image optimization and intelligent control in gaming mode, for example to better illuminate dark corners and zoom into minimaps. The OLED+ 910 is also optimized with the latest P5 AI chip.

This is also found in the slightly cheaper OLED 810 and OLED 760 TV models, which in turn integrate OLED EX panels from LG Display. Although these are slightly brighter at the peak than last year, they are otherwise largely unchanged.

Delusions of grandeur

The top model OLED+ 950 is only available in 65 and 77 inches (1.65 m and 1.95 m respectively), while the OLED+ 910 is also available in 55 inches, i.e., with a diagonal of 1.40 meters. The OLED 760 is available in all sizes from 48 to 77 inches. If you want an OLED TV with a maximum diagonal of 42 inches, i.e., 1.07 meters, you can opt for the 810 model. Like the larger 910 and 950 models, this uses Google TV as its operating system, while all other TVs use the Titan TV OS, which was introduced last year.

The top model OLED 959 with Google TV, which was presented at IFA 2024 in late summer, is still available and offers all the features mentioned, but still uses an MLA OLED panel with microlenses. Philips will offer this model until at least the middle of next year. As panel manufacturer LG Display is discontinuing MLA production in favor of META 3.0, the successor OLED+ 961 should then also use a Meta 3 panel.

Ambilight Plus

The Ambilight strategy of Philips and TP Vision is remarkable. The previous top model OLED 959 is equipped with Ambilight Plus, which uses four different directional lenses per diode light along the LED cord. In conventional Ambilight, on the other hand, the RGB LED beads are located under a common small lens cap. This division allows the TVs to achieve interesting lighting effects within the LED aura around the display. The new top-of-the-range OLED+ 950 model lacks the Plus and instead has a four-sided Ambilight made of conventional LED beads.

In the new model range, only the MLED 950 has a sophisticated Ambilight Plus. The TV itself is an LCD with mini LEDs in the backlight, which can be dimmed locally in zones – Philips does not reveal how many zones, but we will do so in the test. The MLED 950, which also goes by the product name “The Xtra”, is said to be suitable for gaming. It has a 140 hertz panel and the option to increase the frame rate to 240 hertz at Full-HD resolution. This function is not yet possible in OLEDs, or has not yet been implemented.

For gamers

All four HDMI inputs on The Xtra are designed as HDMI 2.1, and the display supports VRR and FreeSync Premium Pro. Although its switching times are certainly higher than those of OLED TVs, latency also plays a major role in gaming, and this is determined by the electronics. This could have been optimized in The Xtra.

The new Game Bar can be finely configured, games are automatically recognized, and the picture settings are saved as a profile under the game name. These can then be personalized and the next time you start the game, the corresponding profile is automatically loaded.

A small downer: the MLED 950 is also only available in 65 and 75 inches; if you want a smaller mini LED display, you can opt for the MLED 910, which has to make do with a simple three-sided Ambilight and uses a slightly weaker processor.

The MLED 950 The Xtra will be available from September, the MLED 910 from May. The OLED 760 entry-level model will also be available in May, followed by the OLED 810 and OLED+ 910 in June and the new OLED +950 top model will be available in late summer at IFA. TP Vision has not yet commented on prices, but they are likely to be in similar regions to the current models.

Transparency note: The author was invited to the product presentation by TP Vision (uk)