Which TV offers an excellent combination of image, sound, features, and price? Which TV would you recommend to friends and family? Philips hopes to provide the answer to this question with the Performance series. But is the 55PUS8807 really such a unique offering?
Philips 55PUS8807/12
Price 899 euros
Screen panel Ultra HD LCD TV
Screen size 55 inches (139 cm)
Connections 4x HDMI (2x v2.1 48 Gbps, 2x v2.0 18 Gbps, ARC/eARC, ALLM, 4K120 HFR, VRR, AMD Freesync Premium), 2x USB, 1x optical digital out, 1x headphone, 2x antenna, bluetooth
Extras HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos, WiFi built-in, Android 11.0, DTS Play-Fi, USB/DLNA media player, DVB-T2/C/S2, CI+ slot, P5 Processor, Ambilight 3-sided
Dimensions 123 x 79 x 26 cm (incl. foot)
Weight 17.9 kg (incl. feet)
Consumption SDR 82 (G) / HDR 138 watts (G)
Website www.philips.nl
7 Score 70 
- Pros
- Stylish design
- Three-sided Ambilight
- Viewing angle, image processing, motion sharpness
- Negatives
- Limited contrast and black detail
- HDR lacks impact
- Calibration needs to be better
A light silver central base and a fine silver frame that sharply and clearly defines the TV. Even if you are looking for a premium design, this Philips can meet the demand. Only its profile reveals that it is not a top model, it is slightly less slim than hoped, but the slight curve of the rear hides that well. The connections are directed downwards and to the side, so you can definitely consider wall mounting.
Ambilight remains an exclusive Philips feature. And it must be said, turn on Ambilight and the TV immediately makes a more luxurious impression. This three-sided version is only unlit at the bottom. Ambilight has been given more and more options over the years. For example, Ambilight Aurora was added this year. Put one of the built-in atmospheric images or moving scenes on the screen and together with Ambilight it turns your TV into a beautiful decorative part of your interior when you’re not watching TV. In addition, you can still use Ambilight as a lounge lamp, there is AmbiWakeup and AmbiSleep, and you can also let Ambilight respond to music. Want to go a little further? Then you can even connect Ambilight to your Philips Hue lamps.
Android TV and good gamer features
The device has a single DVB-T2/C/S2 tuner and a CI+ slot. You can optionally record or pause using a USB hard drive. Live TV is increasingly taking a step back from streaming, and gaming has permeated many living rooms. This Philips can meet all those questions perfectly. It features four HDMI connections, two of which provide 48Gbps bandwidth, so it’s ready for your 4K120 gaming sessions. They also support VRR (HDMI VRR, AMD Freesync) for a smooth gaming experience and the input lag is excellent (17.9 ms in 4K60 and 8.6 ms in 2K120). You can use eARC on one of these two connections, the others provide ARC. Via the Game Dashboard you can easily adjust some image settings or check the frame rate at which the game works.
There is no shortage of streaming apps. Android TV offers almost all popular apps and then some extra. For a full media player you can always opt for VLC, but the Philips media player also supports almost all formats, although the very popular Divx/Xvid used to be missing. The built-in Chromecast function is ideal if you prefer to search on your smartphone and then cast the video to the TV. Thanks to DTS Play-Fi, you can easily and wirelessly connect compatible surround speakers, or send the audio from your TV to a wireless speaker in the kitchen or your smartphone. All those functions also work very smoothly thanks to a powerful quad core chipset under the hood.
The remote won’t win awards for its innovative approach, but it works fine. The keys may be a bit small, but there is enough space between them to avoid a wrong keystroke. The four shortcuts at the top are for Netflix, Prime Video, Rakuten TV and the Philips app gallery. We would have preferred to see the latter replaced by a Disney+ key.
Powerful P5 image processing processor
The Philips P5 image processor has been delivering very good results for several years now. Upscaling, noise suppression, deinterlacing, he performs all those tasks excellently. We would only have liked to have seen Philips implement a better MPEG noise filter. This version has a hard time eliminating blocking and/or color bands. Sports fans can look forward to very good motion sharpness. The processor not only intervenes very quickly, but can also process very fast action images well. The action remains sharp in the picture, without stuttering or difficult errors in the picture.
Great viewing angle
Because the PUS8807 aims at a function as a family TV, Philips opted for an S-IPS screen with a wide viewing angle but moderate contrast. The viewing angle is in any case fine, even from a reasonably wide angle, the screen preserves the color reproduction. The screen uniformity in dark images is less good (this may differ from device to device). At the top of the screen we see some bright spots where the direct LED backlight shines through. This can be disturbing with films, because the spots are extra noticeable in the black bands above and below the image. In clear images the uniformity is good, but we see a bit of ‘dirty screen’ effect. This Philips delivers an ANSI contrast of about 1,200:1, which is fine for an IPS screen. With the Contrast mode in the “optimum picture” setting, the device also uses a dimming technique, but without zones. The entire screen is dimmed depending on what’s on the screen. This gains you some contrast, up to 3,000:1, but more importantly, you get a little more depth in dark scenes due to the better black reproduction. We also activated Dynamic Contrast to make shadow nuances more visible. With these adjustments, the image becomes a lot more interesting. If you want to get even more out of the screen and the processor, you can even activate HDR Upscaling. The Films image mode suffers from a too warm color temperature, as a result of which many colors are tinted a little too much red, unfortunately also visible in the skin tones. If it really bothers you, switch the color temperature to “normal”.
What about HDR display?
More and more streaming and gaming content is available in HDR, so that’s important. The PUS8807 has a sufficiently wide color gamut (90% P3), but the peak brightness of around 400 nits is somewhat disappointing, even if it can even achieve it on a completely white screen. Rather see a good 500 nits there to give HDR some extra punch, especially since the contrast of this device also stands in the way of an impactful display. Good tone mapping can make up for a lot in such a case, but we still see a lot of room for improvement there too. The device takes the HDR metadata into account, but tries to make the image clearer. As a result, the color rendering became faded, but color bands also appeared in the image. In the end we turned off HDR Perfect, which takes some brightness but delivered a much more pleasant and colorful image, without disturbing errors. It is certainly not excluded that Philips can improve this through software updates. The device does have an important asset for HDR, in addition to HDR10 and HLG, it also supports the formats with dynamic metadata, HDR10 + and Dolby Vision. Dolby Vision in particular makes up for a lot, that content brings out the best out of the device.
Conclusion: Buy Philips 55PUS8807/12
Philips deliberately chose a type of screen with a wide viewing angle for the 55PUS8807/12, but a somewhat limited contrast. The screen delivers a nice color range, and although the peak brightness is just a bit modest for HDR images, with Dolby Vision and HDR10 + content, it still comes out surprisingly well. The P5 processor provides excellent image processing, and thanks to the 120 Hz panel, it will also please sports fans. Is there also a game console in the living room? Two HDMI 2.1 connections are ready for 4K120 gaming, with low input lag. The audio performance does not disappoint, but on the other hand it does not rise above average. A good soundbar can solve that, and thanks to DTS Play-Fi, there are also wireless multi-room options. No shortage of streaming options, Android TV offers a huge range. In short, this Philips is not a top choice for film enthusiasts, but a great option if you are looking for a family TV with an extensive feature range and an exclusive touch provided by Ambilight.
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