Philips OLED+959 Ambilight TV Review - A Dazzling Flagship TV!

AVForums Editor Phil Hinton reviews the latest Flagship TV from Philips - The OLED+959. Read the full review - https://www.avforums.com/reviews/phil... The Philips OLED+959 is an excellent flagship TV that offers something for everyone. If you want image accuracy and to view content as it was mastered and intended to be seen, the OLED+959 is excellent in this regard with superb greyscale and colour reproduction. The use of the META 2.0 MLA (Micro Lens Array) panel adds superb peak brightness capabilities and bright room viewing performance, with the 8th Gen P5 AI Dual Engine Processor adding in the video processing smarts. And suppose you don't care for the director’s intent or want a bright and vivid image with smooth motion. In that case, the Crystal Clear picture preset is one of the most balanced ‘Vivid” settings available on the market, where Philips has tried to keep the image bright and colourful, but without going over the top with neon colours and blown highlights. The image is sharp, detailed and natural-looking to a degree that many mainstream users will be very happy using it. Image quality with Filmmaker Mode SDR and HDR is very good indeed and we saw no major issues that concerned us in our time testing the set. There is the occasional instance of image posterisation with tricky content and some minor overshoot in the blacks, but the vast majority of viewers will never notice this and it is also very much content-dependent. Overall, the image quality on offer with the new Dual Engine processing and MLA 2.0 panel is excellent. The audio performance from the Bowers & Wilkins 5.1.2 102W audio system is also superb with weight and scale added to a large and wide soundstage, which beats many standalone soundbars for audio fidelity and quality. Using 18 drivers in total across the front, side and top of the set, it fits in with the design of the OLED+959 adding a real sense of cinematic flair with images and sound that bring content to life with authority, even if the soundstage is mostly front-heavy with little in the way of surround effects. Adding further immersion is the brand-new Ambilight Plus system. Building on 20 years of experience with the Ambilight technology, the new system uses 192 lighting zones with lenses that allow superb gradational resolution to colours and movement that adds more realistic effects to follow what is happening onscreen. And for purists, there is also a bias light setting that can be calibrated to the room for serious movie watching in dim surroundings without your eyes feeling tired. Gaming is also another huge area of the market and Philips has listened to gamers when putting together its latest game bar and games mode. With game mode engaged on the two HDMI 2.1 (48Gbps) ports you get Dolby Vision gaming on Xbox, 4K/144, 4K120, VRR, ALLM and input lag of 14.6ms at 4K/60 and 6.5ms at 1080/120. The only slight negative we can find with the OLED+959 is the use of Google TV for its smart system and the lack of catch-up terrestrial services for UK channels. This can be resolved by adding an external stick or streamer, but it would have rounded off the package nicely if the smart TV system was a little more capable for UK users. The good Accurate SDR and HDR image quality with excellent peak brightness capabilities Ambilight Plus is brilliant All HDR and sound formats supported Excellent audio quality Excellent build quality and unusual design The not so good No full UK terrestrial catch-up service support on Google TV Pedestal stand can lead to cabling and source placement issues Ambilight Plus is only three-sided (top and sides) 00:00 -The Philips OLED+959: Is it any good? 02:02 - What is the OLED+959? 02:52 - HDR Tone Mapping settings 04:12 - Out-of-the-box settings and measurements 04:46 - Calibrated picture quality results 05:24 - HDR measurement results 07:17 - Picture quality assessment 09:08 - Bowers & Wilkins sound system 09:39 - Gaming credentials and measurements 10:13 - Design and features 10:55 - Final Verdict 12:12 - Like and subscribe AVForums S5 IIX Lumix cameras, lenses and video lighting were supplied by MPB. Are you a creator looking to trade up to the latest camera bodies and lenses? MPB is the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade in used photo and video gear and they have recirculated more than 570,000 cameras, lenses and accessories. Visit https://www.MPB.com to change gear today. 👍 👍 If you like what we do 👍 👍 👍 Buy us a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/avforums 👍 Support us with regular donations via our Patreon campaign   / avforums   Your donations help us to improve the website and publish more editorial and videos 🎵 Music - Licensed by Epidemic Sound