Review: Philips 55POS9002 OLED TV

The Philips 55POS9002 is the successor of the 55POS901F. It is equipped with Philips’ own image processing chip, the P5. His introductory price is already a lot lower than that of his predecessor.

Philips 55POS9002 – specifications

• What: Ultra HD OLED TV
• Screen size: 55 inches (139 cm), flat
• Connections: 4x HDMI (4xARC 2x v2.0a), 1x component video, 1x stereo cinch, 1x optical digital out, 2x USB (1x 3.0), 1x headphones, 2x antenna, Bluetooth
• Extras: HDR10, HLG, WiFi (802.11ac) built-in, Android TV (6.0 Marshmallow), USB / DLNA media player, Multiroom (Client/server), DVB-T2 / C / S2, CI + lock, P5 processor, three-sided Ambilight
• Dimensions: 1,230 x 769 x 228 mm (including foot)
• Weight: 17.21 kg (including foot)
• Consumption: 150/0.3 watt (Energy Label B)
• Recommended retail price: 2,499 euros

Philips 55POS9002 – design

The design of the 55POS9002 still illustrates Philips style, but still looks slightly simpler than that of its predecessor. The soundbar at the bottom has disappeared. The elegant wing feet have been replaced by a simple, central ribbon foot. This means that the appliance also fits on your furniture when it is slightly tighter.

The screen is equipped with a dark metal collar, and centrally in the middle there is of course the illuminated Philips logo.

At the back only the back of the screen is metallic. The thicker part that the Ambilight LEDs, connections and electronics contain is made in simple heavy plastic. Part of the cheaper price therefore seems to us to come from the simpler design.

Connections

The connections and the arrangement are identical to those of the 7502 series. At the back there are two HDMI connections, the antenna connections, an optical digital output, component video and stereo cinch input and the wired network connection. On the side two extra HDMI connections (these are equipped with HDCP 2.2 for Ultra HD sources), twice USB (1x v3.0) and the headphone connection.

The rear connections point downwards so you can opt for a tight wall mount. The device also has a wireless network connection and Bluetooth (for wireless keyboards).

Philips 55POS9002 – ease of use

The 2017 Philips models are equipped with Android TV, version 6 (Marshmallow). There are no major differences with Android TV, version 5 (Lollipop). During the installation you can use an Android smartphone or tablet, which allows you to run the installation just a little bit faster.

Remote control

The included remote control is the classic Philips remote for their top models. A sturdy zapper that fits well in the hand, with a good layout of the keys. The d-pad on this remote can normally serve as a touchpad, but that seems to be turned off by default. That is a good decision from Philips, this touchpad only creates confusion.

At the back of the remote is a keyboard, which is useful for typing in search queries, but a better choice is to speak them in. For that you have to connect the remote controls to the television. Press the ‘Pair’ key (on the top right of the remote) for three seconds and the link is created automatically. From then on you can use the microphone and the keyboard.

It was remarkable that all standard remote commands such as volume, home or settings did not work via Bluetooth, but always via infrared. Therefore you still have to focus on the device. That is a conscious choice of Philips, although the underlying reason is not clear. It has been suggested that this is possible because IR is more reliable than Bluetooth.

Philips 55POS9002 – features

Smart TV platform

We risk in this section to sound like a broken record. This television also uses the Mediatek MT5891. The quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 has 2GB RAM, a Mali-T860 GPU and 16GB internal storage. It is the standard chipset for Android televisions. It is sufficient for a smooth and pleasant experience, but top performance is not to be expected.

Smart functions

No changes in the interface compared to the 7502, so we largely take over our review. The Android TV interface fills the entire screen, with recommendations at the top. Then you get a row of apps and games and the entries. Those who implement Android TV will be given limited freedom to customize the interface.

For example, Philips has not provided row icons for the various entrances. If you want to select an external input, use the button on the remote control. At the very bottom you will find all settings. Compared to LG WebOS and Samsung Smart Hub, the interface looks unnecessarily large.

Philips also has its own Home button, which is centrally located at the top of the d-pad. With that you call up a menu on the right side of the screen. Along this way you also have access to the external inputs, the media player, but especially the live TV functions such as recordings and TV guide for those who use the internal TV tuners. Attention, the 55POS901F had a dual tuner and CI + lock, this new version does not have that. So that is another point that has been cut.

The media player is very complete and played all our video test files, including HDR video. The music player only fails with ALAC, Apple’s lossless format. All other popular formats, including tags, are played correctly.

Ambilight

This OLED TV is also equipped with Ambilight. The three-sided version bathes the wall behind the television in a warm glow of colors. You have several options: follow the video where the image looks bigger or follow the audio, where you get a festive and rhythmic color spectacle. Or choose the lounge light, which gives the room a red, green or blue color. Do you also have Hue lamps in your home then you can link them to your Ambilight to bring even more atmosphere.

Philips 55POS9002 – picture quality

Like all other competitors, Philips uses an OLED panel from LG Display. Perfect black, rich colors and a deep contrast, you can be sure of that. Our experience with the predecessor was positive, so where else has Philips made any improvements?

Main settings

Explanation of main settings;

• The Movies setting delivers the best start. The ISF preset is an alternative for those who want day and night versions.
• If you want to see the effect of Ultra Resolution, you have to set sharpness at least 1, but 2 we also found very good.
• HDR Upscaling: gives a very light HDR effect. We usually left it activated because you enjoy the possibilities of the screen.
• HDR Premium: this affects the tone mapping of HDR images. At Maximum the image gets a little more impact, but there is a limited risk that you clip away some highlights (everything above 1000 nits). You can lead your personal taste here, we prefer the maximum settings.
• Ultra Resolution: gives a slight boost to detail without false contours. Activate it, but do not forget to set focus at least 1.
• Noise Reduction and MPEG artifact reduction can best be activated if you start from a bad source (old DVDs or low quality YouTube). We left it at minimum to get a softer picture.
• Motion style: off for purists, but the ‘movies’ mode gave a lot of extra detail, from ‘standard’ you can also see flowing pan images.

General image properties and image processing

With the P5 Philips has its first own image processing chip in house. It must provide substantial improvements in terms of contrast, detail, color, motion sharpness and source analysis. But just as our test of the 7502 series showed, in this case the P5 also seems to drop some stitches when detecting film and video framerates in interlaced sources. To avoid moiré effects, you should choose for progressive input signals (set the source to 1080p or 720p, ipb 1080i).

Random noise disappears nicely, and also MPEG compression noise (block formation) is generally concealed, although it is not completely eliminated. We found it best to leave both noise suppressions at the minimum level. This is all the more important if you want extra detail, because the pronounced contrast can sometimes make noise more visible. The upscaling is excellent, and with the Ultra Resolution setting you focus the detail lightly without causing artifacts. For that you have to set the sharpness setting at least 1, but we do not recommend to set them higher than 2.

The movement sharpness is perfectly in line with the other OLED TVs that we already reviewed. That means that you see a lot of detail, but slightly less than on the best LCD screens. If you want fluid pan images, choose the Motion Style ‘standard’ or ‘fluent’. The latter can provide some too many artefacts for some. If you only want as much detail as possible, without disturbing motion interpolation effects, then choose ‘Films’.

Philips provides this OLED TV with excellent calibration. The movies-image mode is as good as flawless. Only in the brightest shades of the gray scale some green is missing, giving it a very light magenta tint. This rarely occurred to us in practice. The color reproduction is absolutely excellent, all shades are almost perfectly reproduced and skin colors are flawless. Combined with the perfect black and extreme contrast that an OLED screen delivers, it makes the images very impressive and realistic. An experience that we experienced when we watched TV after two hours found that we had not put a letter on paper yet. The only small improvement we still see remains the black detail. As is usually the case with all OLED TVs, Philips hides a minimum of black detail. Do not let that put you off, the images remain excellent.

HDR

Philips supports HDR10 and HLG on this unit. The color range is excellent and covers 97% of DCI-P3 and 71% of Rec.2020. These are the typical values ​​for OLED panels. The color reproduction is very good in HDR, only in the most saturated colors the Philips shows them a little too dark. The peak luminance is in the ‘Films HDR’ image mode around 640 nits, and a completely white screen gets 135 nits, also a very typical result for OLED.

The calibration is very good, and the tone-mapping respects the brightness of the image to about 60%, after which the curve gently rolls off to keep highlight detail. Those who want a slightly clearer picture and do not care about details that are clipped above 1000 nits (which is quite rare anyway), can set HDR Perfect to maximum. You can adjust that to taste, there is fundamentally no wrong choice.

SDR content gives you an HDR effect with ‘HDR upscaling’. We find the effect rather limited, but it is certainly an interesting choice if you look at it with strong ambient light.

Reflections and viewing angles

Oled offers a very wide viewing angle, an advantage that can be a real asset in many living rooms. The screen goes pretty well with reflections, but still shows a soft red tint when reflections are visible on dark screen parts. That will seldom or never disturb.

Gaming

In the film mode we measure an input lag of 55.8 ms, which is pretty decent, and is perfect for a casual gamer. In the game mode the lag drops to 33.7 ms which is an excellent result. We also see these two results in HDR mode. The screen is a decent choice for gamers.

Philips 55POS9002 – audio quality

Unlike its predecessor, the Philips 55POS9002 oled TV does not have a small soundbar. But with 30 watts of music and a large triple ring speaker in the back of the chassis, there must also be sound. Unfortunately, on our test sample, the woofer appeared to be defective. The sound was in any case very thin, and did not seem to have any bass. A second sample performed slightly better, but it was, frankly, below expectations. The sound is very sharp and harsh at times, and the bass is very modest, especially in our extreme test with Metallica’s ‘The Struggle Within’. The ‘Music’ preset performs better, and you can tune the sound yourself by adjusting bass and treble. But even with a lot of adjustments, the result remains limited. Anyone who wants sound that fits the beautiful image results will have to look for an external solution.

Review equipment

For the lag measurement we use a Leo Bodnar Display lag meter. For all other measurements we rely on a Spectracal C6 colorimeter, Xrite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, an AVFoundry HDMI Pattern Generator , an HDFury Integral for HDR patterns and the Spectracal Calman for Business software.

Philips 55POS9002 – conclusion

This second oled TV from Philips is slightly less richly equipped than its predecessor. His Achilles heel: the sound performance. Furthermore, the traditional weaknesses of oled remain: light hidden black detail and no top brightness compared to LCD. But in terms of image quality you absolutely do not have to give up anything, on the contrary even. The excellent image processing of the P5 delivers wonderful results. The Philips 55POS9002 shows an excellent television for both SDR and HDR content, thanks to excellent calibration. The powerful and lifelike color rendering is a pleasure for the eye. Coupled with his, to oled standards, relatively low price, he is certainly recommended.