Review: Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV

Review: Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV

Philips’ latest flagship model builds on the performance of the OLED805 series, and that of the 2019 OLED934 and OLED984. A number of enhancements for image processing and high-end audio from Bowers & Wilkins should take the performance one step further. This review is about Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV.

Philips 65OLED935 specifications

• What: Ultra HD OLED TV
• Screen size: 65 inch (164 cm) ), flat
• Connections: 4x HDMI (4x v2.0, ARC, ALLM, 2K HFR), 2x USB, 1x optical digital out, 1x headphones, 2x antenna, 1x subwoofer pre-out, Bluetooth
• Extras: HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR10 +, Dolby Atmos, WiFi built-in, Android 9.0, DTS Play-Fi, USB / DLNA media player, DVB-T2 / C / S2, CI + slot, 4th Gen P5 Processor with AI +
• Dimensions: 1,449 x 931 x 299 mm (including foot)
• Weight: 34.8 kg (including foot)
• Consumption: 194 / 0.3 watt (Energy label B)
• List price: 3,499 euros

A complete overview of the Philips 2020 OLED models and the other TV line-ups for 2020 can be found here.

Philips 65OLED935 – Design

This new Philips takes the design style of the OLE934 series. That means a classic, slim OLED panel, with a hefty speaker bar at the bottom that serves as a base.

The eye-catching speaker bar has a parallelogram profile, is finished with Kvadrat speaker fabric on the front and sides, and a metal micromesh at the top. The most striking addition is the central “Tweeter on top”, a very typical B&W feature. The tweeter is housed in a solid metal housing with metal grillle and is thus a real luxury accent.

The device comes with two beautiful, dark chrome necks. One for use on a piece of furniture and one for wall mounting.

Philips 65OLED935 – Connections

Also on this top model Philips stays with HDMI 2.0 connections, not HDMI 2.1 versions. The only HDMI 2.1 feature you do get is ALLM. The four connections offer ARC and they are ready for Ultra HD HDR in the best quality.

The device is further equipped with two USB connections, a headphone output, digital optical output and a subwoofer pre-out for those who still want basses. wants to give an extra push. Wireless and wired network and Bluetooth (for the remote, wireless keyboards and wireless headphones) are of course also present.

Three of the four HDMI connections, all USB connections and the headphone output are on the side. The other connections are at the back and point downwards, ideal for wall mounting.

Philips 65OLED935 – Ease of use and smart TV

The Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV shares the same Android chipset as the OLED805 and last year’s models. It’s the MT5887, with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, 2.5 GB RAM and the Mali G51 GPU. The chipset is powerful enough to provide a fairly smooth experience, but still has to outperform the newer Sony models in this area.

The interface of Android 9 (Pie) organizes all content into channels that occupy horizontal rows on the screen. screen. You can adjust or remove these channels yourself. For a complete overview of the possibilities Android TV 9, please refer to our Android TV background article .

Most settings are not integrated in the Android menus, but still have a own menu that also fills the entire screen or a large part of the left side. That is inconvenient if you regularly play in the settings, but for most users it makes little difference. The menus are clear and easy to navigate.

Remote control

The new remote control that we found on the OLED805 is also included with the OLED935. The new model is long and slim, with keys that are perfectly integrated into the surface of the remote. The keys are backlit, and the back is made of Muirhead leather, two details that give the remote a touch of luxury.

The lighting activates briefly when you press a key, a somewhat awkward choice since you the dark must find the first key. Sony tackles this better with lighting that activates based on ambient light and a motion sensor.

The remote is very light, feels great in the hand, and the keys are very easy to press. Nevertheless, we are slightly less satisfied with the ease of use. The layout is decent, but is hindered by those almost seamless keys. Because they are so close together it is easy to press an adjacent key. Your thumb wanders for a moment and it’s done. For example, we accidentally pressed the “Home” key several times, when we actually just wanted to navigate down (the key just above it). Whoever wants to see the “inputs” sometimes accidentally starts Netflix. So there is certainly room for improvement.

The keyboard that we found on many Philips remotes has disappeared. The remote uses Bluetooth for voice commands, but otherwise works fully via infrared.

Functions

The OLED935 has a single TV tuner and one CI + slot. You can record to a USB hard disk, but watching another channel at the same time is not possible.

You watch HDR via Netflix (Dolby Vision) and YouTube (HLG and HDR10). 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.

Airplay 2, a feature that we find with many other brands, is missing, but Philips does offer a unique feature, DTS Play-Fi. You’ll find it on all 2020 TV models, the new 8000 series soundbar and the W6205 / W6505 WiFi speakers. Later in the year, Play-Fi will also arrive on the 2019 TV models. Play-Fi is a WiFi-based multi-room system that you can also use to create wireless surround. Connected devices can be of different brands, not just Philips. From the Play-Fi app on your smartphone you can stream all kinds of music services to the TV and / or connected speakers. Play-Fi also offers you the unique option to not only stream streaming services, but also the sound of your TV to a connected speaker to stream.

The list of DTS Play-Fi devices is rather limited, but it seems to us a handy move by Philips to immediately establish the link with its audio department, and to choose an open eco-system so that you have more options.

Ambilight

Ambilight should not be missing and a top model such as the OLED935 has the four-sided version at home. The small LEDs spread their glow on the wall behind the television. New features this year are Ambilight Sleep, a mode where the TV lulls you to sleep with soft light and sound. Ambilight Air is the new option that connects the TV to Philips’ new WiFi speakers that also have Ambilight.

Philips 65OLED935 – Image processing

Previous years all Philips OLED models (with same release year) same version of P5 processor. The OLED935 deviates from this for the first time, it now gets an even more developed version of the 4th Gen P5 Processor with AI that we found on the  OLED805 . The name is subtly different, it is the 4th Gen P5 Processor with AI +.

Of course it offers all the new AI functionality that we also found on the OLED805, but it expands it with four improved or new functions: improved AI- based sharpness, improved Perfect Natural Reality, a new anti-banding solution and a new anti-burn-in prevention.

The AI-based sharpness was also found on the OLED805, but was then calculated and applied to the full screen. On the OLED935, the P5 can use different sharpness settings in different parts of the image. Parts of the image where there is a lot of detail or texture can be given an extra boost. Perfect Natural Reality, the function that gives Philips SDR image an HDR style, has been enhanced with better detection of light accents. Both effects are noticeable (we compared with the OLED805), but the effect is rather modest and of course depends on what you are watching. Images with a lot of reflections, specular surfaces and a lot of detail are most visible.

The new “AI Smart Bit Enhancement 2.0” removes color bands in soft gradients very well. To activate that function, you must set both Noise Reduction and MPEG Artifact Reduction to at least minimum. In the images below you can see the effect compared to an OLED805 (first image).

The same image on the OLED935 was considerably better, although color bands remain visible mainly in blue tones. This is obviously a test image, and in real content the result is very good.

Even our tricky, dark Game Of Thrones scene came out considerably better. You may lose some detail, but overall that was very limited. Some black detail disappeared in HDR images. In that case you might want to turn off the function.

Finally, Philips has also implemented a logo detection system. This analyzes the screen in a very fine grid (32400 zones) and thus discovers which parts of the image are static (logos, game interfaces). The intensity of those static image parts is then reduced to prevent burn-in.

The motion sharpness is fine, but on this model we also find the new kind of Black Frame Insertion (which is BFI [19659013]) that other manufacturers offer will not return. That little bit of extra sharpness in fast movements as we saw it on the LG and Sony is therefore missing out. The “True Cinema” mode is ideal for film purists, the “Movies” mode uses minimal frame interpolation, but maximum “Perfect Clear Motion” for sharp moving images. We still prefer ‘Standard’ as the best compromise between shocking pan images and images that are too smooth.

Main settings

Here you will find an explanation of the most important picture settings and tips for setting up your TV.

Philips 65OLED935 – Image quality

The Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV is equipped with the latest OLED panel that we also saw on the 65 inch LG CX.

The screen had good uniformity in bright shades, with only a narrow slightly bright border on the left. In dark tones, we saw very light streaks and a slightly darker spot on the left side of the image. In practice, this never bothered.

Philips also offers the Filmmaker Mode but this coincides with the “Films” image mode. In the menu, under General Settings, you can activate “HDMI Auto movie mode”. The TV then automatically switches to Filmmaker mode as an HDMI source that signals it.

The “Movies” image mode is excellently calibrated, with a nice neutral gray scale and top color reproduction. The gamma value of 2.2 is fine for the living room, and also shows all black detail very well. If you look at eclipse, you can set the gamma setting to +2 for a slightly darker, cinematic image. Nothing for the purists, but if you want to give the image some extra punch, the Minimum setting of Perfect Natural Reality is a good choice, the image will get some HDR effect.

Philips 65OLED935 – HDR

The Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV supports HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision and HDR10 +, a good decision. This way you can be sure that you always have the widest choice for HDR.

In the HDR Films image preset, and with the contrast mode ‘Optimized for Image’, we achieve a peak luminance of approximately 836 nits on a 10% window, and 972 nits a 2% window. Both values ​​are reached after some time, in normal use you probably have to take 50-80 nits off. That is an excellent result and confirms Philips’ place in the front of the pack for clarity at OLED. A completely white screen reaches 148 nits.

The color gamut reaches 94% DCI-P3 and 68% Rec.2020. These are typical values ​​for OLED. The HDR Film image mode is very well calibrated. The Philips not only shows all white detail, it also respects the metadata up to 4,000 nits. For that you have to turn the “HDR Perfect” setting off (or on Automatic). In other modes, it makes the image slightly brighter at the expense of white detail.

Although the “Auto” mode itself calculates dynamic tone mapping, we found the results less attractive. The image generally becomes slightly brighter, but colors lose impact slightly. If you want a little more clarity and want to give up some white detail for that, it is best to use the Minimum position.

Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV – Gaming, Reflections and viewing angles

The OLED screen of the Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV offers a very wide viewing angle, and handles well reflections. For the best result, it is still advisable to avoid incident light on the screen.

In the Movie image mode we measure a lag of 76.4 ms, a reasonable but still too high result . In game mode, the lag drops to 36.6 ms, sufficient for many gamers, but Philips lags behind the competition in this respect.

Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV – Sound quality

For the sound Philips partnered with renowned loudspeaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins. The system builds on the recognizable design of the 2019 OLED934. The OLED935’s speaker bar delivers 70W of power in a 3.1.2 configuration. The bar contains three titanium tweeters, four midrange drivers, a subwoofer and two upward-firing Dolby Atmos drivers. The eye-catching “Tweeter-on-Top” is a unique B&W solution that avoids diffraction of the sound in the cabinet and thus ensures a pure, clear sound.

A few songs later, our decision is clear. We can really enjoy this. From the trumpets opening Mussorgsky’s Promenade to the choral work in Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus, but just as well the modest guitar in The man is too strong of the Dire Straits, or the strong drums of Apollo 440’s Krupa. The sound is strong, detailed and very full with a really good bass line.

Those performances naturally also translate into great film results, whether it is quiet dialogue or wild chase. We turn the volume knob wide, and only hear the distortion when it is really too loud. When you play Dolby Atmos content, this is clearly stated. Our Dolby Atmos test clips immerse the room in sound. A great achievement, and a wonderful addition to the impressive images.

Review equipment

We use a Leo Bodnar Display lag meter for the lag measurement. For all other measurements we rely on a Spectracal C6 HDR2000 Colorimeter, Xrite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, a VideoForge Pro pattern generator, and the Spectracal Calman for Business software. We use an HDFury Vertex to analyze any HDR problems.

Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV – Conclusion

The OLED984 was a beautiful television, but not a setup that suited everyone. The OLED934 was a nice solution that took the B&W sound to a more affordable level. Philips continued to work with the OLED935 on that model, with very good results as a result. Are there any downsides? Yes, we would have liked to see a little more love for HDMI 2.1, a matter of letting the gamers enjoy all that beauty as well. And just like on the OLED805, the ease of use of the remote could be better.

The Philips 65OLED935 (OLED935 series) OLED TV is a real TV for connoisseurs of film and music. We were already very satisfied with the image processing of the OLED805, and the OLED935 goes a step further. This model launches with an even more advanced image processor. Its main features are an excellent anti-banding solution that frees fine color gradients from annoying color bands, a problem the previous processor struggled with. Philips also provided an accurate detection system for logos and static picture elements which then dims it to prevent burn-in. An extra touch of sharpness, and a refined Perfect Natural Reality you get on top of it, they are small improvements, but they mainly show how far image processing already goes. Combine with the beautiful colors and perfect black of the OLED panel and the result is an image that will delight everyone. Are you a fan of HDR (who isn’t), then you know that the Philips supports both HDR10 + and Dolby Vision. And that’s not all. The sound system is a wonderful achievement in itself. The B&W speaker bar provides sound that fits the image: compelling, powerful, full and refined and with Dolby Atmos effect. The OLED935 comes complete with 4-sided Ambilight, and support for DTS Play-Fi.