Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55 inch Ultra HD LED TV review: Unique concept, but at an expensive price!
Philips 55 inch 55PUT7906The /94 variant comes at Rs 99,990, which is a standard Ultra HD LED TV from the company’s Ambilight 7900 series. It has Ambilight LED lighting on three sides. There is also Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. It runs on Android TV operating system. Is this the most interesting TV you can buy under Rs 1 lakh in India? Let’s find out in this review.
Design and specifications of Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch Ultra HD LED Android TV (55PUT7906/94)
Philips Ambilight 7900 Series TVs come in three sizes which include 55 inch, 65 inch and 75 inch TVs. Their price ranges from Rs 99,990 to Rs 1,89,990. All three TVs have similar specifications and features, which also include three-sided Ambilight LED lighting on the back side of the TV. ,
From the front and back, this TV looks similar to a modern budget TV or mid-range TV. The borders around the screen are slim, there is a logo at the bottom, a module for the IR receiver, indicator light and also a multi-function physical button to control power and volume.
The TV is a bit thick but slim at the edges, which allows easy access to the ports on the left side even after hanging it on the wall. The weight of the 55 inch variant without stand is 14.2 kg. It is compatible with VESA wall mount which is not included in the box. A table stand is provided in the box which can be fixed near the corners of the TV. This means you will need a large table to accommodate the TV.
Philips Ambilight 7900 Series TV looks like an ordinary TV from outside, but when you turn on the TV, its main features come to light. LED lights are provided in the frame of the TV which are installed on the left, top and right edges. These scatter colorful lights on the wall behind the TV. These lights are very bright, due to which even if the TV is kept on the table, it scatters a lot of light behind the wall.
Most of the ports on the Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55 inch TV are provided at the back in a rectangular slot facing downwards. This means that you will have to make most of the connections before mounting the TV on the wall. Ports on the back include digital audio-out (Toslink), a USB Type-A port, an RJ45 Ethernet port, an antenna socket, and three HDMI ports.
The ports on the left side are quite easy to access, even if the TV is wall mounted. These include an HDMI port (with ARC support), a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a USB Type-A port. The company has done a wise thing by providing ARC enabled port on the side.
Philips Ambilight 55PUT7906/94 LED TV has an Ultra HD (3840×2160 pixels) screen. In this, HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are supported in high dynamic range. For sound, the TV has two full-range bottom-firing speakers with a total sound output of 20W, and support for various audio formats up to Dolby Atmos. The TV has Bluetooth 5 and dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity. There’s 8GB of internal storage for apps and app data, as well as an unspecified quad-core processor to power the software and interface.
Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55 inch Ultra HD LED Android TV (55PUT7906/94) Remote and Features
The company has given a full size remote with the TV which is a little bigger as per the requirement. The remote has buttons to control navigation, playback controls, input selection and a classic number pad. Hot keys are provided for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and YouTube as well as Google Assistant. A microphone is also available in the remote for voice commands.
There is an info button on the remote which tells the resolution and internet speed. Apart from this, there is also an Ambilight button which can be used to quickly access the Ambilight menu and enable or disable the Ambilight effects and also modify the settings.
Initially the remote worked fine. But after a few weeks I found that it was working only when facing the IR receiver. This happened within just one night even though it was working fine on the first day. Changing the battery and resetting the TV did not help. Bluetooth connectivity was working only for Google Assistant. Surprisingly, after a few days the remote started working properly again, so it was important to mention this issue here.
Apart from Ambilight, the Philips 55PUT7906/94 TV is pretty basic in terms of features. The TV has built-in Chromecast for content casting and Google Assistant for voice commands.
Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55 inch Ultra HD LED Android TV (55PUT7906/94) Software and Interface
Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55 Inch LED TV runs on Android TV, 10 OS. It looks a bit like Google TV. In this, the main experience is similar to other Android TVs. The TV gets access to Google Play store which has more than 7000 apps and games.
Apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are available pre-installed on the TV. On the basis of these, TV also makes content recommendations. It may be a step back from the Google TV UI, but the stock Android TV user interface is also a good option.
Apart from the problem with the remote, I found its user interface performance lacking at times. There was a slight delay in reaction while navigating through the UI which was visible as lag in the pictures as well. It was a good thing that there was no such problem while playing the actual content, but I found it much easier and more convenient to switch to Chromecast with Google TV.
Performance of Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch Ultra HD LED Android TV (55PUT7906/94)
Nowadays, quantum dot or OLED TVs are available for less than Rs 1 lakh. It seems crazy to spend so much money for the Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch LED TV. However, the Ambilight effect is quite unique in itself. Brands like Govee and Philips now provide solutions for setting up LED lighting in TVs even after purchase. Still, the company’s Ambilight feature is easy to use, and controlling it via the TV remote also makes it special. But, I wonder if the ambilighting alone is enough to make it premium?
The TV features an Ultra HD resolution LED screen with support for HDR up to Dolby Vision. The performance is quite good with high quality content. The picture looks as sharp as it can be. But it has some flaws which I wouldn’t expect in a Rs 1 lakh TV.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse would be a good place to start telling about it. While watching a movie, bright colors were visible and trippy comic book style visuals looked good. Watching this movie on a TV with Ambilight function was fun and I was not disappointed.
The work that Ambilight did with the film was quite impressive. The bright colors on the screen combined with the bright lights behind the TV made the picture appear larger and more vibrant than it actually was. The Ambilight effect was able to read the colors quickly at the edges of the screen and flowed with the screen, which made the fast-moving colorful content a different experience.
Ambilight wasn’t able to do much with Better Call Saul’s monochrome scenes and muted colors. Here it seemed better to switch it off. I found that the effect looked better when the Ambilights were falling on a white wall. The effect was being reduced on the textured blue wall.
Ambilight settings on the TV are easy to control which is a good thing. For this, presets are also provided so that you can control its intensity. When set in lounge lighting, it has lighting in only one color. The picture was quite sharp in Into The Spider-Verse. Masaba The picture in Masaba was also quite colorful and bright. Colors looked good but weren’t at all punchy compared to the cheaper Xiaomi OLED Vision TV.
The display’s backlighting was giving a whitewash effect in dark scenes, making blacks appear dark grey. This kind of performance can be expected from an affordable LED TV, so I was disappointed with this TV here. The Philips Ambilight 7900 Series TV is quite bright, which is due to its LED display. Because of this, it can be easily seen even in a room with lots of light. In such a situation, if the light in the room is reduced by pulling down the curtains, the picture starts looking very good. Here TVs like Hisense 55U6G are brighter and also cheaper.
HDR up to Dolby Vision is supported in the TV, but the TV does not get much benefit from it. There is only a slight improvement in brightness and colors when switching to HDR compared to SDR content. This wasn’t the same as seen with other televisions, including the Sony X75K, which performed well even with only HDR10 capability.
The TV upscales low resolution content properly. HD and FullHD movies and TV shows look good in terms of sharpness. There are no issues with motion, color and contrast. The sound quality of the TV cannot be called amazing, but it is not bad either. The 20W speakers perform a little underperform as expected. The sound of the TV is sufficient for a small room. In larger rooms the volume has to be increased. Dolby Atmos doesn’t improve the sound much. Overall the sound experience can be called fine.
our decision
Philips Ambilight 7900 series LED TV is quite unique. You can buy it because of its Ambilight system. Although it may seem unnecessary initially, it proves to be very effective in enhancing the viewing experience. However, the lighting effect alone doesn’t do full justice to the Rs 99,990 price tag.
Talking about performance, the TV performs like a TV priced around Rs 60 thousand or so. Which also includes the company’s own 8100 series 55-inch TV. There seems to be a decrease in black level. Even overall brightness is not able to fulfill this. At the same time, some strange problems came to light with the remote also.
If the Ambilight system is the most exciting for you then you can think about buying this TV. It works really well and definitely adds to the entertainment that a customer wants on TV. If you do not have much to do with Ambilight, then you can look at Xiaomi OLED Vision TV, which is a much better option than Philips TV at the same price.
