Philips 55PFL6008S review

MIRROR IMAGE

Philips TVs are renowned for their incredibly sharp picture, and the 6008 is no exception. Even standard definition content has a crispness that TVs from other manufacturers lack, but you can see the difference in HD video too. Most impressively, it adds extra perceived detail without introducing excessive noise to the picture. Using the image quality presets, video looks incredibly bright and vivid. It’s unrealistic in Dynamic mode, having lurid colours that are too bright at times. You’ll need to alter picture settings to get the most from the set, but thankfully there are plenty of options to tweak and configure.

We used the Standard preset as our baseline, but had to drop backlight contrast significantly in order to get the black levels we wanted when watching films. This impacts picture brightness significantly, to the point where you must watch films in a dark room to appreciate shadow detail. Thankfully, the backlight is almost entirely consistent across the 55in panel, with no isolated clouds or light bleed to distract you. We also dropped colour intensity to around 60 per cent and switched to a custom colour temperature, as the defaults were either too cold, creating a blue tint, or too warm, resulting in a yellowish hue. This toned down the bright colours, without dulling the picture.

Finally, we attacked the Pixel Precise HD image processing, which is split into its individual settings for tweaking. Turning off the dynamic backlight and contrast also helps create an even picture, regardless of the ambient light in a room. We disabled Perfect Natural Motion frame interpolation, as we prefer Blu-ray films to look as the director intended, although you can enable it at its minimum setting to smooth fast-moving broadcast TV such as football and motorsport without suffering a heavy amount of motion artefacts. They’re there if you look hard enough, and are much more visible at higher settings, so these are best avoided.

ALL-INCLUSIVE 3D

The 6008 uses passive 3D, which has its benefits, most notably flicker-free viewing and inexpensive glasses. Four pairs are included with the TV, so a family of four won’t have to buy any more. 3D images look incredibly bright using the built-in preset, with impressive levels of depth and an almost complete lack of crosstalk, although there are some disadvantages. Even from six feet away, it’s possible to spot the horizontal line structure of a 3D image. Plus, detail isn’t as high as with active 3D and edges and curves are slightly jaggier as a result. However, you don’t have to spend a small fortune on glasses, or worry about running out of battery power mid-film.

The 6008’s sound managed to match its picture in terms of quality, for the most part. The integrated subwoofer helps strengthen the sound of broadcast TV and music, but it can’t deliver the level of bass we’d prefer for movies and games. There’s easily enough volume to fill a medium-sized room, and the virtual surround sound effect creates a reasonably wide sound stage, although it lacks a crisp high end.

Although it has a limited smart TV portal, which will admittedly be up to par later in the year, the 6008 is a great-looking TV with features you won’t find anywhere else. It doesn’t have the most responsive user interface, but picture quality and the addition of Ambilight makes films and games look superb. At £1,500 for the 55in model, it’s reasonably priced too. If it’s within your budget, you won’t regret buying the Philips 55PFL6008S.