Philips The One 4K TV 2022 (58PUS8506) Review

A solid all-round performance from Philips’ mid-range series. The PUS8506 packs in plenty of entertainment value, even if its motion-picture show operation tin can’t quite become rid of all the idiosyncrasies from previous generations.

Introduction

The latest ‘The One’ Tv from Philips is a mid-range set up that packs as many ‘premium’ features as information technology tin into an affordable screen.

This yr’s model is the Philips PUS8506 (hither in its 58-inch size), replacing the PUS8545 model from 2022. With improvements to the spec and design, the expectation is the PUS8506 pushes on in performance terms. Merely does information technology?

Design

• Improved aesthetics
• Swivel stand
• Premium feeling remote

Some assembly is required to put the PUS8506’south disparate pieces together, but information technology won’t have long. Adhere the two parts of the stand, screw them into the back of the Idiot box and the Philips is ready to become inside five minutes.

The ergonomics of the PUS8506 are in keeping with the 2022 PUS8545 – similar type of stand and like silver bezel that frames the screen. The bezel is slimmer than the PUS8545’s, which not only gives more acreage to the screen but looks amend. The stand is different too, not so Mad Max shiny and chrome, merely withal up to a standard that asserts the PUS8506’south premium aspirations.

The stand offers some swivelling action – 15 degrees in either direction and dotted around the rear panel is an array of Ambilight LEDs in its 3-sided grade (tiptop and sides). When turned on, they offer an experience unique to Philips’ TVs.

The remote is most the same as concluding year, and the tactile feel it offers is, for a lack of better give-and-take, prissy, with its soft push presses. Hotkeys embrace Netflix, Freeview Play, Ambilight, Rakuten TV and Google Assistant. Not much has changed, just what has makes for a small jump up in overall aesthetics.

Features

• eARC and VRR back up
• Fast gaming performance
• Lots of SVOD apps

The PUS8506’s interface is a combination of Philips’ and Android Television 10. Throw in Freeview Play and all the UK catch-upwards apps are catered for. While Sony has graduated from Android to the new Google TV interface, it seems Philips is taking a wait-and-see approach.

In whatever case, Android Telly 10 offers Chromecast for streaming and Google Assistant for phonation control, and dissimilar last twelvemonth’s TVs, all the major apps are available in their 4K HDR/Dolby Atmos incarnations.

Connections are flanked around the rear with 4 HDMI – 1 is eARC for sending lossless audio out to an external speaker – with Variable Refresh Charge per unit (VRR) available on HDMI 1 and 2. Add two USB inputs (2.0 and iii.0), satellite and terrestrial tuners, Ethernet, headphone out, Common Interface Plus, and digital optical out and that’due south your lot. Wireless connections include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Delve into Philips’ own menus and there’s plenty to tweak, with an array of advanced settings for pic, sound, Ambilight and much more. For those less inclined to spend time looking, in that location are Quick Picture settings inside Android for adjusting colour, contrast, brightness, and sharpness – though if you ask me, the colour setting barely does annihilation.

Philips’ unique Ambilight proposition comes in its 3-sided form (peak and sides). Ambilight places LED lights around the edges of the rear panel, casting the colours on screen to the surface behind. It’s genuinely dissimilar feel, but besides never gets also distracting (well, perhaps it will for passers-by on a street who run into the glow from your front room). The consequence is a piffling curtailed by the fact there’due south no bottom row, so if you’re wall-mounting it may feel incomplete.

The PUS8506 has a game way, and information technology’s an improvement with x.6ms at 1080p and ten.7ms at 4K – twice as fast as final twelvemonth’south PUS8545.

In the audio department in that location’s DTS Play-Fi back up (the app download is a whopping 256MB on Android), which brings the PUS8506 within a multi-room arrangement for playing music with uniform speakers. In that location’s also Mimi Divers Sound, which optimises the sound performance based on your hearing ability through a series of tests. It’due south worth giving it a get if yous find information technology hard to hear every word or detail.

Picture quality

• Problems with dark detail/darker scenes
• Colourful pictures
• Solid motion handling

Every bit per usual, Philips’ out of box settings need tweaking but not as much as the PUS8545 required. The slight frustration is that, despite the various motion picture modes this Philips offers, there’s no one fashion that you can hang your hat on and use across nigh content.

It’due south exemplified by Philips’ Motion-picture show mode, which is the most color accurate but with certain content looks flat, bland, and overly dark, and with others looks punchy and vibrant. Iron Man three (SDR) looks understated, just in Natural mode it is punchier.

Give information technology some brighter content and the reds and greens of the Christmas shop in Last Christmas look terrific in the motion-picture show picture setting, and with some films, the Vivid mode hits the spot, such as Lucy with a richer, high-contrast image matching the motion-picture show’southward florid aesthetics. The Vivid mode has ever been something of a surreptitious sauce for Philips’ TVs compared to other brand’south implementations, and when it works it’s actually attractive (if overly abrupt).

Powered by its P5 Perfect Pic engine, the Philips gives SDR broadcast channels colourful and expressive tones. Complexions are warmly expressed and there’s plenty of variation in tones and hues for a punchy, saturated picture that’s just on the right side of natural.

Upscaling standard definition broadcast offers anticipated fuzzy edges and a soft look. Slightly galling is the amount of racket on faces, which becomes distracting whenever someone moves their head – steer clear of SD every bit much as possible. HD content poses no bug with a statelier and equanimous presentation.

The 58PUS8506 proves capable enough with motion, likewise. The races in Days of Thunder (Dolby Vision) are handled without distracting artefacts, while the Philips survives WW1-drama 1917 generally unscathed, and in Bumblebee, the transformations of Autobots and Decepticons are confidently handled without obvious blur or judder. There is at times a hyperreal attribute to move and if that bothers there’s a film-like flicker option bachelor.

Watching The Suicide Team on 4K Blu-ray (Dolby Vision) and in that location’southward some noise during the fast pans and camera movements over the opening credits, merely aught out of the ordinary. Peacemaker’s chrome helmet causes a few blurry moments, only aside from the usual moments of judder and stutter, information technology’s a consistent and stable performance where motility is concerned.

The Philips supports all HDR flavours (HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision) and all would seem to suffer from the same issue – a lack of detail in the darkest part of the image.

Out of box settings
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Adjusted

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel to remedy by bumping up the Effulgence setting in the bill of fare, but it is curious that Dolby Vision and HDR10+ require farther aligning given they’re meant to be optimising effulgence. The lack of detail is visible (or not) in the first episode of Hawkeye on Disney+. All the detail of Kate Bishop’due south blackness dinner jacket is crushed, and similarly in Alien (HDR10) and Life (Prime number Video, HDR10+), where scenes are darker than they should be. Set the Brightness to the high 60s and the Philips looks more than similar it should.

The Philips likewise suffers from a lack of overall peak brightness for HDR (Vivid measures 418 nits on a ten% window), so highlights aren’t expressed with searing luminance – though the Tv set does characteristic a potent sense of dissimilarity. Black levels are strong and deep in The Shape of Water; the bedchamber where Amphibian Man is held has a 50s blackness and white horror feel to it, the PUS8506 emphasising the film’s chiaroscuro sense of lighting with gusto.

HDR10+
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Dolby Vision Brilliant

Dolby Vision helps the set’due south limited brightness, and the difference between it and HDR10+ seems to differ film by film but could exist summarized as the Dolby Vision offering stronger black levels and depth, while HDR10+ reveals more particular in the shadows and darkest parts but colours aren’t equally firm. Accept your pick, as either rendition nonetheless looks very good.

Back to The Suicide Squad and that native 4K presentation offers excellent levels of particular for the Philips to feed on. From the individual strands in Bloodsport’southward bristles to the fine detail of their suits and the craggy, battered buildings of the fictional Corto Maltese, the pic – despite its rough-and-ready advent – looks fantastic.

I accept fewer qualms well-nigh the PUS8506’south performance than I did the previous model. While there are notwithstanding areas for improvement, this is a much more consistent performer.

Sound quality

• Better than expected
• Calibration evinces a better performance

The Philips 58PUS8506’s 20W downfiring system may appear meagre, but performs decently. A sound bar is a must for any flat-screen TV if you aspire for a cinematic (or even immersive) feel then, merely if you’re not in a blitz to buy i, the Philips acquits itself well.

There is Dolby Atmos capability that offers ameliorate processing. The TV’southward out of box performance is fine, though it lacks dynamic achieve and feels muted in moments that require impact. Calibrate the speakers and more particular is wrung out with better separation betwixt effects, dialogue and score, plus sharper dynamics. Dialogue is captured well – the reverberations of Morgan Freeman’south voice when he’s giving a oral communication in a lecture hall in Lucy sounds right, and furnishings are placed finer on screen so there’s some decent spatial accurateness there.

Bass is express but the Philips nonetheless manages to generate a sense of calibration with action scenes. When Tony Stark’due south Malibu complex comes under attack, the Television has a solid go at describing the devastation equally the house falls into the body of water. For what is a 20W system, it’s a solid try.

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