TECHWEEK
The new Philips 65OLED935 TV is inspired by the OLED934 series . Yes, and not far from OLED984 . It’s a classic slim OLED panel with a massive speaker strip at the bottom that serves as the base. The TV has two beautiful dark chrome necks connecting the OLED panel to the soundbar. One for use on furniture and one for wall mounting.
The eye-catching speaker panel has a parallelogram profile, Kvadrat fabric at the front and sides and a metal mesh top. The most striking addition is the center “tweeter on top”, a very typical B&W feature. The tweeter is housed in a sturdy metal housing with a metal grill and is thus a true luxury piece of construction.
Image quality
The OLED935 series features the latest OLED panels found on the 65-inch LG CX . The screen has good uniformity in bright and dark shades. Philips also offers Filmmaker Mode , but this is the same as Films picture mode. In the menu, under General Settings, you can activate HDMI Auto Video Mode. The TV will then automatically switch to Filmmaker mode when HDMI outputs the appropriate signal.
HDR
The OLED935 TV supports HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision and HDR10 +. The HDR Movies preset and Optimized for Image contrast mode peaks at approximately 836 nits with a 10% gray fill and 972 nits in a 2% window. Both values are reached after some time. In normal use, you will probably need to drop 50-80 nits. This is an excellent result and confirms that Philips is at the forefront of OLED displays.
The color gamut covers 94% DCI-P3 and 68% Rec. 2020. These are typical OLED values. The HDR Film picture mode is very well calibrated. Philips not only shows all the light details, but also takes into account metadata up to 4000 nits. To do this, you need to turn off the “HDR Perfect” setting (or select “Automatic”). In other modes, it makes the image a little brighter due to the lighter details.
Image processing
In previous years, all Philips OLED models (with the same model year) used the same version of the P5 processor. For the first time, the OLED935 departs from this with an even more advanced version of the 4th generation P5 processor with artificial intelligence, the P5 AI Perfect Picture. The same is found inside the OLED805 .
Of course, it has all the new artificial intelligence features that the OLED805 has. But it is complemented by four improved or new features: improved clarity based on artificial intelligence, improved Perfect Natural Reality, a new solution to prevent streaking and prevent burnout.
The OLED935 P5 processor can use different sharpness settings in different parts of the image. Parts of an image with a lot of detail or texture can be sharpened. Perfect Natural Reality is a function that gives your Philips SDR picture an HDR look. It has been improved with better recognition of light accents. Both effects are quite modest in their manifestation (when compared to OLED805) and depend on what you are watching.
The new AI Smart Bit Enhancement 2.0 feature is very good at removing color stripes in smooth gradient transitions. To activate it, you need to set both noise reduction and MPEG artifact suppression to a minimum. It is possible to lose some details, but in general, these are minor losses. Some black details disappear in the HDR image. In this case, the function can be disabled.
Philips has also implemented a logo detection system. It analyzes the screen in a very fine grid (32400 zones) and thus detects which parts of the image are static (logos, game interfaces). Then the intensity of these static parts of the image is reduced to prevent burn-in.
The motion handling is excellent. In this model we find a new type of black frame insertion (called BFI [19659013]) that other manufacturers do not offer. Therefore, some of the sharpness of fast moving objects is missed. True Cinema mode is ideal for movie lovers. In the “Cinema” mode, the minimum interpolation of frames is used, but the “Ideal definition of motion” parameter is increased to the maximum. Standard mode is the best compromise for everything.
Smart TV
The OLED935 uses the same Android chipset as the OLED805 and last year’s models. It is an MT5887 with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, 2.5GB of RAM and a Mali G51 GPU. The chipset is powerful enough to provide a fairly smooth operation, but it still doesn’t outperform newer Sony models in this area.
The Android 9 (Pie) OS interface organizes all content into channels that make up horizontal rows of tiles on the screen. You can configure or delete these channels yourself. Most of the settings are not integrated into Android, but have their own menu that fills the entire screen or most of the left side. This is inconvenient if you regularly experiment with the settings, but it doesn’t really matter for most users. The menus are clear and comfortable.
The new remote control is the same as the OLED805. It is long and thin, with buttons perfectly integrated into the surface. The keys are backlit and the back is made of Muirhead leather for a luxurious look. The backlight is activated for a short time after pressing, which is somewhat inconvenient, because you have to look for the first button in the dark. Sony does a better job of this with lighting that is activated based on ambient light and a motion sensor.
The remote control is very light, fits perfectly in the hand, the keys are easy to press. However, the nearly seamless keys are so close together that it is easy to touch the adjacent key. The keyboard that was on many Philips remotes is gone. The remote uses Bluetooth for voice commands, but otherwise works entirely through infrared.
Features and Ambilight
Philips OLED935 has a digital and analog TV tuner and one CI + slot. You can record to USB hard disk, but you cannot watch another channel at the same time. HDR is available on Netflix (Dolby Vision) and YouTube (HLG and HDR10). The media player is very complete and plays any test video files including HDR videos. The music player doesn’t work only with ALAC, Apple’s lossless format.
There is no Airplay 2 feature, but Philips does offer the unique DTS Play-Fi feature. It can be found on all 2020 TVs, the new 8000 Series Soundbar and W6205 / W6505 WiFi Speakers. Later in 2020, Play-Fi will also appear on 2019 TV models. Play-Fi is a Wi-Fi-based multi-room system that can be used to create wireless surround sound.
The OLED935 has a four-sided version of Ambilight. Small LEDs light up on the wall behind the TV. New features this year are Ambilight Sleep, a mode in which the TV soothes you with soft light and sound. Ambilight Air is a new option that connects the TV to the new Philips Wi-Fi speakers, also equipped with Ambilight.
Games, reflections and viewing angles
The Philips 935 OLED screen offers a very wide viewing angle and copes well with reflections. For best results, it is nevertheless recommended to avoid shining light on the screen. In the “Cinema” mode, the measured image display delay is 76.4 ms. This is an acceptable value, but still too high. In game mode, the latency is reduced to 36.6ms, which is enough for many gamers. But Philips lags behind the competition in this respect.
Sound quality
In the audio field, Philips has partnered with renowned speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins. The system is based on the recognizable 2019 OLED934 design. The OLED935 acoustic panel delivers 70W of power in a 3.1.2 configuration. It houses three titanium tweeters, four mid-range speakers, a subwoofer, and two Dolby Atmos upward-firing speakers .
The attractive “Tweeter Top” is a unique B&W solution that avoids diffraction of sound in the cabinet and thus delivers clear and clear sound. The sound is strong, detailed and very juicy with a really good bass line. This kind of performance naturally leads to great results in movies, be it quiet dialogues or wild chases.
We “turn” the volume knob all the way and hear distortion only when the sound is really too loud. When Dolby Atmos content is played, you can hear it clearly. Dolby Atmos test videos wrap the entire room in sound. An excellent achievement and a great addition to an impressive picture.
Connections
This top Philips model still uses HDMI 2.0 rather than HDMI 2.1. The only HDMI 2.1 feature you get is ALLM. Four ports offer ARC and are Ultra HD HDR ready at the best quality. The TV is additionally equipped with two USB ports, a headphone output, a digital optical output and a pre-amplifier output for a subwoofer.
Wireless and wired networking and Bluetooth (for remote controls, wireless keyboards and wireless headphones) are of course also present. Three of the four HDMI connectors, all USB ports and a headphone output are on the side. The rest of the connections are located at the back and point downwards, ideal for wall mounting.
Conclusion
This is a real TV for connoisseurs of film and music. The model comes with an even more advanced image processor. Its main features are a great solution for preventing streaking on soft color gradients.
Philips has also provided an accurate logo and static element detection system that darkens them to prevent burn-in. The extra sharpness and the enhanced Perfect Natural Reality feature you get on top of that are small improvements, but they mostly show how far image processing has gone.
And that’s not all. The sound system itself is a wonderful achievement. The B&W speaker panel delivers sound that matches the picture: compelling, powerful, full and sophisticated, with Dolby Atmos. The disadvantages include the lack of HDMI 2.1 and an uncomfortable keyboard on the new remote control.
