Philips PUS9206 Review: Impressive performance and functionality

Tech Week Score
5.0
- Michail Yahontov

Philips PUS9206 is the new 4K TVs from the company’s extensive range of 2021 with 4-sided Ambilight. The PUS9206 adopts the sleek design of Philips OLED TVs, but takes performance and functionality down a notch. The 9206 series is based on VA panels with direct LED backlighting.

Philips Ambilight 4-sided light is familiar to many TV enthusiasts. Perimeter LEDs on the rear panel provide additional immersive illumination by changing colors to match what is happening on the screen. In this review, Philips 55PUS9206 / 12 4K HDR TV as a representative of the series, we will look at its capabilities and characteristics.

Philips PUS9206 review

Design

The Philips 55PUS9206 / 12 TV features an elegant design with a very narrow silver bezel. The two supports, which allow the TV to be placed on shallower furniture, also contribute to the minimalist design. The distance between the supports is adjustable. If you decide to mount your TV on a wall, you need a VESA 300 x 300mm compatible bracket.

With its dimensions, the 55PUS9206 TV is suitable for large bedrooms or living rooms, where the distance to the screen is at least 2.5 … 3 meters. The TV itself is well made, but some parts of it don’t feel particularly premium. For example, silver bezels. While they are not actually overly thick, the fact that they are silvery makes them stand out on screen.

Philips PUS9206 - overview

Ambilight remains a true treat for Philips TVs and a strong reason to choose the PUS9206 series over any other TV manufacturer. The backlight looks great, and its additional lighting actually reduces eye strain when watching TV in a darkened room, helping movie marathons to be a little more comfortable.

Image quality

PUS 9206 offers a great picture for the money. This is a high-end TV, its goal is to create a pleasing picture that will appeal to the majority of TV buyers. Sharp contours, vibrant colors and good contrast are essential to create the most vivid image possible for the price.

All of this is in the hands of the Philips P5 processor, which focuses on five areas that the company believes provide a great TV picture – source perfection, sharpness, color, contrast and movement. This is most evident with 4K HDR content. Philips 9206 TV supports both HDR10 + and Dolby Vision (as well as HDR10 and HLG). Dolby Vision content from Netflix is ​​picked up immediately and picture settings for HDR are downloaded automatically.

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Regardless of which picture mode you choose, we recommend turning off most of the post-processing or setting it to a low level. And then start from this and regulate everything that is needed, except for the processing of motion. Philips hasn’t always been the best in this area when compared to its competitors, but recently it is starting to get closer to them.

With all the parameters adjusted according to personal preference, the TV picture of the PUS9206 is truly a pleasure to watch. The colors are rich, the detail is great, and the edges are crisp and crisp. The contrast is also really impressive, mainly due to the VA panel. Unlike IPS, this technology produces inky deep blacks and bright HDR highlights in the absence of backlight bloom.

Philips PUS9206 - design

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However, there is some loss of detail in the darkest and brightest areas of the image. And sometimes darker scenes may not have the clarity that more expensive devices, including Philips OLED806 , can handle . Viewing from an angle also leaves much to be desired: blacks lose depth and colors lose saturation. This TV is not an option for a room full of guests.

PUS 9206 TV copes well with upscaling. HD content is crisp and virtually noise-free. There may be some noise in the streaming content. But it’s minimal and doesn’t detract from the image itself, which has the same quality as 4K – superb color processing, superb levels of detail, and impressive contrast.

Game Mode

For gamers, VRR support is provided on HDMI1 and HDMI2 for a smooth gaming experience. These ports support 4K resolutions up to 120Hz, i.e. compatible with next generation consoles. Philips TV PUS9206 will automatically switch to low latency game mode when you switch to the HDMI input of the console. The input lag is about 21 ms, which will not appeal to serious gamers, but should be suitable for more inexperienced players.

Smart TV

The 55PUS92506 uses Android TV 10 as the user platform, and it is not yet known whether to expect a transition to the more recent Google TV interface. It is not the most intuitive and not the most well thought out platform. But in reality, the interface is much smoother and faster than the old Android TV. The content is organized into customizable carousels: a list of apps at the top, and below it are feeds for each app.

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The selection of apps is good too. Chromecast comes standard, so you can seamlessly download content from your phone to your TV. Google Assistant is also available for voice support. It can be used to adjust TV settings and navigate channels, and to search and download content.

Philips’ own menus are a bit sprawling and complex how extensive the offer is for customization. Fortunately, each menu item provides a short explanation of what changing this parameter can do. Being able to customize this way is great for those who like to experiment. For those who don’t know how to set up a TV, there are various TV modes (Standard, Vivid, Cinema, ISF Day, ISF Night, etc.).

The remote with an aluminum top panel and leather trim is quite large. It’s well done and responsive. But it seems that the empty space at the bottom can be made a little smaller so as not to reach for the buttons at the top. In particular, the shortcut buttons for Netflix, Prime Video, Rakuten TV and the TV’s Ambilight setup. A nice bonus is the button illumination.

Sound

To process the sound of the Philips 55PUS9206 TV, there are two 10W mid-tweeter downward facing drivers and a 30W woofer unit on the rear panel. Their performance is actually pretty good, and you won’t be desperate for the soundbar’s optical cable.

Philips PUS9206 - switching

There are several options for sound settings. But Movie mode is best for most content. The audio system has decent volume and voices don’t get lost on loaded soundtracks. There is also a sense of space, and the action scenes in the films sound quite rich. Dynamics and detail match the soundbar sound.

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There’s Dolby Atmos support onboard, but don’t expect much from the built-in speakers in terms of the height that Atmos usually adds. For soundtracks like this, it’s definitely better to add a soundbar with Dolby Atmos to really hear what the format is capable of. Fortunately, with eARC support, you can do this easily.

Connections

Around the back of the Philips PUS 9206 are four HDMI inputs (2 x 2.1 and 2 x 2.0), two of which are on the side for easy access. There are 3 USB inputs (two are also installed on the side, and one of them is USB 3.0), satellite and antenna jacks, a digital optical output and a headphone minijack. ARC is supported on all HDMI inputs and eARC is supported on HDMI2. There is built-in Wi-Fi, as well as an Ethernet port for network connectivity and Bluetooth 5.0.

Conclusion

Philips PUS9206 offers excellent value for money not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of functionality. It’s good to see that both Dolby Vision and HDR10 + are supported, along with features like HDMI 2.1 / eARC and Dolby Atmos.

There are some trade-offs in image quality, mostly with HDR footage. In particular, shadow and highlight detail may be lost in the darkest and lightest areas of the image, and the overall peak brightness could be higher. But overall, the TV justifies its presence in the premium segment of Philips LCD TVs.

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