Not one to be left behind, Philips has introduced its own set of Mini LED TVs to arrive in the shops this year.
The Philips 9000 series consists of two distinct lines, the Philips 9639 MiniLED TVs, which come with an integrated Bowers & Wilkins soundbar, and the Philips 9506 MiniLED which is TV-only.
The 9000 series Mini LED TVs come in a choice of 65in or 75in sizes and with the beating heart of Philips’s very latest TV chip, the fifth generation P5 processor. They both also feature four-sided Ambilight technology.
They’re designed to offer close to the top-end picture quality of Philips’s OLED TVs but at a more affordable price point. Their Mini LED-backed VA panels are split into an impressive sounding 1000 dimming zones with the 9506 boasting a 1500 nit panel and the 9639 a little more peak brightness still at 2000 nits.
As ever, Philips is agnostic about HDR support, meaning that customers can benefit from both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ given compatible disc and streamed source material. Also included is HDR10+ Adaptive which combines real-time ambient light information with the HDR10+ metadata to optimise screen brightness on a scene-by-scene basis.
The 9000 series TVs are also fitted with a suite of HDMI 2.1 features on certain ports, including eARC, ALLM and VRR for 4K content from 40Hz to 120Hz at 48Gbps speeds (4:4:4, 12 bit colour).
Gamers will also appreciate the AMD FreeSync Premium Pro anti-tearing compatibility. Philips claims that, together, the gaming experience should offer lag times of less than 18ms, apparently less than the blink of an eye.
Both TVs come with an Android TV 10 OS which includes Google Assistant built-in as well as compatibility for Amazon Alexa. They also support DTS Play-Fi high resolution multi-room.
Aside the bump in picture quality, the other main difference between the two lines is that 3.1.2 Bowers & Wilkins sound system. Just as with the Philips OLED+935 from the 2020 range, it combines Dolby Atmos height speakers with the Bowers isolated tweeters and Tweeter-on-Top technology.
Philips’s Mini LED launch will begin with the 9506 series which is set to arrive in June 2021.
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