LOEWE BILD 3.55 OLED TV

Contemporary design meets premium AV performance in Loewe’s most affordable UHD OLED

Amazing OLED picture quality and the prestige of Loewe design, for under £3k? You’d better believe it – here’s the lowdown on this sweet panel

£2,790 loewe.tv

Loewe televisions have an enviable reputation for design, thanks largely to the vision of creative director Bodo Sperlein. They’re sleek, minimal and a little bit posh. The new Bild 3.55 is no exception, despite the fact it’s a good deal more affordable than its upmarket Bild siblings.

The Bild 3 line actually spans LED LCD (the smaller 3.49 and 3.43 iterations) as well as this OLED. The idea being you can achieve a uniform look between the screens in your kitchen, den and living room. (Life’s too short to only own one Loewe.)

The panel sits on a tidy pedestal with helpful swinging action. The forward-facing speaker is wrapped in a neat charcoal fabric. Loewe has resisted running it full width, giving the screen an uncluttered look. Branding has been relegated to a small logo tag, affixed to the top right of the bezel. The trim is matt plastic.

The panel itself is just 4.9 mm, swelling out to accommodate electronics and connections. An optional DR+ upgrade allows you to add an integrated PVR.

Connectivity is on point. There are four HDMIs, all v2.0 and HDCP 2.2 compliant, plus an AV input for legacy kit, three USBs, Ethernet LAN and coaxial digital audio output. There’s a choice of Freeview (not Freeview Play) or generic satellite tuner. Wi-Fi is standard. Bluetooth headphone support simplifies personal listening.

As it appens

Reflecting the industrial design, the menu interface is sharp and practical. However, feature provision is uneven. Loewe’s OS Home interface looks cool, but the app choice is limited. The selection includes catch-up from BBC iPlayer, plus Amazon 4K, Tidal, Deezer, Lumas, and the Berliner Philharmoniker. Reassuringly, Loewe has promised more services via a firmware update later this year.

While the set has a VP9 decoder for YouTube 4K, its Netflix provision is browser-based. Compared to a standard Netflix TV app, this seems clunky in the extreme. You have to navigate with a slow-moving cursor via the remote, and the interface is uncomfortably low-res. You’ll be better off getting all your catch-up and OTT fix via an external box, better optimised for the job.

It’s certainly worth investing in high-quality sources, as picture quality is delicious. The unsullied blacks of OLED, combined with fine

levels of detail and vibrant colour, make for a heady cocktail. This dramatic zing benefits pretty much anything you care to watch. The potty protagonists of Transformers: The

Last Knight (UHD Blu-ray) look genuinely metallic and threedimensional, while the perplexed participants of Mastermind seem convincingly isolated against a backdrop of pure black. This Loewe makes even the mundane look downright ravishing.

Picture this

Standard SDR picture presets comprise Home, Premium (eco), Shop, Cinema and Personal. Fed an HDR source, these automatically change to HDR Bright, HDR Dark and HDR Premium.

For our audition, the TV was primarily used in the Home mode (effectively the Standard or Normal setting), or HDR equivalent. These give the best balance of high average picture level in rooms with some level of ambient light, yet retain dynamics and colour vibrancy.

The Bild 3.55 supports HDR10, broadcast HLG and Dolby Vision, not that it really needs dynamic metadata. We measured HDR peak luminance at a creditable 749 cd/m² (aka nits) in a five per cent window, and only marginally less in a ten per cent window. This means effective spectral highlights, precious little tone mapping and a comfortable HDR viewing experience. The set may not have Ultra HD Premium certification, but it clearly exceeds that particular specification. Wide colour performance is excellent.

Additional image adjustments include variable contrast, brightness, colour intensity and skin tone. There’s also Image+ Active, an intriguing Loewe image cocktail that can be enjoyed in Soft, Normal, Extended and Intensive flavours. A deeper set of picture adjustments, accessed via the Other Settings menu, includes Sharpness and image interpolation control (aka DMM).

The latter is designed to reduce image judder, but like other similar modes, image interpolation picture processing imparts a slick, video sheen that isn’t exactly cinematic (although you might like it for TV studio fare). DMM comes in Soft, Middle and Intensive strengths, or can be turned off altogether. Given that the motion resolution of this panel is inherently good, we would advise turning DMM off, particularly when watching movies or cinematic TV shows. DMM may be effective at de-juddering, but it introduces unnatural, smudgy shades around moving artefacts in all three modes.

The integrated sound system is a welcome addition. Rated at 2 x 40w, its stereo soundstage is clear and punchy, though it doesn’t have the wherewithal to handle deep bass. Of course, we’d always advocate that a panel of this calibre be partnered with a Dolby Atmos-enabled AV receiver, for an immersive experience.

The Bild 3.55 remote control is a weighty wand with a premium hairline finish. It’s a league apart from lightweight IR zappers