The thin end of the wedge
FOR Neat design; solid sound; good picture; Bluetooth AGAINST No smart apps; slight motion issues
Rivalling Miss America in its pursuit for slimness, the TV industry has typically prioritised picture over sound quality, squeezing speakers into ever-thinner frames.
This 24in Full HD Philips is a slender telly, but gets round the sonic repercussions by having its wedge-like, cheese grater-sized stand double up as a speaker (driven by a 16W amplifier).
Despite jutting out a little in front and behind the panel, which prohibits it from being wall-mounted, the Philips’ speaker concept is not only beneficial in performance but from a features perspective too.
While it omits internet (and therefore smart) capability, the 5231 has built-in Bluetooth for streaming music from a laptop, smartphone or portable device. There’s also a single USB input for photo, video and music playback, and twin HDMI and SCART and component inputs, plus an optical output if you choose to upgrade to a separate soundbar.
Shere delight
We’ve condemned many stand-alone speakers this size for sounding thin, but the Philips is surprisingly ample. As we settle down for a sing-a-long to Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book adaptation, Bill Kingsley’s narration (as Bagheera) comes through with plenty of body, and there’s solidity behind Idris Elba’s tiger roar – notably more than from the average small flatscreen TV.
That’s without any midrange boost, although the ‘Personal’ sound mode (as well as ‘Clear Sound’ setting) can step in to add extra clarity and projection to voices. The speaker doesn’t just add weight to the presentation, there’s a satisfying amount of detail, dynamics and volume too. It has the insight to carry Shere Khan’s threatening tone, keep the jungle noises discernible beneath dialogue, and communicate the faint pitter-patter of rain. In the opening jungle chase, as Mowgli darts from tree to tree, the galloping momentum of the backing track is carried well enough to get your feet twitching in anticipation.
We switch to Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack and the Philips handles the droning bass undercurrent competently. Organ chimes sound big and bold, and there’s a sense of immediacy and dynamic presence you can otherwise expect only from a standalone budget soundbar.
Explicit presentation
You don’t have to push the volume to 11 to get a room-filling soundfield either. In fact, we’d avoid its loudest quarter, where a little hardness pollutes upper mids and treble.
Playing Bluetooth-streamed music doesn’t hamper our praise for the 24PFS5231 – its presentation is explicit, balanced and clear, even with a lo-res Spotify stream. It delivers an enjoyable rendition of Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey In The Jar that drives the electric riffs with clarity and conveys the feeling in the vocal well.
The impressive sound makes you hanker for a larger screen, but thankfully the quality of these 24 inches more than meets the high standards set by the speakers. The TV menu may not be the most intuitive we’ve seen, but it’s where you’ll find the usual contrast, brightness, sharpness and colour settings, all of which we tweak with a THX Optimizer disc. Switching to ‘Standard’ or ‘Natural’ picture modes, which provide the best colour balance, and turning down contrast a tad are good starts. There’s no motion-processing setting, which is a shame because, with The Jungle Book, camera pans and animal scraps carry a little inescapable judder.
A rare find
That's this set’s soft spot, but the rest of the Philips' picture talents more than make up for it. With both Blu-ray and Full HD TV broadcasts, it’s crisp and clean. From green leaves to Mowgli’s red pants and Shere Khan’s orange coat, colours strike a natural balance that’s easy on the eye.
The downgrade to DVD is kind, which is partly due to the Philips’ diminutive size but also its credible upscaler. Edges carry some blur, but the levels of sharpness and clarity are mostly retained. You only need the black bars and a shot of space to show that contrast is too, and hues don’t lack potency or punch.
It’s also refreshing not having to caution readers about the quality of standarddefinition broadcasts, as we’ve become used to with some 4K sets. It's more than watchable, and the delivery won’t put you off watching episodes of Top Gear on Dave.
Many people buying a new TV might opt for one with 4K and HDR, but it could be some time before those technologies are a requirement for a household’s second telly, and even longer before they are standard on such a modest screen size.
If your current needs require an affordable small screen that serves up a solid picture and prioritises sound quality more than most, whether for films, TV shows or gaming (or all three), the Philips 24PFS5231 is a compelling, and rare, find.
“The quality of the picture on this 24in screen more than meets the high standards set by the speakers”