A bargain 4K TV with enhanced viewing thrown in

Priced at an almost barely-believable £1,299, this 55-inch 4K TV from Philips is quite a bit cheaper than many HD TVs of the same size. You wouldn’t spot the cheap price tag from looking at it though, because like most Philips products these days, the 7809 looks absolutely stunning up close. With thin, metallic edges and a slick stand it’s as good looking as any TV out there.

It comes packing Philips’ unique Ambilight technology, too, which uses rear-mounted full-colour LEDs to illuminate the wall behind the TV. The idea is that this makes your screen seem even wider and the picture more immersed, matching its colours to the content on the screen in order to create a more seamless viewing experience.

You can take Ambilight to the next level if you so wish, by pairing the TV with Philips’ Hue light bulbs. They will talk to each other over your wireless network, syncing up to expand the colour splash across the entire room.

4K pictures look truly stunning and the TV does a great job of upscaling HD content to the native Ultra HD resolution of the screen, so even when you’re not watching 4K content you’re still making use of that high-res panel.

It’s not perfect, though. For a start it’s not natively compatible with HEVC – the technology used by Netflix and other services for Ultra HD streams – but Philips will soon be offering a separate 4K media player to make up for that, and it’s part of the reason for the low price.

The TV also lacks HDMI 2.0, which limits 4K pictures to 30 frames per second. That may be a problem for purists, but given that there isn’t currently any 4k 60fps content out there, it’s really not a huge issue.

It may not be the ultimate home cinema TV, then, but at this price we would still recommend the Philips 55PUS7809 to anyone looking for a big 4K TV that doesn’t cost the Earth.

Philips Media Player UHD

880

This Philips TV doesn’t have built-in Netflix Ultra

HD support, so this additional media would

make a fantastic companion purchase.

£200, philips.co.uk Love Excellent picture quality. Ambilight is really impressive. Superb looks Hate Blacks could be deeper. No onboard HEVC for decoding Netflix Ultra HD. No HDMI 2.0 T3 Sa ys Not the best for AV enthusiasts, but for everyone else it’s a big-screen bargain