Philips 50PUS8545 Review: The Ambilight 4K TV
8.5/10 (Expert Score)
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Set Alert for Product: Philips Ambilight 50PUS8545/12 50-Inch LED TV (4K UHD, P5 Engine, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, HDR 10+, Freeview Play, Works with Alexa, Android TV) Mid Silver/Light Silver (2020/2021 Model) - £728.24
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- With this 4K TV and 3-sided Ambilight, your screen will feel bigger than it is. Moreover, this means less eyestrain when watching TV.
- Get the most out of your Philips TV with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. The sound is crystal-clear and the picture is as sharp as in the…

Philips 50PUS8545 Review: The Ambilight 4K TV
£728.24
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Philips 50PUS8545 Review: The Ambilight 4K TV Prices
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Price history for Philips Ambilight 50PUS8545/12 50-Inch LED TV (4K UHD, P5 Engine, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, HDR 10+, Freeview Play, Works with Alexa, Android TV) Mid Silver/Light Silver (2020/2021 Model) | |
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Reviews (2)
2 reviews for Philips 50PUS8545 Review: The Ambilight 4K TV
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Luke –
I upgraded to this TV from a 50″ Hisense 4K smart TV. I was looking for a larger screen, but also improved picture quality and general user experience. This TV delivered on those expectations. However, upon first turning it on I was appalled by the default picture settings. They look very “shop demoey” with overblown contrast, lurid colours, and off-putting motion interpolation. I recommend changing the picture setting to ISF DAY out of the box and then proceeding to turn all motion nonsense off. At this point SDR content looks great. HDR content is a different story, with its own separate profiles. To remedy the utterly dismal defaults: switch to ISF Day, turn motion off, turn the HDR plus to its highest setting (NOT auto) and then colour enhancing to medium. Also sharpness to 1. Personally I turned backlight contrast down to 90 as otherwise highlights look a little harsh (I believe the tone mapping for this display is pretty aggressive, and a little optimistic). Proceed to fiddle with other settings to taste, and turn all the other “features” such as the denoiser etc off as they don’t improve image quality. My review may sound a tad harsh so far but my issue here is with how Philips have decided to configure this panel by default, not the capabilities of the panel itself. After the aforementioned tuning I was rather impressed by how this telly handles content from old 576i SDR shows on Netflix all the way up to 4K HDR in both HDR10 and Dolby Vision with a punchy and vibrant picture, albeit lacking accurate colour reproduction. I briefly tried the built in speakers and they’re not bad by any means. The CEC functionality on this TV behaves very well, and it plays nicely with my Nvidia Shield TV Pro allowing itself to be turned on and off consistently by connected devices. The Ambilight feature has actually remained turned on despite my expectations of it being a gimmick. This was not a selling point for me, but I’ll admit that it’s very well implemented and does aid in the immersion of some content. I have wall mounted the TV and it rests around 10cm from the wall at most, but is able to project the Ambilight LEDs a good distance. Bottom line, I’m happy with this TV and can’t expect anything more at this price point.EDIT AFTER ABOUT A MONTH – I’ve found that HDR stuff (both HDR10 & DOLBY) look nicer on this panel if you set the gamma 1 step brighter (-1).I’ve got a few minor nitpicks now that I’ve used this TV daily for around a month.1 – I’ve had an issue where the TV doesn’t want to pass through any sound to my receiver. This was fixed by power cycling the TV at the wall. This has happened once and I can’t repeat the issue.2 – Occasionally on a “warm” boot, when turning the TV on with CEC via my Nvidia Shield, the TV will boot but show a fuzzy static signal. This is fixed by turning the TV off and on again with the remote, taking around 4 seconds. A minor inconvenience, happening once a week or so. I have a feeling it’s got something to do with HDR/SDR profiles, such as turning the TV off with some HDR content open. I’m still looking into how to reproduce this consistently so I can let Philips know.3 – Changing picture profiles takes a minimum of 4 clicks, which is rather annoying as I like to change between day/night profiles manually. I don’t use the ambient light sensor as it offers an image far too dim for my taste.I imagine all 3 of these issues can be addressed via a software update.Other than this, the TV has held up well thus far and I stand by my original statement that it’s decent value for money.
CD –
I love this tv. Some background before I write about this tv. I purchased a top of the range 65″ LG OLED about a year ago and was very impressed with the true blacks a picture until a vertical line appeared from top to bottom of the screen near the left hand side and once you notice something like that you can’t unsee it. It was so annoying and knowing the drawbacks lile burn in with oled, I returned the tv. I wanted to take some time to wait for manufacturers to release new 2020 tvs before making a new purchase, so as a stop gap I purchased a 55″ Philips ambilight for £400, which I thought was a great deal. I was so impressed with the tv for price and loved the ambilight. The pictures quality was great and the only difference from oled was the blacks are more grey because of the backlight behind the screen, although with some settings adjustment it’s barely noticed. I liked the tv so much and wanted a larger screen I purchased this one as it was on a deal for £850 and I absolutely love it. The P5 picture processor works great when watching sports or fast motion. The android operating system is much better than Philips saphi OS. Just a lot easier to use and the ability to side load apks from the usb using your own hard drive. The in build apps are great and the dolby vision on Netflix is just amazing. The remote is nicely weighted and has a mic in built for Google assistant or alexa, which I haven’t tried yet. The stand also comes with extendeders, so instead of the tv sitting right on the feet, you can swap this out with slightly larger ones which raise the tv up from the feet by a few inches and it looks great on the tv stand. I cannot recommend this tv enough. So many features, android is simple and easy to use the picture quality is great and I can’t do without ambilight anymore. My final point is this tv is hundreds of pounds cheaper than most of the top of the range competitors but in my opinion, it’s just as good.