A 55-inch android 4k tv for the masses philips 55put6800

Better than average performance, useful features and competitive pricing make this 4K Android TV an excellent choice.

byNg Chong Seng Feb 2016

It’s clear that the Philips 6800 series TV is a midrange model when looking at price and the fact it sits below the brand’s 9000 and 8000 series TVs. However, you’d be hard pressed to tell at first glance with specs like a 700Hz Perfect Motion Rate, four HDMI ports (of which one supports HDCP 2.2), three USB ports, an RJ-45 LAN jack, Wi-Fi Direct and HEVC support, plus a simple, elegant metal swivel stand.

It’s also a smart TV running on Android. Official Google Play support opens you up to a rich catalog of apps, especially games; and Google Cast lets you ‘cast’ (i.e., project) apps on your mobile devices onto the big screen. There’s 8GB of built-in storage for apps, expandable by hooking up a USB drive. A dual-core processor keeps the UI snappy for the most part.

A feature on Philips TVs for many years now, Ambilight is back on the 6800. By emitting a glow from both sides of the TV, it attempts to convey the feeling of a wider screen as well as help relax your eyes.

Out of the box, the picture didn’t look very bright, mainly because the Standard picture mode is tuned to save energy. Vivid mode made for a much brighter and saturated presentation, but Movie mode was my preference because of its good balance of details and accurate colors. Screen uniformity was good overall, with no obvious dirty screen syndrome.

An LED edge-lit TV, the 6800 utilizes a Micro Dimming Pro system to optimize contrast based on the light conditions in your environment. Basically, it analyzes the picture broken down in 6,400 zones to determine backlight adjustments to make. While I still noticed backlight inconsistency in some scenes, it wasn’t too distracting. For a low-cost 4K TV, I’d actually rate its black level performance to be good.

Resolution was also kept high during fast-moving scenes. Natural Motion is Philips’ motion enhancement tech for resolving judder, and in my experience, works decently. You may want to turn it off for 24p content however.

If you’re shopping for your first 4K TV and aren’t willing to pay top dollar, the Philips 6800 series, especially this very competitively priced 55-inch 55PUT6800, is a worthy consideration.