Review: Philips 48PFT5509

Introduction and features

The Philips brand active in the UK TV market this year is a very different beast from the one we've become accustomed to seeing.

Gone are the extravagantly powerful, hugely feature-rich high-end models that have been in the brand's DNA for so many TV generations (though such models are still around if you happen to be popping over to certain other European territories, like the Nordics!).

What we've got instead is a new leaner, meaner Philips that's all about rebuilding brand awareness – and retail channels – through value and sales volumes. A new philosophy that couldn't be articulated any more clearly than it is by the 48PFT5509: a 48-inch full HD TV that's yours for just £530.

Design

The 48PFT5509 doesn't look like a particularly cheap TV. Its super-slim frame wouldn't appear out of place on a TV costing twice as much, while the stand it sits on is startlingly well built and attractive – especially as it reinforces the striking minimalism of the screen by using a 'barely there' open-framed rather than solid metallic design.

The quest for cheapness does mean, sadly, that the 48PFT5509 doesn't carry Philips' cool Ambilight technology, where LEDs down the TV's edges cast out coloured light from the screen's edges. But it's still a substantial aesthetic cut above the norm for its price level.

A search for connections uncovers highlights of two HDMIs, two USBs, and both LAN and integrated Wi-Fi network options. The disappointment here is finding two HDMIs when we like to see even budget TVs these days managing three.

On the upside, though, it's decently generous of Philips to provide two USBs for playback of multimedia files, and it's also good to find that the network options support multimedia streaming from DLNA-enabled devices as well as access to both Philips' ring-fenced online content and an open Web browser.

The ring-fenced content is not as prodigious as I'd like it to be given the masses of stuff on offer via some rival brands' smart TV services. Especially noticeable by their absence are the ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5, and Amazon Instant. However you do get, thankfully, Netflix and the BBC iPlayer.

Philips has improved the look of its smart menus for this year, and I'm actually quite relieved to see it not overloading its menus with reams of pointless gaming and infotainment apps that have little or no place in a TV environment. But there's no getting around the fact that it's certainly not an 'A List' smart TV service by 2014 standards.

It's a shame the 48PFT5509 isn't one of the 'powered by Android' TVs Philips unveiled at the 2014 IFA technology show in Berlin. But then it's not realistic to hope for that level of smart functionality on such a reasonably priced TV.

Turning to the 48PFT5509's picture technology, as well as delivering a full HD native resolution it surprisingly manages to offer micro dimming (which divides the picture up into hundreds of small 'blocks' for more accurate analysis and a degree of localised adjustment) and Philips' Pixel Plus HD processing engine.

Anyone who's followed Philips TVs over the years may know that Pixel Plus HD is actually pretty old now, having been superseded by Pixel Precise HD and Perfect Pixel HD (and the latter's UHD version).

It's true that the newer systems are more powerful and less prone to digital artefacting but finding a processing engine capable of delivering the extra sharpness and motion clarity of the Pixel Plus HD, at the 48PFT5509's price level, is impressive. Especially as the motion element of the processing is backed up by a pseudo-200Hz system delivered by applying backlight scanning to the native 50Hz panel.

Also promising is the discovery that the 48PFT5509's LED lights are positioned not around the screen's edges but behind it – a configuration which has the potential to deliver better contrast and less backlight inconsistency.

If you're brave enough to explore the 48PFT5509's picture set-up menus, you'll find quite a few useful tweaks. Particularly worth playing around with are the set's multi-level dynamic contrast system, a series of contrast modes that include our favourite picture setting. There's also a sharpness-boosting super resolution mode, which actually needs to be handled with care if you don't want pictures to start looking noisy.

If you're one of the dwindling number of 3D fans out there, please note that the 48PFT5509 doesn't support 3D playback.

Picture Quality

With an alarming number of 2014's TVs – even expensive ones – failing to impress with their pictures this year, it's a massive relief to find this highly affordable Philips model delivering dark scenes with real aplomb.

Parts of pictures that should look black actually look black – or, at any rate, they get much closer to a convincing black tone than the vast majority of other similar-sized TVs around for under £550. There's precious little of the misty, milky greyness in dark scenes that betrays low-contrast panels.

This impressive contrast performance isn't just the result of heavy duty manipulation of the backlighting, either. You can tell this from the way the 48PFT5509 retains good levels of luminance for bright parts of predominantly dark images, and the way even the darkest sections of a picture are reproduced with subtle detailing still visible within them. On sets with weaker native contrast it's common to find the darkest parts of images looking hollow and flat.

Meanwhile, as long as you don't leave the image set too bright, dark scenes remain largely free of the backlight clouding and brightness 'twitches' that often prove distracting on sets that have to work harder to deliver a convincing black colour.

Another startling strength of the 48PFT5509 is the sharpness of its HD pictures. These sometimes look so detailed and crisp, in fact, that they appear slightly higher than HD in resolution, especially if you've got the super resolution tool in play.

In fact, using the TV's default settings pictures can look a bit too sharp, tipping parts of the image into noise and making some edges look stressed and over-defined. With careful adjustment of the super resolution mode and the separate sharpness setting, though, you can get pictures so that they still look remarkably crisp for such an affordable TV but also look more natural and 'even'.

The 48PFT5509's inherent sharpness does ironically highlight a little motion blur from the screen when there's a lot of movement in the frame. But in reality this blur isn't that big a deal by the standards of the budget TV world at large. It's just a potential reason to spend more on a high-quality, mid-range TV rather than any sort of deal breaker – especially as the set's motion handling doesn't generate many unwanted processing artefacts.

In fact, strangely, the whole picture looks more natural and less 'processed' than we would have expected based on our recollections of Pixel Plus HD from years gone by.

Black levels as good as those delivered by the 48PFT5509 are usually accompanied by a strong colour performance. And so it proves here, as the 48PFT5509 delivers a winning combination of natural, subtle toning; minimal colour banding or blocking; and engagingly dynamic, punchy tones. Many budget TVs look either too rudimental with their colour toning (leaving video sometimes looking like animation) or produce tones with PC-biased temperatures. But not this Philips set.

Yet more good news came from my tests of the 48PFT5509's input lag – the time it takes for its screen to produce pictures having received image data at its inputs. I measured a figure on average of just over 30ms when using the provided game/PC 'activity' modes, which shouldn't be high enough to have any serious impact on your gaming abilities.

There are one or two signs of the 48PFT5509's affordability, inevitably. I've already mentioned its susceptibility to a little motion blur, but there can also be some judder too. Next, while the sharpness is generally well judged if you're careful with the super resolution setting, some very grainy sources can look a bit too 'alive' with dot crawl no matter what you do with the settings.

Sharp camera pans can reveal a slight glow to areas of very fine detail too, and finally the 48PFT5509 isn't the best upscaler of standard definition, leaving SD broadcasts and poor-quality DVD transfers looking a touch fuzzy and blocky. Also, more strangely, colours look much more basic/short of tonal subtlety with SD than they do with high definition, while dark parts of SD pictures tend to look a little too dominant, losing the good balance noticeable with HD.

Still, there's no shortage of HD sources available to us today, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep the TV fed and watered on HD for the majority of your viewing time.

Usability, sound and value

Usability

The 48PFT5509 isn't the most intuitive TV to use. Its remote isn't bad, but its on-screen menus are a little longwinded for such a relatively basic set. The menu structure follows the approach found on Philips' higher-end TVs, where it's quite handy to have their huge feature lists broken down into so many submenus. With the 48PFT5509, though, the submenu use seems excessive and a barrier to feature 'exploration'.

Another issue is that, presumably because of a lack of processing power in this budget set, the 48PFT5509's menus run rather slowly, causing a sometimes frustrating lag between your remote control selections and what happens in the menus.

On the upside, the 48PFT5509 doesn't provide as many setting options for its video processing as you get with higher-end models, which actually makes it much easier for you to match its pictures to your tastes.

Sound quality

Here again the 48PFT5509 bucks the budget TV trend – and the expected limitations of its super-slim design – by sounding very respectable.

The key to its success is the power and clarity of its mid-range, as this enables the TV to deliver both treble details at one end of the audio spectrum and some really decent bass rumbles at the other without either sounding forced, harsh, dislocated or dominant.

Impressively for such an aggressively priced TV, the 48PFT5509 carries a woofer speaker on its rear, and it's this that enables it to produce such strong bass levels while also taking enough pressure off the mid-range to allow it to remain clear even when the going gets tough.

While trebles don't sound harsh, it would have been nice if there was a little more treble detail around. And there's no doubt that there are a few more expensive TVs out there with much more audio power and punch to their name. But for its money the 48PFT5509's sonics are more than fine.

Value

The 48PFT5509 is a no-brainer where value is concerned. It would look startlingly cheap for a 48-inch TV even if it wasn't any good. So by the time you've factored in its strong picture and sound you've a pretty spectacular bargain – even if its smart TV features could be better.

Verdict

Intro

The 48PFT5509 isn't exactly the sort of TV we've become accustomed to seeing from Philips over the years. Rather than bristling with cutting-edge tech with an eye-watering price tag to match, it's stripped back and seriously aggressively priced.

The biggest and best surprise about the 48PFT5509, though, is how well it carries off this new Philips approach, managing to deliver more picture, sound and even design prowess than you've any right to expect of a 48-inch TV that costs just £530.

Obviously we'd love to see Philips also get its high-end groove back on in the UK next year if its high-value TVs prove successful. But in the meantime, the 48PFT5509 is a very welcome reminder that Philips is still a TV force to be reckoned with.

We liked

Despite being very aggressively priced for a nearly-50-inch TV, the 48PFT5509 is a great picture performer with HD sources. There are a generous two USB ports for multimedia files, and the network options support multimedia streaming from DLNA-enabled devices as well as access to both Philips' ring-fenced online content and an open Web browser. Its sound is also much better than average for a high-value TV, and its slinky design is space-saving, deceptively robust and bang on trend.

We disliked

One more HDMI would have been nice, as would a few more video on demand/catch-up TV apps. The menus are little slow, with some frustrating lag, and there's no Ambilight or 3D (although this could be a perk for 3D-haters). The set isn't particularly great at upscaling standard definition broadcasts, either.

Final verdict

The 48PFT5509's aggressive price and relatively basic specification may not tally with what we usually expect of a Philips TV, but that hasn't stopped the Dutch brand from making it a resounding success. Its picture, sound and build quality combine to make it a rare budget gem in a year which, for the most part, has been a far from vintage one for the TV world.

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