Philips OLED811 gets brighter, but Ambilight struggles to justify its premium

Philips’s OLED811 improves HDR brightness, colour accuracy and gaming support, but a higher price, weaker SDR performance and the switch to Titan OS leave it trailing cheaper rivals from LG and Samsung.

Philips’s OLED811 arrives as a premium mid-range OLED with one clear advantage: Ambilight. It is also a stronger all-round television than its predecessor in several key areas, but Tweakers says its asking price is difficult to justify when rival OLEDs from LG and Samsung cost less and, in some rooms, perform better. The Dutch review also notes that the set sits uncomfortably close in price to higher-end models, despite using a more modest panel and less elaborate processing than Philips’s flagship OLED951.

The biggest story is brightness. According to Tweakers’s measurements, the OLED811 is substantially brighter than last year’s OLED810 in HDR, with full-screen output up by around 40 per cent. It still does not approach the class-leading peaks of flagship OLEDs, however, and the publication found that the Samsung S90H remains a little brighter across much of the range, while LG’s C6 trades blows with Philips on the smallest highlights. Colour and grey-scale accuracy are a high point: in Philips’s new Referentiemodus, the set delivers very natural tones, with differences from the reference image too small to see without side-by-side comparison.

The trade-off appears in SDR. Tweakers found that Philips’s brightness controls have to be kept conservative in standard dynamic range if the television is to remain accurate. Push the panel harder and the colour balance, greyscale tracking and gamma curve all drift in the wrong direction. At a lower setting, the OLED811 remains accurate, but it cannot match the SDR brightness of the LG C6, Samsung S90H or even Philips’s own OLED810. In a brighter living room, that makes it the weaker option for everyday television, even though it is still bright enough for a typical lounge.

The panel itself is familiar. Philips uses the same glossy OLED type that appears in the LG C6, and Tweakers says that means reflections are more visible than on Samsung’s matte-finished S90H. The upside is that black levels remain properly black and viewing angles are excellent, with only a barely noticeable green tint emerging from extreme side angles. The set also supports a broad range of HDR formats, including HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision, which gives it more flexibility than either the C6 or the S90H. Philips also promises an update for Dolby Vision 2 Max.

Gaming is an area where the OLED811 is stronger than its predecessor. Tweakers reports that the television now offers four full-speed HDMI ports instead of two, with support for 4K at 165Hz on PC and 120Hz for consoles. Input lag is low enough for fast action games, and the basic gaming tools remain intact, although Philips has trimmed some of the more advanced features found on the OLED951. On the other hand, the set’s switch from Google TV to Titan OS is a clear downgrade for anyone who values a broad app library and deeper platform integration. Tweakers describes Titan as fast, but less complete than Google’s system.

Physically, the OLED811 keeps Philips’s familiar look, with slim borders, a central swivel stand and the brand’s three-sided Ambilight lighting system. That stand is now partly plastic, rather than fully metal as before, and the lower Ambilight strip seen on more expensive models is missing. Sound is respectable rather than exceptional, helped by two woofers and four 10W drivers, and the set is one of the few in its class to support both Dolby and DTS audio formats. Energy use is less impressive. Tweakers found that the television draws more power than its LG and Samsung rivals, and that Ambilight adds still further to running costs. The result is a capable but expensive OLED that feels well equipped, yet hard to recommend unless Ambilight is a priority.