Philips 6000 Series 55-inch LED TV

The last TV that Philips sent me was the Cinema 21:9, and while it had its kinks, I liked it a lot. Philips also sent me the 55-inch 6000 series. After reviewing a TV like the Cinema 21:9, I was pretty hopeful about this one. So lets see how it did.

Nice and slim design, but that’s about it

Design and Features
This TV looks pretty decent and is quite thin, although the border is quite thick. While setting it up, we realised that there was a screw missing for the stand, but the TV was surprisingly stable even with the missing link. After properly setting it up, I tried putting it on, but it just wouldn’t happen. I was quite puzzled, and kept trying until I found out that the remote had to be pointed to the left of the TV, and not where the feather-touch menu buttons were. That’s when I started having my doubts about this TV.

I decided to stop complaining about the narrow reach of the remote and go about checking other stuff out. Next up, I tried connecting a Bose 2.1 home theatre system and found that the HDMI cable’s input jack was a little too thick, and Philips hasn’t left enough place at the back for this to be connected to the HDMI input; another fail. Still, I was sure the rest would be A-OK, so I plodded along.

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HDMI cables with thicker jacks have a tough time squeezing in

HDMI The Philips 6000 series has all the regular connections any Full HD LED TV would such as 3 HDMI ports, a USB port that plays movies, music and shows you images and the rest of the regular stuff; I’m talking about component, composite, etc.

Performance
After a rather disappointing encounter with the design and features, I was sure that the 6000 series would deliver. Again, I was wrong. I first tried it out with our test disc, played back from the Philips BDP2700/12 Blu-ray player, and it the picture was quite harsh. The colours seemed saturated, the contrast was terrible and there was a lot of motion blur even in slow moving scenes. I double-checked the TV as well as the Blu-ray player, but it all seemed fine.

The screen actually looks like a cloudy sky!

Even when there was no picture, the blank screen looked really patchy and the viewing angle wasn’t impressive either. And like I mentioned before, operating the remote can be a big pain, especially if you don’t know that you have to point it to the bottom left of the TV.
The menu of the TV was pretty standard, as most other TVs are. But like its big brother, the Cinema 21:9, the 6000 series is not really intuitive. It doesn’t know when you’ve plugged in something, and you have to go and select the input option yourself. A lot of other TVs have a function where all you have to do is plug in your cables and play, without the need for making further adjustments. I know it isn’t a huge argument, but there is a little fight in it.

The screen looks even more cloudy at an angle

I also tried it out with our legendary Alienware Aurora ALX rig, and it was almost the same story. The colours were almost as bad as when I tested it with the Blu-ray player, but there was not much latency in movements when I checked out a few games.

As for the audio, that is bad too. The sound is extremely thin and has no body to it at all. Seems like there’s absolutely no bass; only treble and high mid frequencies.

Next up was the DisplayMate test, where the 6000 series failed to impress. It did do really well in some of the tests such as the Video Bandwidth, Focus Matrix and Defocusing, Blooming and Halos, but didn’t do too well in the rest. It was especially bad with tests like Vertical and Horizontal Colour Registration, Fine Line Moire Patterns and the Flicker test. All in all, the Philips 6000 series LED TV was quite a let down with an average DisplayMate score of 40%.

Looks decent enough

Verdict
This is definitely not a TV I’d recommend to anyone, as there are so many better ones out there. At a market price of Rs. 1,49,000, this one’s a definite lemon. I don’t even know why companies as big as Philips bother releasing such products, when they are obviously capable of so much more. If you’ve read this review properly and looked at some of the photos, you will clearly see that this TV doesn’t have much to offer.

I give this TV 1 ½ stars, and I think even that’s a little lenient. It has all the features of a regular TV and looks nice and slim too, but there’s a barrage of complaints about it. The contrast ratio and black levels are bad and the colour reproduction is not worth writing home about. Even when I played a Blu-ray disc, there was tons of noise and motion blur. It’s also way too expensive for the quality it offers. I would expect a TV of this caliber to perform a lot better for it to get a higher rating.

I reiterate – I do not advise anyone to buy this TV, as there are plenty of better ones available. I would actually rather go in for a smaller TV with better performance and features such as the LG 47LX9500, whose big brother we’ve reviewed here.