HORIZON TOP 10
HORIZON
The best new tech heading your way
1 PHILIPS 9636 PREMIUM
• £TBC, philips.co.uk
Philips’ TV division has been growing fast in recent years. The company’s patented Ambilight tech allows it to offer something completely unique to the market, its partnership with Bowers & Wilkins adds solid audio offerings to its TV lineup, and there’s no shortage of exploration in the design department, which is something of a rarity in a sea of black rectangle TVs. Now Philips seems to be placing itself directly ahead of the curve: its latest LCD TV salvo, due in the summer alongside a raft of OLEDs, totes mini LED tech.
Dropping at two sizes, really big (65-inch) and probably too big (75-inch), the top-end 9636 Premium (to be released alongside the same-sized but slightly downgraded 9506 Premium) certainly packs in the features, pairing the mini LED array with a wide colour gamut 120Hz VA panel driven by the company’s new 5th-gen P5 processor. That panel might be LCD-based, but it’s no slouch: 2,000 nits brightness is an impressive spec, and tens of thousands of little LEDs illuminating it mean it’ll manage some of the most impressive isolated blacks that it’s possible to get out of an LCD.
The 9636 also gets its own B&W 3.1.2 audio system, with the Atmos-equipped soundbar acting as a handsome stand for the TV, and complements its Kvadrat-cloth covered looks by offering the super-slim panel a brushed metal frame and four-sided Ambilight. Philips is keeping quiet on the price right now – though we’d expect, given the size and the tech, for this to fall on the costlier end of the graph.
T3 TECH-O-METER
The 9636 packs everything nextgen consoles need. That means high-bandwidth 4K VRR running at between 40Hz and 120Hz, FreeSync Premium Pro and an automatic game mode on top of previous low latency smarts.