The Philips Ambilight 7900 Series TV: A Unique Viewing Experience or a Pricey Gimmick?
Televisions are increasingly becoming more about the core functionality and less about the design and aesthetics. That’s why Philips’ Ambilight technology is so interesting. It adds a unique dimension to the viewing experience, especially in dark rooms where the LED lights at the back of the TV really shine. Philips’ latest television in India brings back the concept in a big way, and at a much more accessible price than before. But is it really worth the cost, or just a fancy gimmick?
Design and Features: A Blend of the Ordinary and the Extraordinary
The Philips Ambilight 7900 Series is available in three sizes – 55 inches, 65 inches, and 75 inches – with prices ranging from Rs. 99,990 to Rs. 1,89,990. All three sizes share the same specifications and features, including the three-sided Ambilight LED lighting at the back of the televisions.
At first glance, the front and back of the Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch TV resembles any modern budget or mid-range television. There are slim borders around the screen, a small Philips logo at the bottom, and a module for the IR receiver, indicator light, and a multi-function physical button to control the power and volume without the remote. The television is moderately thick but slightly slimmer at the edges, which leaves enough space to access the left-side ports when the television is wall-mounted.
The 55-inch variant weighs around 14.2kg without the stands and is compatible with VESA wall mounts (not included in the box). The table stands are included in the box, and they fix onto the TV near the corners, so you’ll need a large table or TV unit to place the Philips Ambilight 7900 series TV on.
While the television might seem ordinary-looking at first glance, the key feature shows itself only when you turn the Philips Ambilight 7900 series TV on. The LED lights built into the frame of the TV along the left, top, and right edges project multi-coloured light onto the wall behind the TV. The lights can get quite bright and are effective regardless of whether you have the TV wall-mounted or on table stands slightly away from the wall.
The Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch TV has most of its ports in the square cavity at the back and facing downwards, so you’ll have to ensure that you’ve attached most of these connections before wall-mounting the television. The ports at the back include Digital Audio-out (Toslink), one USB Type-A port, RJ45 Ethernet port, antenna socket, and three HDMI ports.
The ports on the left side are much easier to access even with the TV wall-mounted. These include one HDMI port (with ARC support), 3.5mm headphone jack, and one USB Type-A port. Ideally, there could be at least one more HDMI port on the side, as well as the Toslink port. However, having the ARC-enabled port on the side is a sensible decision by Philips.
The Philips Ambilight 55PUT7906/94 LED TV has an Ultra-HD (3840×2160 pixel) screen, with support for the HLG, HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision high dynamic range formats. There are two full-range bottom-firing speakers with a total sound output of 20W, and support for various audio formats up to Dolby Atmos. Bluetooth 5 and dual-band Wi-Fi are supported on the TV, and there is 8GB of internal storage for apps and app data, along with an unspecified quad-core processor to power the software and interface.
Remote and Features: A Touch of Convenience
Philips has typically included a full-size remote with its televisions, and it’s no different with the Ambilight 7900 series LED TV. The remote is arguably a bit larger than it needs to be and has buttons to control navigation on the Android TV UI, playback controls, input selection, and a classic number pad, among others. There are hotkeys for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and YouTube, as well as a Google Assistant button and microphone to listen to voice commands.
A couple of useful additions include an ‘info’ button which shows resolution and Internet speed, and the Ambilight button. The latter provides quick access to the Ambilight menu, which can be used to turn on or off the Ambilight effects, or modify the settings, including the modes and lounge lighting presets.
It’s useful to quickly adjust the Ambilight settings, particularly if you’re finding the glare too much or the lights a bit distracting.
While the remote initially worked fine, after a few weeks I found that I had to point it directly at the IR receiver for it to work. This seemed to happen overnight after it worked fine the previous day. Changing the batteries and resetting the TV made no difference, and Bluetooth connectivity only worked for Google Assistant and not the rest of the remote’s functions, which continued to rely on IR.
Strangely, the remote began working normally a couple of days later, so it’s hard to pinpoint the issue here.
Apart from Ambilight, the Philips 55PUT7906/94 TV is pretty ordinary when it comes to features. There is built-in Chromecast for content casting and Google Assistant for voice commands, both of which are standard to all televisions running Android TV software.
Software and Interface: A Familiar Experience
The Philips Ambilight 7900 series 55-inch LED TV runs on the Android TV 10 operating system, with the updated user interface featuring a refreshed, Google TV-like appearance.
Of course, this isn’t the same as the Google TV user interface, but the core experience is the same as what you get on most Android TV-powered televisions. This includes access to the Google Play store, which now claims to have over 7,000 apps and games designed specifically for use on a TV screen.
Some key apps such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube are preinstalled on the Philips Ambilight 7900 series television, and the new user interface is able to curate and push certain content recommendations using these and other major streaming services.
While it is a step below the more polished and capable Google TV UI, the stock Android TV user interface is still a pretty good option, given that the app experience is the same reliable one that the platform has worked hard to get right.
Despite the issues with the remote, the UI performance on the Philips 7900 series TV was a bit sluggish at times. There was often a noticeable delay in the reaction time when navigating the UI, along with visible lag in the picture. Fortunately, this didn’t extend to when actual content was playing, but it was a lot easier to switch to the Chromecast with Google TV which was a lot less frustrating to use.
Performance: A Mixed Bag of Strengths and Weaknesses
It’s now possible to get a good quantum-dot or OLED television for less than Rs. 1,00,000, so spending that much on an LED TV such as the Philips Ambilight 7900 Series 55-inch TV might seem a bit silly. However, the Philips television’s key feature — and indeed its most impressive party trick — is the Ambilight effect, which enhances the viewing experience in its own unique way.
Now, you can set up aftermarket LED lighting for just about any television, with brands such as Govee and Phillips offering such solutions. However, the undeniable convenience and ease of use of the Philips Ambilight television, as well as the fact that you can switch it off easily with the television remote, makes it a superior option for anyone looking at rear adaptive LED lighting.
That said, I’m left wondering whether that alone justifies the considerable premium of the Philips 7900 series TV.
The Philips 55PUT7906/94 television has an Ultra-HD resolution LED screen with support for HDR up to the Dolby Vision format. Performance was decent with high-quality content, and the picture was definitely as sharp as it could be, but there were a few drawbacks that I wouldn’t typically expect to see on a 55-inch television priced at Rs. 1,00,000.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse seemed like the best movie to start with given the bright colors and trippy comic-book style visuals that I expected to play well with the Ambilight functionality on the Philips TV, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The truly impressive part was how the Ambilight worked with the film, with the bright lights reacting intuitively to the continuously changing colors on screen, giving me the feeling of the television and picture being a bit bigger and more vibrant than it actually was. The Ambilight effect was quick to read colors on the edges of the screen and flowed well, making for a particularly good effect with fast-moving, colorful content.
With gentle motion and muted colors, such as the many monochrome scenes in the final season of Better Call Saul, the Ambilight effect on the Philips 7900 series LED TV often had very little to do or add and was best switched off. I also found that the effect worked best when the lights projected onto a white wall, since this allowed them and the colors to be seen clearly.
With a textured blue wall, for instance, the effects were largely lost, save for blue light itself. Fortunately, controlling the Ambilight settings on the Philips 7900 series TV is an easy process, thanks to a dedicated Ambilight button on the remote which opens the quick access menu on the Android TV user interface.
You can control the intensity through Ambilight presets or set it to lounge lighting, which sets a single color for the rear lighting.
The picture was sharp and detailed with the animation of Into The Spider-Verse and even bright, colorful shows such as Masaba Masaba. The colors looked good too,
