Philips 40PFL6606H

In Philips' collection of TVs, the 6000 series is made up televisions with MVA displays backlit using Edge LED technology.  The PFL6606 comes in five different sizes: 32'', 37'', 40'', 46'' and 55''.  We had a chance to test the 40'' version, which crams a whole range of features into an attractive exterior, including HD Natural Motion motion interpolation filters, Pixel Plus HD, support for the DLNA standard and online services from the Net TV platform.  All that makes for a promising start ...

Build Quality and Design

Although this an entry-level TV, Dutch manufacturer Philips has included a motion interpolation filter, a 100 Hz mode and its Pixel Plus HD technology.  There's also an Internet connection, via an Ethernet port or an optional WiFi adaptor, which can be used with a built-in browser, meaning you can surf the web from the comfort of your sofa.  The only hitch is that there's no support for Flash, making streaming video from sites like YouTube difficult.

Apart from that, though, the PFL6606 makes do with the bare minimum, with the main features stretching to three HDMI inputs, an ambient light sensor and a media player that relies on the USB port.  There's not much point in the media player, though, which doesn't support very many formats, disappointingly.

Philips' favourite Ambilight technology isn't available either, as it's reserved for models in the 7000 series and above.

The onscreen menus might look modern, but they're not very easy to use.  Sony's XrossMediaBar interface, first seen on the PlayStation 3, is still the reference in this domain.  Our biggest complaint with Philips is the fact that the menus don't cycle: once you get to the last option, you can't get back to the first option with a single click, but instead have to work your way back up through the list.  This is something we've been complaining about for years, but still nothing has been done about it.

Ghosting Time and Input Lag

We always start this section by looking at input lag, and with an average lag of 66 ms behind a CRT monitors, we can't recommend the PFL6606 for gamers.  Besides, the MVA panel had a ghosting time of 17 ms, which is worse than the average result of 12 ms obtained by other TVs we've tested.

Image Quality

With the default settings, the picture quality is quite simply an absolute disaster: colour reproduction is dreadful (deltaE: 10.8), luminance is all over the place (an average gamma of 3 instead of 2.2) and an average colour temperature of 13845 K instead of the ideal value of 6500 K.

Switching to Cinema mode can't completely eradicate all of these problems.  Our grayscale gradient remained too dark, and colour reproduction is far from perfect with the average deltaE falling to 4.8.  At least the contrast ratio is pretty good, with blacks as dark as 0.05 cd/m² against a white of 200 cd/m² leading to a contrast ratio of 4025:1.


You can improve things even more by reducing the brightness to 56, which improves the gamma without it ever being perfect, falling to an average figure of 2.3.  The colour discrepancy also improves, falling to an average deltaE of 3.9, but even that is higher than the average figure measured across other TVs we've tested.


In short, it's possible to improve the picture quality but it will never be perfect.  And adjusting the settings in search of more accurate colours has a detrimental effect on the contrast, which falls to 2200:1, although this is still a perfectly decent figure.

It's fair to say that we were a little disappointed by the results of our lab tests, but things went better when we sat down in front of the PFL6606.  Even with the default settings, HD content looks good, but the picture is a little rough.  To make things more natural, we suggest you turn the sharpness down from 2 to 0.  With SD content like ordinary TV programming or a DVD, the picture could do with a little more detail, and turning the sharpness back up to 2 will help restore some details.  As long as the scene is fairly static, the quality is pretty acceptable, but if there's a lot of movement on screen, the poor responsiveness quickly becomes problematic and the ghosting blurs fast-moving objects.

The HD Natural Motion filter and 100 Hz mode do a good job of improving the smoothness of fast-moving scenes, but they also have a negative impact on the overall quality, leaving visual artifacts around fast-moving objects and making the whole scene look like it was shot on a camcorder.

Clouding

The vast majority of TVs that we've tested recently with Edge LED backlighting have suffered from problems with clouding, but the Philips PFL6606H that we had in the lab seems to be the exception that proves the rule ... at last!

Audio Quality

Philips' latest TV went from strength to strength as our tests continued, scoring highly for audio quality.  You can expect to enjoy films with decent bass, but it will never replace a real Home Cinema kit or a sound bar.

Energy Consumption

The energy consumption figures we measured were absolutely excellent.  The PFL6606H doesn't need anything more than a mere 0.1 W while on standby, and is just as impressive when you switch it on: the 44'' version we tested used just 45 W.