Philips' flagship OLED TV for 2020, the OLED+935, is upon us – packaging together a OLED panel, premium Bowers & Wilkins audio, as well as four-sided Ambilight in one high-end set.
While we've known about the 935 for a while now – images of the set first leaked back in July – it's only now it's being given an official welcome into the Philips TV range, in the midst of a largely-online week of IFA 2020 announcements and presentations.
The OLED+935 joins the 805, 855 and 865 OLEDs also released by Philips in 2020, but ups the ante with four-sided Ambilight – rather than the three-sided array featured on the other sets – ensuring that color is projected out of the bottom edge of the television as well as the top and sides.
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In terms of sound, the set features 70W 3.1.2 channel speakers from audio specialist Bowers & Wilkins, too, continuing the successful partnership from last year's OLED+934 model.
A press release for the announcement says that, "The OLED+935 features a total of ten drivers in a 3.1.2 specification, including three 19mm titanium-dome tweeters in a forward-firing left, centre, right (LCR) configuration. All three tweeter assemblies are decoupled from the speaker enclosure for superior performance, with the Tweeter-on-Top mounted in its own rigid, chrome metal enclosure and supporting its partnering mid-range driver unit to create a dedicated centre-channel array."
The trend in premium TV speakers seems to be towards verticality, with Philips and Samsung (though its OTS+ system) both putting out flagship sets with tweeters placed higher up in the set's casing.
Ambilight of my life
The OLED+935 comes in three model sizes, with 55-inch and 65-inch iterations launching in September, and a compact 48-inch size coming in October – making the 935 one of very few OLED TVs to feature the new smaller panel measurement, along with the LG CX and Sony A9.
Buyers will also be treated to Philips' excellent P5 AI processor, Perfect Natural Reality upscaling engine, and the latest Android smart TV platform, Android Pie (9.0).
Philips made much of the draw of Ambilight in its presentation, with a rep stating it was "doubling down on Ambilight advocacy", and that “While other TV techs comes and goes, the cult of Ambilight just keeps growing”.
The technology first appeared in 2004, with colored lighting tubes controlled by the TV's remote, though it's since evolved into a real-time projection system built into the television's sides, drawing on the hues shown on the screen itself.
