Philips 40PFL7007T/12 review

Picture quality can make or break any TV, and thankfully it’s here that the PFL7007 excels – as long as you stick to high-definition sources. Terrestrial television is passable in SD through the integrated Freeview HD tuner, but there are noticeable compression and motion artefacts. Noise reduction can smooth things out somewhat, but you lose edge sharpness as a result. Switch to high definition and the results are excellent. Images look sharp, detailed and have convincing contrast.

The edge-lit LED backlight is incredibly uniform, producing rich blacks without any noticeable light bleed. Shadow detail isn’t perfect, but it’s still a major improvement over many edge-lit TVs. Colour accuracy was very good, particularly skin tones and skylines, but there’s still room for extra tweaking using the custom colour presets menu.

Blu-ray video looks fantastic, retaining all of Star Trek’s film grain and handling motion superbly. The Pixel Precise HD image smoothing system helped reduce motion judder at the minimal setting, but anything further and we noticed a lack of sharpness, so there’s no reason to push it any higher. AmbiLight is strips of colour-changing LEDs at the rear of the TV that illuminate the wall behind it to provide a greater sense of immersion within whatever you’re watching. It makes sports and films an absolute joy to watch.

Switching to 3D proved a little difficult for the 2012 7000 series. For an active set there was relatively little flicker, but we did notice more crosstalk than we would have liked. The now ubiquitous 2D-3D conversion is present and correct, but as ever we didn’t think it added anything to films or TV. Only one pair of active 3D glasses is included with the set, with extra pairs costing £59 each (PTA517/00 from www.savastore.com).

The 7000 series is a fully featured TV with excellent 2D image quality. Although not as exact as some high-end plasma sets, it produces superb images given that it’s using edge-lit LED. Sound quality’s great, we love AmbiLight and we think the set looks fantastic, but it’s not quite the complete package. Noticeable 3D crosstalk and a limited selection of Smart TV services prevent it from toppling the phenomenal Sony HX853, but it certainly comes close.