Philips OLED810 Review: An Iteration, Not a Revolution — But Still Easy to Recommend

The Philips OLED810 replaces last year’s OLED809 and continues the long-running Philips 8-series OLED line — a range that typically goes head-to-head with LG’s hugely popular C-series. For 2025, Philips is promising a slightly brighter OLED panel, a newer P5 AI Gen9 video processor, 3-sided Ambilight, and Google TV now based on Android 14.

The OLED810 comes in sizes from 42 inches all the way up to 77 inches. We tested the 65-inch model.

Key Specs: Philips OLED810

• Panel: OLED (4K)
• Sizes: 42″–77″ (tested: 65″)
• HDR formats: HDR10, HDR10+ Adaptive, Dolby Vision, HLG
• Processor: P5 AI Gen9
• Peak brightness claim: up to 1500 nits (OLED EX panel)
• Refresh: up to 144 Hz (via HDMI 2.1 with PC)
• Smart platform: Google TV (Android 14)
• Ambilight: 3-sided
• Speakers: 2.1-channel, up to 70W total output (50W on the 42″)
• Inputs: 4x HDMI (2 are full HDMI 2.1 / 4K120), 2x USB, Ethernet, CI+
• Audio out: HDMI eARC, optical
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
• Tuners: DVB-T2/S2/C
• decoding: MPEG4, HEVC, VP9-2, AV1
• In the box: remote, manual (no surprises here)

Note: eARC lives on HDMI 2, which means if you’re using a Dolby Atmos soundbar over eARC, that will consume one of your HDMI 2.1 bandwidth ports — leaving just one remaining high-bandwidth HDMI for gaming.

Also worth noting: the Ethernet port is still capped at 100 Mbps, which is common across TV brands but still disappointing in 2025.

First Impressions & Design

Visually, the OLED810 doesn’t stray far from previous Philips 8-series sets. The panel is still ultra-thin, and the electronics are housed in a thicker section on the back. The stand has changed, though: the 65-inch model now sits on an oval metal base in the center. It’s sturdy, keeps the TV stable, and still swivels manually left/right. (The 77-inch model uses a different two-leg stand to better support the extra width.)

Because of the rear electronics housing, the TV doesn’t sit perfectly flat against the wall when mounted. Unlike other brands that try to make the TV hug the wall, Philips actually benefits from a little breathing room — that space lets Ambilight throw colored light onto the wall effectively.

This model has 3-sided Ambilight (top and sides). For 4-sided Ambilight, you’ll have to step up to Philips’ 9-series, which also get Philips’ new 4-layer RGB Tandem OLED panels.

All main ports are on the back and angled down or sideways for cleaner cable routing. The power connector uses an angled cable.

Software, Performance & Features

The OLED810 runs Google TV with Android 14 out of the box, which is already a step ahead of most 2025 Google TVs from other brands — many of those are still on Android 12.

Internally, Philips is still using the MediaTek Pentonic 1000 (MT5896) SoC, the same chip found in last year’s OLED809 and in some high-end Sony Google TV models. You get:

• 3GB RAM
• Mali G57 GPU
• noticeably more internal storage this year (around 17–18GB free after setup)

Setup is mostly streamlined by Google’s improved pairing and sign-in flow, but Philips adds its own extra setup steps afterward. In testing, we couldn’t finish the entire onboarding purely from the phone app; we still had to complete part of it on the TV itself. It’s a minor annoyance, and you only do it once, but it’s there.

As with all Google TV sets, you can choose:

• Full Google TV experience (apps, recommendations, voice, etc.)
• “Basic TV” mode if you mostly plan to use external devices or just want HDMI inputs and live TV

In day-to-day navigation, performance is basically unchanged from last year’s OLED809. Scrolling and app switching feel fine, but you can tell this chip is nowhere near as fast as something like an Apple TV 4K box. Nvidia Shield TV is also still ahead in raw GPU power. So: Google TV works well, the app catalog is huge now (global apps + local services), but the hardware ceiling keeps it from feeling as instantly responsive as Apple’s box.

Philips adds its own tab to the top of the Google TV interface. This “Philips” tab folds in things like Ambilight controls, manuals, and Philips-provided content (including NFT-style visuals and, in the future, photo galleries via the upcoming Philips Moment app). The concept is good, but it still feels underused — Philips could surface a lot more of their unique features there.

Ambilight: still a Philips ace

Ambilight is still Philips’ signature feature. No other TV maker builds anything this integrated.

You get:

• Quick Ambilight button on the remote
• Modes that match on-screen content or lock to a single bias light color
• An “Ambilight Lounge” mode that keeps ambient lighting on even when the TV is off
• Sleep mode (to help you wind down)
• Sunrise mode (gentle light alarm)
• Tools to compensate for wall color and room lighting

Long story short: Ambilight is more customizable, more “ambient,” and more tightly integrated than the LED light-strip hacks you add to the back of other brands’ TVs. If you specifically want reactive bias lighting or mood lighting as part of your viewing setup, there’s still nothing else quite like it.

HDMI CEC / control

Last year’s OLED809 had a few HDMI CEC headaches (Philips calls it EasyLink): some users saw issues powering devices on/off and passing volume control cleanly. After firmware updates it got better, but it wasn’t perfect at launch.

On the OLED810, those problems seem to be ironed out. Power, volume, input switching, and external box control (like Apple TV or Chromecast/Google TV devices) all behaved normally in testing.

The TV also comes with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, plus two USB ports. PVR-style recording/pause-to-USB is no longer supported.

Remote Control & Usability

The remote is basically the same as last year — which is a good thing.

• Metal body
• Feels solid
• Backlit number cluster (press “123” to light up the keypad area)
• Now rechargeable via USB instead of disposable batteries

Button count is still a little higher than we’d prefer, and there are still sponsored shortcut buttons you can’t remap officially. We’d love to see Philips let users assign their own functions to at least one of those branded buttons. (Workaround: you can install a “button remapper” app from the Google TV store, but obviously the printed logos on the buttons don’t change.)

Audio

Sound quality is above average for a built-in TV speaker system. Philips includes a 2.1-channel setup with a dedicated bass channel / port, which helps action scenes and general TV viewing feel fuller than the usual thin OLED speakers.

For day-to-day watching, news, talk shows, YouTube — totally fine. For cinematic immersion or for music listening, you’ll still want an external soundbar or speaker setup for clarity and width.

Where Philips really stands out is format support:

• Dolby Atmos is supported
• DTS formats — including DTS:X IMAX Enhanced — are supported
• Disney+’s Marvel titles that ship with IMAX Enhanced audio can actually pass DTS:X from the built-in Disney+ app, through the TV, into a capable receiver/soundbar

That’s rare. In fact, Philips is basically the only mainstream TV brand still doing proper DTS:X passthrough like this. With most other TVs, DTS:X is either unsupported or broken in streaming apps, which means you lose those higher-end audio tracks unless you get into workarounds.

Even if Atmos and DTS:X won’t sound mind-blowing on the internal speakers, having both available — and being able to pass them out over HDMI eARC — is a big win for home theater people.

Picture Modes, Calibration & Brightness

Out of the box, the TV defaults to an Eco picture mode for energy ratings in the EU, but it’s not the most accurate. “Crystal Clear” is the opposite — vivid and punchy, but way over-processed.

The most accurate option is still Filmmaker Mode, and that’s the one we recommend for almost everything (even if you’re not literally watching a Hollywood movie). Filmmaker Mode aims to stick as close as possible to the creator’s intent, with proper color and minimal processing. On the OLED810, Filmmaker Mode is slightly more accurate than it was on last year’s OLED809.

Gaming mode is decent but not color-accurate enough for perfectionists out of the box. Turning off certain color “optimizers” gets it closer.

One annoyance: you still have to manually pick Filmmaker Mode separately for SDR, HDR10/10+, and Dolby Vision content. There’s no universal “always use Filmmaker when possible” toggle.

Brightness

In Filmmaker Mode (calibrated), we measured:

• Peak HDR brightness around 1300 nits on small highlights
• Up to 1500 nits in a more aggressive / bluer mode like Crystal Clear
• Full-screen white around 200 nits, similar to last year

So compared to the OLED809:

• Peak brightness is mildly higher (roughly 1100 nits last year vs ~1300 nits calibrated this year)
• Full-field brightness is basically unchanged

Is that a huge difference in actual viewing? Not really. But versus pre-2024 OLEDs that struggled to even reach 1000 nits, this is still strong HDR performance.

Color coverage is what you’d expect from a standard white-OLED (WOLED) panel: roughly ~99% DCI-P3 and ~72% Rec.2020.

Real-World Picture Quality

In real content, HDR performance is excellent. Because HDR movies and shows are usually graded for peaks around 1000 nits, the OLED810 can display them with near-reference contrast, inky blacks, and clean specular highlights. Colors look rich but believable.

Only in extremely bright, full-frame scenes — think white ski slopes, bright snow filling the entire screen — do you see OLED’s main limitation versus high-end miniLED LCDs: overall full-screen punch. MiniLED sets can still blast the entire panel brighter, but they also deal with blooming and local dimming artifacts. OLED810 doesn’t have those blooming issues and delivers perfect pixel-level black control.

SDR performance is also consistently strong, with no serious banding or artifact issues. Sports, movies, and TV look very good, and viewing angles remain essentially perfect (as expected from OLED).

Motion handling is typical OLED: super-fast pixel response means you can sometimes notice a bit of “stutter” or “judder,” especially with 24fps cinema content or fast pans in sports. Philips’ “Movie” setting under Motion → Motion Styles slightly smooths motion without going into full soap-opera territory. Sony still has a small lead in motion processing overall, but Philips has a decent compromise.

Gaming

Gaming features are mostly unchanged from last generation, since Philips is still using the same Pentonic 1000 chipset.

You get:

• 4K at 120Hz (and up to 144Hz from a PC)
• VRR (variable refresh rate)
• ALLM (auto low latency mode)
• Dolby Vision gaming at 4K120 on Xbox Series X
• HDR10 4K120 on PS5
• ~13ms input lag in Game mode, which is very good

Limitations:

• Only two HDMI 2.1 ports, and one is tied up if you use eARC for your soundbar
• VRR on OLED still sometimes produces slight flicker or lifted blacks — this is not unique to Philips, it’s a general OLED/VRR quirk

Philips also has a refreshed game menu overlay with quick access to things like crosshair overlays and signal info. We’d love Game mode to be more color-accurate out of the box, but performance-wise it’s absolutely solid for console players.

Final Verdict

The Philips OLED810 isn’t a dramatic reinvention of last year’s OLED809. Instead, it’s a careful refinement:

• Slight bump in peak brightness (up to ~1300 nits calibrated / 1500 nits in vivid mode)
• Updated styling and stand
• Google TV now launching on Android 14
• Fixed CEC quirks
• Same Ambilight magic

There are still a few limitations. You only get two HDMI 2.1 ports. There’s no HDMI 2.1 QMS. Ethernet is still 100 Mbps. And while the 65-inch pricing is competitive against other premium OLEDs, the 77-inch model still feels pricey — and Philips still doesn’t offer an 83-inch option for people who want truly huge OLED screens.

But in terms of pure picture quality — SDR and HDR alike — the OLED810 delivers. For most buyers, it will actually look better than much more expensive miniLED LCDs because it avoids blooming, nails contrast, and still gets bright enough for living-room viewing. Audio format support is excellent (Dolby Vision and HDR10+ on the video side, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X IMAX Enhanced on the audio side). Google TV has matured, and Ambilight remains a real differentiator that no mainstream rival can match.

If you want a TV in the LG C-series class, but you also want Ambilight and wide format support without having to choose between Dolby and DTS, the Philips OLED810 is one of the most compelling options out there right now.

Bottom line:
Not groundbreaking, but extremely well-rounded. Strong HDR, improved brightness, fixed CEC, full next-gen HDR formats, working DTS:X, and Ambilight. The Philips OLED810 earns a clear “highly recommended.”