First “OLED EX” TVs announced, promising brighter high-contrast picture

Philips has revealed the first TVs to use LG’s new type of OLED panel, OLED EX. The Philips OLED807 line of 4K HDR TVs announced Thursday doesn’t have a price, but it will be released in Europe sometime this year.

OLED EX promises to increase brightness “up to 30 percent compared to conventional OLED displays,” LG says. In spite of their famously rich contrast, OLED panels generally don’t reach the brightness levels of LED panels, which can surpass 1,400 nits. Unfortunately, Philips didn’t provide a specific brightness spec for the OLED807 beyond reiterating the “30 percent brighter” claim.

The OLED807’s diodes use deuterium compounds that LG says are brighter and more efficient than hydrogen. OLED EX panels combine this material with machine learning to control the TVs’ “energy input to more accurately express the details and colors of the video content being played,” LG said when announcing OLED EX.

Philips will offer the OLED EX panel in four sizes: 48, 55, 65, and 77 inches. The sets support HDMI 2.1, with variable refresh rates from 48 to 120 Hz and all the flavors of HDR you’d expect.

LG also promised smaller bezels with OLED EX, and those of the OLED807 are hard to spot—at least in the images shared by the company. LG says bezel thickness will drop from 6 to 4 mm on 65-inch panels.

The announcement attributed the thin bezels to “an outside metal frame that allows a seamless connection” to the updated Ambilight system, a Philips TV feature that places reactive LEDs around the TV’s border.

LG does not claim that OLED EX will dramatically improve burn-in risk, but Philips says the OLED807 will fight the issue by using a “logo detection function to monitor a grid of zones to accurately detect static content and gradually reduce the intensity of its local light output,” according to this week’s announcement.

Beyond that, the Android TV 11-based OLED807 is being positioned as fit for gamers. In addition to 120 Hz, the max refresh rate supported in 4K by the latest Xbox and PlayStation consoles, the set promises HDMI 2.1 at its full 48 Gbps bandwidth. There’s also Nvidia G-Sync compatibility and AMD FreeSync Premium to fight screen tearing.

Further, Philips is introducing a “gamebar” to provide “quick access to picture and sound settings,” including Adaptive-Sync. The set also sports a new 70 W 2.1 sound system, including four passive radiators and a rear-facing bass driver.

Enhanced AI

Philips says the upcoming TVs will update the OLED806’s P5 AI processing engine; enhancements include the ability to tweak brightness, color, and gamma based on ambient lighting for SDR and HDR content. You can toggle between “dark detail,” “color temperature optimization,” or “eye care” settings. There are also five new smart picture modes (up from two) in the AI Auto Film Mode feature.

Philips said its OLED EX TVs will be released only in Europe. We expect to hear more OLED EX TV announcements from LG’s partners, as well as LG itself, which will shift all OLED TV production in Paju, South Korea, and Guangzhou, China, to OLED by the second quarter of the year.