It's showtime!

Philips gets ahead of itself with a tantalising 2023 TV range preview. Steve May reports on things to come

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PHILIPS LAUNCHED ITS 2023 TV range under a Big Top in Amsterdam, introducing a flagship OLED built around a high brightness MLA (Micro Lens Array) panel, two mid-priced Mini LED models, and an all-new smart TV platform. The setting may have been straight out of The Greatest Showman, but the manufacturer clearly wasn’t clowning around.

 

However, don’t expect to buy any of this stuff anytime soon; it quickly became clear that these announcements were very early. The OLED+908 isn’t expected to arrive until at least September. A screen demo, comparing its peak brightness with a 2022 OLED EX panel, had us salivating, but this was far from a finished sample.

Bowers-powered The OLED+908, which will be available in 55in, 65in and 77in sizes, certainly looks every bit the high-end TV, with a dark metal bezel and matching Kvadrat cloth speaker grille for its Bowers & Wilkins-designed sound system. The panel sits on a central open frame stand, which swivels. Like the rest of Philips' 2023 TVs, it sports two 4K/120Hz-capable HDMI inputs – the European brand hasn't yet followed some rivals in offering the necessary data rates across all inputs.