Panasonic W85 vs Philips PUS7000

Unfortunately, we don't have good news here. The Panasonic W85B is quite a dark television – its peak brightness doesn't exceed 300 nits, making it hard to talk about any real HDR effect. In practice, this means that scenes which can 'shine' and impress on other screens simply look like regular SDR with a slight colour boost here. Our measurements and film tests confirmed this – regardless of the content, the W85B won't draw anything more from HDR. So if someone is looking for a television specifically for HDR, it's better to look at other models. On a positive note, the W85B does quite well in terms of colours. It's a QLED television, so its colour gamut coverage is wide, and most films and series look natural, without a noticeable 'faded' effect. The colours are saturated, so in everyday viewing, there's no feeling that something is seriously off.

Unfortunately, the PUS7000 is not suitable for watching HDR content. This screen is simply too dark. A brightness level of 200 nits is insufficient to display this format correctly. Even if a HDR signal message appears on the screen, the image will resemble a standard SDR recording. Therefore, it’s better to stick with the latter format to avoid errors in displaying bright scenes, as you will read below. The situation is worsened by the fact that this is a classic LCD model without additional layers that improve colours, such as QLED or PFS. As a result, colours in HDR may seem washed out. Ultimately, this provides a worse effect than in the standard SDR format, which is simply better suited to the capabilities of this panel.

Testing the Panasonic W85B, we obviously started with the Filmmaker mode, as it's the gold standard for watching content "the way the director intended." The problem is that this TV is quite far from those intentions. The biggest issue turned out to be an excess of red – both in SDR and HDR. The image often looked too warm because of this, and in some scenes, it was almost "on fire." Added to this is the issue of brightness management. When we looked at the gamma and EOTF charts, it was clear as day that in most scenes, the TV brightens the image more than it should. The effect was easy to predict. Details can get lost, leading to flattening and clipping across the entire screen. We obviously know how to fix this, but to be fair, it does require a lot of calibration work. Out of the box, the W85B doesn't produce an image close to reference quality – it's more of a TV that, without professional adjustments, will always interpret colours and brightness a bit "in its own way." Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of the viewer.

We tested the television in movie mode, which theoretically should provide the best and most natural colours. And indeed, this mode is quite correct; however, when we connected the calibration equipment, its biggest flaw became apparent. The PUS7000 has significant shortcomings in displaying reds. Poorly tuned white balance and too low saturation of this colour cause the image to appear too cool. As a result, one might get the impression that the displayed content lacks vibrant colours. The situation is worsened by the fact that both SDR and HDR content are excessively brightened. This is confirmed by the gamma curve and EOTF graphs, which show that the television displays the image brighter than it should. This causes scenes to lose their depth and can make them seem slightly washed out. Fortunately, in the Philips menu, we find plenty of features to improve these aspects, so we immediately proceeded to calibration to see what we could extract from this screen.

Fortunately, calibration made a significant difference for the Panasonic W85B, especially for SDR content. Here, the improvement was quite evident – we managed to even out the white balance and reasonably tame the TV's tendency to overly brighten the entire image. The picture became more coherent and the colours gained the naturalness that was lacking in the factory settings. Admittedly, the results from the Color Checker are not perfect, as the W85B has noticeable issues with green saturation, but overall, we rate the post-calibration effect in SDR quite positively. The situation with HDR is a bit different. Here too, we managed to reduce the tendency to warm up the entire scene, so the image performed definitely better than in the factory settings. However, there is still the same problem we mentioned earlier – the TV interprets the image too strongly "in its own way" and brightens the whole screen. And the lack of local dimming only exacerbates this effect. In summary, briefly, in SDR content, the W85B performs really well after calibration and is perfectly suitable for everyday viewing. However, in HDR, even after adjustments, it is still difficult to unambiguously recommend it for more serious viewing.

After professional calibration, it’s evident that the PUS7000 responds well to image adjustments. In this price range, that’s not a given. The effects are best evaluated in two scenarios, depending on the content we plan to watch. SDR performs the best. After our adjustments, the image looks really good. Most colour errors have dropped below level 3, which is the threshold at which discrepancies usually become visible to the naked eye. Movies, series, sports, and regular television present naturally, without unpleasant deviations. If someone mainly watches classic channels or streams in HD quality, the difference after calibration will be noticeable straight away. However, it must be said clearly that the PUS7000 is still not a television suited for proper HDR, and calibration doesn't change much in this regard. The reason lies in the hardware: colours remain too unsaturated. The television lacks solutions that widen the colour gamut, such as PFS filters or a quantum dot layer, so the panel simply cannot display the intense colours required by HDR. This is most evident in reds, which still look washed out. This limitation cannot be circumvented through menu settings, as it stems from the design of the backlighting and the panel itself.

With native SDR content, the Panasonic W85B performs very well – tonal transitions are smooth and natural, without artificial bands or clear outlines. However, the situation is worse with lower resolution materials. This is where the TV has the biggest problem with "beautifying" the image. The lack of any menu option to improve gradation means that with older films or materials from YouTube, one can sometimes notice slight issues with colour blending.

Fortunately, upscaling, or enhancing the quality of lower resolution content, performs much better. This is definitely a strong point of this model – the image is scaled cleanly and in detail, and the TV handles this better than one might expect from such an inexpensive setup. This is thanks to the HCX processor, which Panasonic has been developing for years, and it shows that even in the lower series, it can do a good job.

The PUS7000 handles digital image processing quite well. The distortion reduction feature deserves praise, as it effectively smooths unwanted tonal transitions even at a low setting. However, it has its downside: with too aggressive operation, it can introduce undesirable artifacts on the screen. It would be a good idea to experiment with this setting to find the golden mean between a smooth image and the clarity of details.

The upscaling, or enhancing the quality of lower materials to 4K, is decent. The image after processing is very "soft," which is typical of almost all Philips TVs. The edges are plastic and smooth, making the image look cohesive. If someone finds it too soft, it can always be adjusted with the sharpness slider in the menu for a more pronounced effect.

At first glance, everything looks good – the Panasonic W85B has a 120 Hz panel and even a 144 Hz mode, so it seems like it should handle smooth motion really well. The problem starts when we delve into the settings. The options for improving fluidity are supposedly present in the menu, but in practice… they don't change anything. No matter what we choose, the image looks the same. On top of that, there’s a lack of BFI, or black frame insertion, which in many TVs helps sharpen motion. And suddenly, it turns out that despite the strong panel, the W85B doesn’t give us any real tools to adjust that motion to our needs. It’s only good when the source itself operates at a higher frequency – for example, games at 120 Hz. But when it comes to movies or sports, we just have to accept what the TV shows us because there’s nothing more that can be done about it.

In this regard, we actually have no good news. It might seem that the biggest downside is the lack of a 120 Hz panel, but in this price range, that's actually the norm, and it's hard to expect more. However, the worst part is that the television has no motion smoothing features. There are no supporting systems in place for either movies or sports. We have to come to terms with the fact that the image on the PUS7000 is processed "raw." This means that during dynamic scenes or fast camera movements, motion can appear choppy or unclear. We have no option to enable any smoothers that could alleviate this effect.

On paper, the Panasonic W85B looks really solid. It has two full HDMI 2.1 ports, support for ALLM, variable refresh rates, Dolby Vision in games, and of course, a high refresh rate for the panel itself. Additionally, there's the characteristic Panasonic game bar, which allows you to view key parameters with a single click and quickly change them if needed. It sounds great, but the problem arises when we enable HDR. Here, the W85B really struggles because the implementation of HGiG is practically nonexistent – the TV poorly manages brightness, and instead of faithful images, we get scenes that are too bright, sometimes even blown out. The solution? The simplest one – turn off HDR in the console settings and keep everything in SDR. And here it gets really interesting, because in this scenario, the W85B shows its better side. Low input lag, high smoothness thanks to 120 Hz – all of this makes gaming look phenomenal. Yes, HDR can be skipped, but if responsiveness and smooth gameplay are the priorities, the W85B provides plenty of fun.

Even though the PUS7000 isn’t marketed as a gaming TV, it doesn't perform as poorly in this category as one might expect. True, it doesn't support 120 Hz refresh rates, which is understandable at this price point, but the manufacturer has included several important features that significantly improve the console gaming experience. The most important of these are VRR and ALLM technologies. VRR is responsible for synchronising the screen with the number of frames generated by the console. This means the image doesn't "tear" and remains consistent even during sudden drops in frame rates while playing. On the other hand, ALLM is a solution that automatically switches the TV to a mode with the lowest latency immediately after detecting a signal from the console. All these parameters are easily accessible thanks to the Game Bar feature. This is a special control panel for gamers that can be brought up on the screen at any time. It allows for a quick view of current settings and connection status without interrupting gameplay, which is a very convenient solution.