Philips OLED909 vs TCL A400 PRO

Philips OLED909 impresses with its HDR effect quality, achieving up to 1500 nits of peak brightness in tested scenes. This is an excellent result, placing this television among the best OLED models on the market. The MLA panel, also used in models like the Panasonic Z95A and LG G4, plays a crucial role here, allowing for exceptionally bright and detailed reproduction of dynamic scenes. However, it is worth noting that in the most demanding scene from the film The Meg, brightness drops to around 700 nits. This is a typical phenomenon in OLED technology, where intensely bright full-screen images cause a reduction in luminance. Nevertheless, the HDR effect still looks very good, and the television performs better than most competitors under similar conditions. The wide colour gamut coverage also deserves praise. The OLED909 offers 95% coverage of DCI-P3, ensuring that the television guarantees the ability to display vibrant and realistic colours.

The TCL A400 Pro is a moderately bright TV. Its peak brightness reaches around 600 nits. That level already allows for a real HDR effect and in many films it does deliver a noticeably more appealing picture than in SDR. However, it’s not a level that dazzles by brightness alone. The A400 Pro is not one of those TVs that bombard the viewer with a powerful flash in every dramatic scene. The biggest limitation is visible with small bright elements on a dark background. Because of fairly aggressive zone control, the TV can significantly reduce their brightness, in extreme cases down to around 100 nits. That means small lights, sparks, stars or single highlights can be much less visible than they should be. It should be added, though, that this isn’t done without reason. The A400 Pro does this to keep black levels as deep as possible and to limit the halo effect around bright objects. It’s a deliberate compromise: the TV more often opts for deeper blacks rather than maximising point highlights. On the one hand this is understandable, especially given a limited number of dimming zones, but on the other you should be aware that the HDR effect won’t always be as strong as the peak brightness alone might suggest.

On the plus side, the colours are a strength. The PFS LED filter used here, marketed by the manufacturer as QLED, delivers suitably saturated colours. Our measurements showed about 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut and around 74% of BT.2020, which is a solid result for this class.

Like other TVs, the Philips OLED909 has been tested for colour reproduction in factory modes. The best mode was found to be Filmmaker Mode; however, despite its name, it is not without faults.

The biggest problem is the white balance. In both HD and 4K HDR content, there is a noticeable dominance of green and red hues, resulting in a clear yellow tint on the screen. This effect is particularly visible in test materials, for example, in a scene with Tom Cruise in the foreground, where the difference compared to a calibrated image is very clear.

As for the brightness characteristic, in HD materials, the gamma was excessively boosted - it was below the reference value of 2.4, giving the image a “milky” filter and impacting overall clarity. For 4K HDR content, we observed the opposite phenomenon – at the beginning of the EOTF curve, there is a noticeable drop, indicating issues with reproducing the smallest details in dark scenes. Although Filmmaker mode offers acceptable quality, noticeable errors in white balance and brightness characteristics show that the TV requires additional calibration to fully realise its potential in colour reproduction.

As usual, we carried out colour measurements in the best‑tuned picture mode, Filmmaker Mode, the one intended to be closest to the creators’ intentions. The A400 Pro, of course, also offers other picture modes, but in practice they show much larger colour errors and interfere more with the image character. So we won’t cover them in detail in this part of the review. How does the factory colour reproduction fare? In short: really very well. In fact, looking at our measurements, it’s excellent. Both the white balance and the luminance response were set surprisingly precisely. The errors were so small that during the measurements we genuinely rubbed our eyes in surprise. Such good factory settings don’t happen often, even in televisions running Filmmaker Mode. All the more reason to praise TCL, because the A400 Pro straight out of the box can produce an image very close to how the source material should look. The results were so good you could easily think someone had already given this unit extra attention and tried to calibrate it. Our one bit of nitpicking comes down to a single issue. In SDR material the image was slightly brighter than the reference for a dark room, because the factory gamma was set closer to 2.3 than 2.4. It’s not a large error and most viewers probably won’t even notice it. We should note, however, that we are talking about our specific test unit. There can always be some variation in factory colour between individual units, production batches or screen sizes. We do not assume every A400 Pro will look identical straight out of the box.

Philips OLED909 offers tools for image calibration, significantly improving its quality. After calibrating the Filmmaker Mode, the television displays a much more natural colour reproduction. The white balance after calibration looks very good. Although we noticed slight blue tint deviations in HD content, the errors fall within acceptable limits, and the picture is significantly better than in factory settings. The brightness characteristics, including gamma and EOTF, have also been clearly improved. The television no longer has issues with excessive brightening or dimming of the image. Both dark and light details are now rendered correctly, making the picture look very good in every scene. After calibration, Filmmaker Mode on the Philips OLED909 offers excellent picture quality that will meet the expectations of even the more demanding users. The calibration fully utilises the potential of this model.

Despite the outstanding factory tuning, we couldn't resist checking how the TCL A400 Pro would respond to professional calibration. With such a strong starting point, we were especially curious whether we could squeeze even more from this TV. And here we have to boast: we managed to bring our sample to absurdly low colour errors. Results below 1 are something you don't see every day, even on very good TVs. Such outcomes are more often associated with professional reference monitors than with a lifestyle TV for the living room. In terms of white balance and colour reproduction, the A400 Pro after calibration simply excelled. The only thing we can pick on after closer analysis concerns the brightness response. The TV can vary the luminance level depending on the content being displayed, and quite often the picture is a little darker than it should be according to the reference. This most likely stems from the way the Mini-LED backlight and the local dimming algorithms work in this model. That said, it doesn't ruin the overall impression, because in terms of colour precision the A400 Pro after calibration reached a level that was genuinely hard to expect.

Philips OLED909 offers a distortion reduction feature designed to smooth tonal transitions. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this feature leaves much to be desired. Setting it to "Medium" achieves some effects, but it comes with the risk of blurring important details in the image. For this reason, we do not recommend using this option unless you are looking to soften visible artifacts at the expense of detail.

As for image scaling, the TV presents a very pliable image, which may appeal to viewers who prefer a softer picture. Those expecting sharper clarity will also find a solution, as image scaling can be adjusted to individual preferences in the settings.

Digital image processing is unfortunately one of the weaker points of the TCL A400 Pro. That does not mean the TV performs badly, but it’s hard to call it anything clearly above standard. The upscaling itself is acceptable: edges are fairly well smoothed, the picture does not look overly sharp or “pixelated”, and lower-quality material can be watched without major discomfort. At the same time the overall image has a slightly soft character and you don’t see the kind of precision that the best image processors in more expensive TVs can offer.

Handling of tonal transitions caused by heavy compression is much worse. TCL equipped the A400 Pro with a “Gradual Smoothing” feature that in theory should reduce visible colour banding and artefacts in lower-quality material. In practice, however, its effectiveness is very limited. It does not improve tonal transitions in any noticeable way, and at higher settings it can further smooth image detail, giving it an artificial, slightly blurred character. For that reason we think it’s best to leave this feature off. The A400 Pro copes decently with basic image scaling, but if you often watch heavily compressed material with visible posterisation, this model will not be one of the best choices.

The Philips OLED909 with a 144 Hz panel offers excellent image fluidity, which should satisfy both movie lovers and gamers. Additionally, the TV is equipped with a motion smoothing feature called "Motion Style," which allows for precise adjustment of image fluidity according to personal preferences. In the settings, we find two sliders: "Fluidity," which adjusts the smoothness of motion in films, and "Motion Blur Reduction," which helps eliminate minor artifacts and distortions in dynamic scenes. This feature works well, ensuring that even quick movements on the screen are clear and readable.

The TCL A400 Pro is equipped with a 144 Hz panel, but in practice we're most interested in how it performs at 120 Hz. That's the refresh rate most consoles, as well as many sports broadcasts and high-motion sources, are limited to today. In that range the TV performs quite well. Motion clarity is really good, especially after properly configuring the motion smoothing. The 'Motion Clarity' function improves smoothness. Its settings include two sliders that let you tailor the motion smoothing to your preferences, separately for low-frame-rate and high-frame-rate content. This allows you to achieve either a more cinematic look or a noticeably smoother image. If you don't want to fiddle with manual configuration, you can use built-in presets such as Low, Medium, High, Cinema or Nature.

Philips OLED909 is a TV that meets practically all the requirements of gamers. Equipped with ALLM (automatic low latency mode), VRR (variable refresh rate), and support for Dolby Vision, it guarantees an excellent gaming experience. Additionally, the TV offers very low input lag, ensuring that the response to player movements is instantaneous, which fans of dynamic games will particularly appreciate.

The TV effortlessly supports any resolution at 120 Hz, and even higher refresh rates. The HGiG function, responsible for correctly displaying HDR content in games, works as it should, making the picture in game mode balanced and aligned with console manufacturers' guidelines.

The OLED909 is also equipped with a Game Bar feature, which allows for quick preview and adjustment of gaming settings. Although the interface of this solution seems less visually appealing than that of competitors, it serves its purpose by offering all the essential options in one place.

In terms of gaming features the TCL A400 Pro performs brilliantly. The TV has practically everything you’d expect from a gaming TV today: support for 4K at high refresh rates, VRR, ALLM, correct implementation of HDR formats in games, including Dolby Vision, and HGiG. That means it works well with both next‑gen consoles and PCs. Another plus is the inclusion of a Game Bar, a dedicated panel with the most important settings for gamers. From it you can quickly check basic information about the signal, refresh rate or active features, and customise the appearance and behaviour of some settings to your preferences. It’s a solution that may not change picture quality by itself, but it greatly improves the convenience of using the TV while gaming. The only thing to criticise is the number of full HDMI 2.1 ports. The A400 Pro has only two such ports out of four, and one of them also serves as eARC. In practice this means that if you want to connect two next‑gen consoles and a soundbar you may run into some limitations. In that scenario you’ll need to either swap devices or use extra equipment, such as an AV receiver or a soundbar with HDMI inputs. Even so, it’s hard not to rate the A400 Pro very highly as a gaming TV. The gaming feature set here is genuinely powerful.