Philips OLED950 vs SONY BRAVIA 3 II (XR35M2)

OLED950 is a phenomenal TV for consuming content in HDR format, primarily thanks to the use of innovative Tandem OLED technology. With this technology, the screen can generate astronomical brightness levels, reaching over 2000 nits in movie scenes (on test patterns). This is an outstanding result that places the OLED950 model among the elite displays available on the market. However, it is worth noting a specific aspect of this solution – at moments when full-screen flashes of light appear, brightness can drop by as much as half. Nonetheless, it is important to highlight that levels above 1000 nits on a full screen are still an outstanding result. This allows HDR content to be displayed exactly as filmmakers intended, maintaining the dynamics and impact of bright scenes.

The use of Tandem OLED technology also brought tangible benefits in terms of colour reproduction, improving elements that traditional WOLED panels had issues with compared to QD-OLED competition. In the case of the OLED950, the colour gamut coverage is wider than in classic WOLED panels, reaching nearly 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space and a solid 82% of the demanding BT.2020 palette. While these results still do not match the highly refined achievements of QD-OLED panels, the difference becomes less noticeable during real-world use. We cannot deny that in the vast majority of films, colours look simply fantastic on this model – they are saturated, vibrant, and full of depth.

The Bravia 3 II isn't exactly a TV that tries to impress with brightness. In our measurements it reached around 450 nits, so it's well short of the brightest models on the market. That doesn't mean HDR is just a paper feature here. Compared with standard SDR material, the brightest parts of the image can already punch through noticeably, and highlights, light sources and stronger exposures have a bit more energy and stand out better from the rest of the scene. You can see this best in simpler shots where the screen contains lots of bright elements. Then the Bravia 3 II can give a taste of a higher-dynamic-range picture. The problem only starts with more demanding content, where much greater brightness headroom is needed. There the TV quickly shows its limits and instead of bold, spectacular HDR we’re left with a merely competent picture.

Colours

The Bravia 3 II uses a QLED panel, although technically it doesn't employ a traditional quantum-dot layer. Instead Sony has used a PFS phosphor-based solution, which performs a very similar role: it allows for more saturated reds and greens, and thus reproduces a much wider colour gamut. In our measurements coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut was about 94%, and of the very wide BT.2020 around 74.4%. Those are good results for this class of hardware, which means the Bravia 3 II has no problem showing suitably saturated colours in HDR material. Colours don't look washed out, and the more intense hues can look really attractive.

We tested the OLED950 model in Film mode. Although it is intended to be the best and most accurate preset on this television, in practice, it proved to be not without flaws. Interestingly, in the specimen we tested, the biggest challenge was not the white balance itself – although it did show a slight tendency to give the image a pinkish tint. The main issue lay in the way the television managed brightness, both in everyday SDR content and in demanding HDR scenes. Analysis of the gamma chart and the EOTF curve leads to one key conclusion: the television excessively exposes brightness in the lower registers. This results in the image appearing less contrasty than what the panel technology allows. Details in dark areas, which should remain perfectly dimmed (the characteristic "OLED black"), are simply unnecessarily highlighted and brightened. Fortunately, these errors can be corrected using the appropriate tools, so – as always – we proceeded with professional calibration.

In Professional mode the Bravia 3 II delivers a fairly good level of colour reproduction straight out of the box. In SDR the most noticeable issue is a slightly low gamma, which makes the midtones a little brighter. The white balance isn't perfect either; as brightness increases a bit of blue and red drops away, so whites can sometimes appear a touch warmer with a faint greenish tint. These aren't mistakes that immediately jump out when watching a film. Average error values hover around 3, so the factory setup can be considered quite good. The situation in HDR is similar. Here too there's a slight lack of blue, so the picture is marginally warmer than the reference, but the difference isn't large enough to be distracting during normal viewing.

As you can see, the OLED950, after a professional calibration process, becomes an absolutely phenomenal display that, without a shadow of a doubt, can be placed alongside the best televisions currently available in the world. This equipment needed only a professional touch to showcase its full potential and eliminate factory shortcomings. The residual errors in the Color Checker tests and the fidelity of the colour palette speak for themselves. We are dealing with an almost perfect device here. A true window to the world, offering image quality of the highest order.

After calibration you can get a lot out of SDR material. The white balance was set almost perfectly, gamma practically matches the reference value, and average colour errors fell from around 3 to about 1. That’s already the level at which differences from the reference image are very hard to spot in practice. The Bravia 3 II therefore shows that despite its place in Sony’s range it has quite a bit of potential for precise picture tuning. Improvement is also visible in HDR, although here you can’t avoid all the limitations of the TV itself. Once the colours are evened out it’s easier to notice that the EOTF curve in film material runs slightly below the reference value in places, meaning the Bravia 3 II gently darkens parts of the image. That isn’t ideal from a reference point of view, but in this particular TV it also has an advantage. With no local dimming and average black levels this behaviour slightly reduces the visibility of the backlight in darker scenes and helps preserve a stronger sense of contrast. You could say Sony is partly masking the limitations of the panel this way, rather than trying at all costs to stick to the reference brightness.

Upscaling

In terms of the scaling of the image, the proprietary P5 processor performs just as well as in most of the manufacturer's models. Lower resolution content gains a very soft and plastic character. This presentation will certainly appeal to many people. However, if you prefer sharper contours, you can gently enhance them using the appropriate slider in the TV menu. In this aspect, it's really hard to nitpick. The image simply looks very good and additionally, there are no issues with overscan.

Smoothing and Distortion Reduction

The smoothing of tonal transitions performs somewhat worse. In the settings, we find an option called "Distortion Reduction." This allows for a three-level adjustment of the processor's intervention. Unfortunately, the Minimum setting works poorly and the smoothing effects are minimal. The Medium level gives a decent result, but it also begins to smooth out the details of the actors' skin. On the other hand, the Maximum setting works too aggressively. It removes far too many details from the face and background elements or can even eliminate film grain. To achieve the optimal effect, it's worth playing around with these settings at home and adjusting them to your liking. It might seem that the Medium option represents the best compromise here.

Bravia 3 II is Sony's first TV to use the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip, and you can see a few changes in the image processing. Starting with the basics: the upscaling itself is decent. The TV can sensibly upscale lower-resolution material and doesn't have a strong tendency to over‑emphasise jagged edges or other source imperfections. With regular broadcast TV or lower-quality streaming material the picture therefore remains quite attractive.

We have more reservations about the digital image processing. In this model Sony has replaced the well-known "Smooth Gradation" function with a new setting called "Digital Noise Reduction". Its job is basically the same: to smooth out ugly tonal transitions and artifacts caused by heavy compression. Unfortunately, this function performs noticeably worse than before. At the "Large" setting (the only one that had any visible effect) the TV can smooth away too many image elements at once, which causes film grain to disappear and object textures or even skin to start looking unnatural. Worse still, the effect is not particularly stable. When there's more motion in a scene, the function's effect noticeably weakens and at times it looks as if the TV stops intervening in the image altogether. So for everyday viewing we wouldn't recommend using it at a high level. It can help on static shots, but the trade-off is often too much loss of detail.

The motion reproduction on the OLED950 model is simply perfect. This is typical for screens of this kind (OLED 120Hz+), as the panel shows no motion blur at all. This allows us to enjoy perfect sharpness in practically any conditions. A significant part of this is due not only to the nature of organic technology itself. Equally important work is done here by the smoothing systems employed by the manufacturer.

Motion handling is definitely one of the Bravia 3 II's strongest points. The TV uses a 120 Hz VA panel, a solution that by nature, despite the high refresh rate, doesn't always cope well with motion blur. Sony has, however, managed that issue very well here. Fast-moving objects remain sharp, and the characteristic motion trails and blur are reduced to a very low level, if not to zero. It's one of the least motion-blur-prone LCD TVs we've had the chance to test. Interestingly, in this respect the Bravia 3 II can even outperform the much more expensive flagship True RGB series, the Bravia 9 II.

OLED950 is almost the perfect television for gamers. This is due not only to the unique atmosphere created by the Ambilight system during gameplay. The most important aspect here is the solid hardware support. We literally have everything you would expect from a modern gaming display. The manufacturer has implemented two HDMI 2.1 ports with full bandwidth of 48 Gb/s. This gives us access to gaming in 4K resolution at 120 frames per second. There is, of course, support for VRR technology and the automatic game mode ALLM. The device handles any HDR signal with ease, whether we’re using Dolby Vision or the HGiG standard.

We have access to all settings from one place thanks to the special Game Bar overlay. While this interface may not be the most graphically attractive on the market, it fully accomplishes its task. It displays all the important signal parameters and offers useful additions. Gamers can take advantage of the minimap zoom function or add a fixed crosshair on the screen, which can be seen as a small aid in online competition. The adjustment of contrast range also proves to be useful. It allows you to brighten shadows and achieve better visibility of enemies hiding in dark corners of the map.

The Sony Bravia 3 II is a very good TV for gamers, although not everything has been solved the way we’d like. The biggest change concerns the connectors. For the first time in a Sony TV we get four full HDMI 2.1 ports with 48 Gb/s bandwidth, thanks to the new MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset. That removes one of the problems that has hung over this manufacturer’s TVs for years. You can connect several devices at once and on each input use the device’s full capabilities, including VRR and ALLM. There’s also a simple Game Bar that lets you check the key signal parameters and change a few useful settings, such as black level, when you want to improve visibility in darker parts of a game.

There are, however, two limitations worth knowing. The first is the lack of support for 1440p at 120 Hz. That won’t be an issue for everyone, but people using that resolution on a console or PC—for example to get higher frame rates in certain games—will have to choose 1080p. We have more reservations about HGiG support. Sony doesn’t let you disable tone mapping on the Bravia 3 II, so the TV keeps processing HDR even when you’d prefer to leave that task to the console. It’s easiest to spot during HDR setup—the checkerboard test pattern doesn’t disappear at the point where it should based on the TV’s actual capabilities. That doesn’t mean HDR in games will look bad. You just need to set up a little differently and, rather than relying on the pattern, manually set the peak brightness to about 450 nits. So the issue can be worked around, but you should know about it before you start configuring your console.