Philips PUS8500 vs Sony BRAVIA 2 II (S25M2)

When it comes to HDR performance on the PUS8560, it's safe to say that it's rather average. The brightness of the panel is around 350 nits, so we consider this to be the absolute minimum for watching content in this format. However, it’s not a result that will impress viewers looking for the best possible picture.

On the plus side, it's worth noting that the PUS8500 series – including the PUS8560/12 tested here – is marketed as a QLED television. And indeed, we can expect a wider colour gamut here. This model is equipped with an additional filter (PFS), and the DCI-P3 coverage of around 90% should suffice for most users. This filter operates very similarly to quantum dots. As a result, colours are quite well-saturated. It's not an outstanding result, but it's entirely sufficient for watching movies and series from streaming platforms.

Sony Bravia 2 II isn't a particularly bright TV and unfortunately that's immediately obvious in HDR. In our measurements brightness stayed around 300 to 330 nits, which is far too low for the brightest parts of the image to look truly impactful. In practice HDR here doesn't differ that much from regular SDR. Bright highlights, the sun or lamps are of course visible, but they lack the intensity you'd expect from HDR content. The Bravia 2 II is therefore much better suited to standard SDR material, where its limited brightness will be least noticeable.

Colour gamut coverage

The Sony Bravia 2 II also doesn't impress when it comes to colour. The TV doesn't use any extra gamut-expanding filter, such as the quantum dots found in QLED sets or a PFS phosphor layer. In our measurements it covered about 78% of the DCI-P3 gamut and roughly 57% of the very wide BT.2020. That's definitely too little to deliver truly saturated colours in HDR material. More intense reds, greens or turquoises will simply be less striking than on TVs with an expanded colour gamut. The Bravia 2 II is much better matched to the standard Rec.709 gamut used for films, series and SDR broadcast.

We tested the television on the best available factory settings, that is, in Film/Filmmaker mode – this is the mode we recommend for everyday viewing. Unfortunately, it is not without its flaws. Both in HD and HDR content, the image had a distinct tendency to pinkness, caused by an excess of red and blue in the white balance. Another issue turned out to be excessive brightness of the image, as confirmed by both the gamma graph and the EOTF curve. This characteristic was responsible for the loss of detail and washed-out colours in more challenging HDR scenes we mentioned earlier. All of this led to quite significant colour reproduction errors – in extreme cases, the delta E value exceeded 7, while the threshold for visibility of errors for the human eye is about 3. This situation can be improved through calibration, and you can read about its effects below.

The out-of-the-box colour reproduction in Kino mode was really quite good, at least for ordinary SDR material. The Bravia 2 II had a slight tendency to boost reds, which made some colours lean a bit warmer, at times with a faint pinkish tint. That wasn't a major fault and during normal viewing the picture still looked fairly natural. There was a bit more going on with image brightness. Looking at the gamma curve, Sony doesn't stick perfectly to the reference value. The darkest areas are slightly lifted, while as brightness increases the gamma gradually rises and a large part of the image becomes darker than it should. However, the difference isn't big enough to seriously bother during everyday watching. Overall, SDR straight out of the box performs quite decently.

The situation is much worse in HDR. We've already mentioned the limited colour gamut, but on top of that the Bravia 2 II quite aggressively manipulates image brightness. The EOTF curve sits below the reference for much of the range, which means the TV renders most mid and brighter parts of the scene darker than the source material intends. Only towards the very end of the range does the curve flatten out, as the panel reaches the limits of its capabilities. Combined with a peak brightness of around 300 nits, this gives HDR that not only lacks much punch but can simply look too dark.

The Dutch manufacturer offers quite a large dose of settings in its products, so as usual, we decided to tinker with them a bit. The effects are immediately noticeable – we managed to correct the white balance, which made the image cease to appear overly pinkish. The brightness characteristics were also partially equalised, of course within the limits that the television itself allows. The picture is no longer so excessively brightened, and the overall reception after calibration is definitely better than in the factory settings of the Filmmaker mode.

You could only nitpick about the characteristics of the EOTF curve, which still indicates that the image tends to brighten HDR content. Despite our efforts, the darkest parts of the scenes can still be too bright, and the brightest ones do not always reach their full contrast potential. However, it must be clearly stated that we are dealing with a typically budget-oriented design – one cannot expect reference-quality rendering of HDR content from it.

Calibration has definitely helped this model – it improved the balance, toned down the aggressive colour palette, and brought the image closer to what one can expect from a well-configured movie mode. However, there are certain limitations that cannot be overcome.

Calibration did a lot for the Bravia 2 II, especially with SDR content. Above all, we managed to even out the white balance and tidy up the gamma, which now stays much closer to the reference value. As a result, the image no longer has the earlier pink cast, and the brightness across different areas is much better organised. You can also see it in the colour errors, which after calibration dropped to a very low level (with only minor issues in the most saturated reds).

We also partly managed to rein in the Bravia 2 II in HDR, especially in the way the TV handles image brightness. However, there is one thing no calibration can fix: the panel's capabilities. A narrow colour gamut means the TV physically can't reproduce the most saturated colours recorded in HDR content. On top of that, the low contrast of the IPS panel causes darker scenes to be covered in a grey haze, which robs colours of some of their depth. So we can improve how the Bravia 2 II uses its capabilities, but we can't overcome the panel's inherent limitations.

Philips PUS8560 offers a deinterlacing function, hidden under the name “distortion reduction”. And while it indeed serves its purpose, smoothing out problematic tonal transitions, it operates a bit too broadly. In practice, it affects not just colourful gradients but also softens faces, clothing textures, and furniture surfaces. This undermines the authenticity of the image – especially in films where natural texture is of great importance. However, if someone is looking for smoothing at any cost, it’s best to set this option to “Low”. For cinema image enthusiasts – we definitely do not recommend it.

On the plus side, the quality of scaling older materials is worth noting – the PUS8560 model handles them surprisingly well. The image retains a natural softness without artificially boosted sharpness. It’s also worth mentioning that the TV correctly displays very low-resolution content, avoiding issues with image cropping (so-called overscan).

Upscaling on the Bravia 2 II performs quite well and the TV maintains the standard we've come to expect from Sony. Lower-resolution material is sensibly upscaled to 4K, and the image is slightly smoothed without excessive edge sharpening. It's less successful at dealing with content that shows visible compression artefacts. That's down to the "Digital Noise Reduction" function, which on the "High" setting can smooth some ugly banding. The problem is it does so quite aggressively and, along with the imperfections, removes a lot of fine detail, including natural film grain. What's more, when there's more motion on screen its effectiveness drops considerably and the improvement is minimal. For that reason we generally didn't use this feature for everyday viewing.

The Philips PUS8560 is a television equipped with a 60 Hz refresh rate panel, which already limits its capabilities for displaying dynamic content right from the start. Watching sports or playing on a console is not one of the more enjoyable experiences. The situation is further worsened by the absence of any option to improve film fluidity. In the menu, you won’t find settings that would allow for the activation of motion smoothing or even a slight motion blur for films recorded at 24 frames per second. You can imagine the effect. The image can appear choppy, especially in shots with panoramic camera movements.

Bravia 2 II uses a 60 Hz panel and, for what it is, handles motion quite well. However, bear in mind it’s an entry-level panel and its limitations are especially noticeable with sports. The TV can’t interpolate 50/60 fps material to a higher refresh rate, so it can’t further improve the sharpness of fast-moving objects. For films and series there’s a conventional motion-smoothing feature that can reduce the judder typical of 24 fps material.

Although the Philips PUS8560 is not designed with gamers in mind, the manufacturer has equipped it with a few features that may prove useful when connecting a console. Onboard, we find automatic switching to game mode (ALLM), as well as a simple connection status information bar – the so-called Game Bar. It doesn't make a particularly visual impression, but it serves its purpose. The presence of variable refresh rate (VRR), operating in the range of 48 to 60 Hz, may come as a surprise. This is not a wide range, but for less demanding games or titles with unstable frame rates, VRR can help reduce the tearing effect. However, this is the only element that can be considered beyond the minimum.

It must be clearly stated that the PUS8560 is not equipment for gamers looking for a responsive screen and full support for modern console features. It lacks HDMI 2.1 ports, the refresh rate is limited to 60 Hz, and the panel's response time is not among the fastest. This model may at best suit people who play occasionally and want to enjoy the Ambilight system.

The Bravia 2 II isn’t a TV that’s particularly suited to gaming, and the feature list makes that clear pretty quickly. You basically only get automatic low-latency ALLM and a simple Game Bar where you can view basic signal info and change a few settings. That’s where the positives end. The TV doesn’t support VRR or 120 Hz (not even at lower resolutions) and on top of that it has problems correctly implementing HDR HGIG. It’s fine for occasional console play and, thanks to low input lag, the controls remain responsive, but if you’re after a TV primarily for gaming the Bravia 2 II is a significantly limited choice.