Philips PUS8359 (VA) vs Sony BRAVIA 7 II

Philips PUS8359 did not impress us with its results in HDR materials. This model is capable of generating a maximum brightness of 320 nits, and often even less. Such results, combined with a lack of support for HDR Dolby Vision, mean that the image will be significantly darker compared to the source material. Therefore, playing SDR materials will be more beneficial for this television. This is also suggested by the rather low coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut at 83%, which results in significant colour deficiencies. The fact remains that the television supports the HDR format based on dynamic metadata, although HDR10+ is such a niche format that it does not bring any significant advantages.

The Sony Bravia 7 II handles HDR very well and, above all, is simply a bright television. In the correct viewing mode, Professional, we measured around 2,000 nits of peak brightness, so the panel’s capabilities are truly significant. Of course, with Mini-LEDs a test pattern result is only part of the story, because a lot still depends on how the TV controls the backlight in real scenes. Here Sony’s algorithms perform very well. Depending on the scene, the brightness we measured in films ranged from roughly 1,100 to as much as 1,700 nits. That’s already a level at which HDR has proper punch and bright highlights can be genuinely impressive. It isn’t perfect in every situation, though. With small bright elements on a very dark background the Bravia 7 II clearly favours maintaining good blacks, which can cause their brightness to drop to around 500 nits. It still looks good, but you can see the TV does not always manage this without compromise.

Colours

The second thing that has a huge impact on HDR is, of course, colour. And this is precisely where True RGB technology was meant to bring one of the biggest changes. Looking at the panel’s capabilities alone, the Bravia 7 II performs very well. We measured about 98% DCI-P3 coverage and 88% BT.2020, so the potential to show strongly saturated colours is really large. In RGB TVs, however, the situation is a bit more complex. When we repeated the same measurements with a film background applied, palette coverage fell to around 92% DCI-P3 and 78% BT.2020. Those are still good figures, especially for an RGB Mini-LED TV, but they clearly show that the final result largely depends on how the algorithms control the three backlight colours. In most scenes the Bravia 7 II handles this well and colours retain high saturation. The biggest differences are visible in shades of blue, where samples begin to deviate more noticeably from reference values and coverage is weaker than for the other primary colours. True RGB therefore offers genuinely greater potential here, but, as with brightness, much depends on what is happening on screen.

The best factory mode in terms of fidelity to the source material was "Film". This was the mode we used during our tests. Just like each of the factory modes in televisions, it had its shortcomings. We will check what exactly was wrong in both SDR and HDR materials. In both cases, the white balance showed excessive dominance of the green and red colour combination. This created a yellow tint that spread across the entire image, causing issues such as yellowed whites and problems with skin tones. This situation was perfectly illustrated on the "ColourChecker" palette, where each of the tested samples was pushed into its warmer counterparts. The foundation of the image is primarily contrast and black. These are represented by gamma charts and the EOTF curve. Looking at the first one, we can see a true rollercoaster, as we can observe both an elevated and a lowered gamma. The heavily elevated gamma caused visibility issues in blacks, while the lowered gamma led to a dramatic drop in contrast. In this context, the EOTF curve performed significantly better, only slightly brightening the image.

To evaluate the factory colours we chose the Professional mode, because it performs best among the available settings. However, it is not perfect. In SDR the white balance drifts slightly towards magenta, making some scenes look a little warmer and less neutral than they should. A bigger problem is the gamma, which sits closer to 2.5 than to 2.4. This makes the image a bit too dark in places, particularly in the midtones. In HDR the situation is better. As brightness increases a little too much red appears, but this is not an issue that is highly noticeable during viewing. Overall the Professional mode is a good starting point, although you can get a bit more out of it after calibration.

Philips offers a wide range of image calibration tools in both its more expensive and cheaper models. We utilised these tools and got to work, which was not as easy as many of you might think. While we were able to model the white balance, significantly improve the gamma, and refine the EOTF curve in both cases, the deltaE errors remained extremely high. There are several reasons for this situation, which are directly related to the low coverage of the DCI-P3 palette and the maximum brightness of the unit in HDR materials.

After calibration the Bravia 7 II can look decidedly better. Above all, we managed to set the white balance very well, both in SDR and HDR. Gamma can also be improved, which after correction runs very close to the reference value. And in fact, for most users these changes will have the greatest impact on the picture. There is, however, a limitation when it comes to the colours themselves. In the Bravia 7 II Sony does not provide access to a classic CMS that would allow us to correct individual hues separately. A lot is therefore left in the hands of the algorithms controlling the True RGB backlight. If the TV misrepresents a particular colour, we are not always able to do anything about it. In our measurements this is most visible in certain reds and blues, where errors can still be quite large. This does not, however, undermine the point of calibration itself. Correctly setting the white point and gamma strongly affects the whole picture, so even without the ability to precisely correct every colour the difference compared with the factory settings is noticeable.

In this paragraph, we will take a look at two functionalities. We will once again examine the feature responsible for tonal transitions, but we will also check how the television performs with image scaling. The option responsible for smooth gradation is called "Distortion Reduction". As we have established, it quite effectively smooths out the inconsistencies. However, we must point out two things: we cannot enable it for HDR materials and that it blurs details in films.

The tested television cannot boast of the best image scaling. There is a noticeable overall blurriness of the image, but worse still, it blurs details. This is particularly evident on the branches and the model's hair. A characteristic white halo around the character is also visible.

Scaling and digital processing are among the strongest points of the Bravia 7 II and one of the bigger reasons to choose Sony over the competition. The manufacturer has been handling digital image processing well for years, and it shows here too. First and foremost, the 'Smooth Gradation' function works very well and can smooth out weak tonal transitions in lower-quality material. The safest setting is Low, but we would comfortably recommend Medium as well. The effect is stronger then, yet the TV still treats details very gently. Some fine details may be slightly smoothed, but Sony does this much more subtly than many other brands. The upscaling itself also performs very well. Lower-resolution material is well upscaled to 4K, the image looks clean and retains a lot of detail. Of course the TV will not magically turn native HD material into true 4K, but what can be extracted from such a source is handled really well by the Bravia 7 II.

Philips PUS8359 will not be the best television for sports. The reason for this is the lack of implementation of even the basic motion smoothing feature, which was to be expected given the price of the device. We also note that we are dealing with a VA panel, whose sharpness is not of the highest standard. This type of panel is mainly associated with high contrast, which goes hand in hand with quite a slow response time, as clearly indicated by the matrix analysis results. As you can see from the images captured in rapid motion, the picture is typically blurred for this type of panel. Although it may not be the ideal option, it can be used conditionally for watching sports; however, one must keep in mind the less than optimal sharpness in motion. It is worth mentioning that films will exhibit judder, as the television does not have any motion smoother, even the simplest one.

The Bravia 7 II uses a 120 Hz panel, so in terms of motion handling it delivers everything you would expect from a TV of this class. With sport or games at 120 fps, the picture is suitably smooth, and for films Sony provides an extensive motion interpolation system. You can therefore adjust the interpolation level separately and decide whether you want to preserve a more cinematic character to the motion or obtain noticeably smoother movement. The issue of motion blur itself is a little worse. The VA panel used is not among the fastest, and you can notice a slight trail behind moving objects, particularly on darker backgrounds. It is not at a level that greatly bothers during normal viewing, but last year’s Bravia 7 fared better in this respect and had a noticeably faster panel.

It will not be a surprise if we write that Philips PUS8359/12 only offers the most basic support for consoles. Once the console is connected, we can count on features such as: VRR and ALLM. This is quite pleasing in the case of the former, as experience has shown that even in more expensive units there can be issues with this. A nice touch is the implementation of a special GameBar that allows for changing settings on the "fly," so we won't have to exit the game and unnecessarily distract ourselves. This feature also allows for adapting gameplay to the needs of people with disabilities, which will certainly be extremely useful.

Bravia 7 II has basically everything you’d expect today from a good console TV. It supports 4K at 120 Hz, VRR from 48 to 120 Hz and ALLM, so when you start a game the TV automatically switches to a low-latency mode. It also has properly working HGiG, which means that after configuring HDR on the console the TV won’t try to brighten the image further on its own. You just need to remember to turn off tone mapping in the TV’s menu. Dolby Vision in game mode is also a plus, especially useful for Xbox owners. Sony adds its own Game Menu. From it you can quickly check key signal information, verify VRR operation or change gaming-related settings without digging through the whole TV menu. The only thing missing from the feature list is support for 1440p at 120 Hz.

Our biggest reservation is not really about the functions themselves, but about the connectors. The Bravia 7 II has four HDMI ports, but only two of them support full HDMI 2.1 at 48 Gbps. One of those is also an eARC port. So if you connect a soundbar or AV receiver to the TV via HDMI, in practice you’re left with only one full HDMI 2.1 for a console or PC. With a single console that’s no problem, but with a PS5, an Xbox and an audio setup it starts to get tight. And this is hard to excuse for Sony. In cheaper TVs two HDMI 2.1 ports can still be acceptable, but in a model of this class, especially in 2026, we would expect a full set of four such ports.