Hands on: Philips OLED911 review

2026 is shaping up to be a very interesting year for OLED TVs. Two Japanese AV stalwarts, Sony and Panasonic, have entered strategic partnerships with huge Chinese corporations to ensure their respective TV businesses can flourish in these uncertain times. And we can't ignore the fact that RGB Mini LED is knocking on OLED’s door as the latest challenger in the panel technology arena.

Nevertheless, this hasn’t deterred European heavyweight TV manufacturer Philips from swinging for the fences with its 2026 TV range, which encompasses a wide range of panel technologies. OLED is still the reference choice in its eyes, but that hasn't stopped it from also launching RGB Mini LED, Mini LED and QLED TVs.

That being said, there was one TV from its range that stole the spotlight at Philips’ (and its parent company TP Vision’s) launch event that we attended in Berlin this week.

The Philips OLED911 is the sequel to the five-star OLED910, a brilliant TV which gave the Product of the Year-winning Sony Bravia 8 II a run for its money when we tested it last year. The new set continues Philips’ close partnership with legendary British hi-fi company (and recent inductee into the Harman International family) Bowers & Wilkins.

With a fresh design, beefed-up panel, and surprising new feature set, could the Philips OLED911 be the TV to watch in 2026? It might just be…

Price

As is often the case with our TV hands-on reviews, pricing hasn't been confirmed for the OLED911. However, we can take an educated guess from the price of the OLED910, which launched at a surprisingly competitive £2199 for the 65-inch model.

You'll notice that we are mentioning only UK pricing; this is because Philips unfortunately doesn't sell this range in the US or Australia. You will find Philips-branded TVs in these markets, but they are manufactured by another company, not TP Vision.

Back to that £2199 price tag. We actually reviewed the OLED910 at £1799, as the TV's price dropped almost instantly it came out; and it has remained there ever since.

Other flagship OLEDs, including the Sony Bravia 8 II and LG G5, have both dropped to similar prices as of late, so this sector of the TV market really is a hot spot.

We are hoping that Philips takes a similar pricing strategy with the OLED911, as some competitors, such as the Panasonic Z95B and, probably, the Sony Bravia 8 II, will be sticking around for the foreseeable future. Price cuts, then, are inevitable.

Build

Philips has a tendency to switch up the looks of its TVs on a yearly basis. Considering that it has a tendency to make the best-looking TVs around from a design standpoint, we take no issue with this.

The OLED911 is no exception; upon first impressions, this TV is a sight to behold.

It takes the established bottom-mounted speaker-bar and dual-feet design of its predecessor, and refines it to look even smarter and more premium. That chin-mounted “soundbar” no longer spans the entirety of the TV's bottom edge. It now takes on the shape of an elongated pill, which stops just short of the full width of the screen, giving the illusion of a trimmer build overall.

The bar comes in two sizes, depending on whether you get the 48- or 55-inch, or the 65- or 77-inch model, respectively. You'll notice that we mention a 48-inch model here: the OLED911 will be the first in this range to come in the smaller screen size.

The metal pill-style feet of the previous model return, and while they aren’t placed at the very ends of the TV, they are still spread fairly wide, meaning a media unit of decent width will be necessary to support this TV.

That, of course, is if you don't wall mount it. And we wouldn't be surprised if a lot of prospective OLED911 customers take this route. Philips has managed to shave this set down to an impressively slender 39.9mm, down from 47.3mm. Marry that slim frame with the four-sided Ambilight system, and you could well say that this TV was practically made to be wall-mounted.

Features

Speaking of Ambilight, the OLED911 has a new trick up its sleeve for fans of the reactive lighting system, which mirrors the action on screen. Philips is introducing AmbiScape, which allows its new Ambilight-equipped TVs to interface with smart light bulbs from various manufacturers (including Philips Hue, Nanoleaf and IKEA) and sync up, turning practically your entire room into an immersive Ambilight landscape; hence, AmbiScape.

Ambilight might not be for everyone, but we’re fairly sure the new second-generation Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel will be to most people’s preferences. Philips claims that this TV can reach a staggering peak brightness of 4500 nits, while the improved reflectivity-reducing qualities of this display (baked in by its originator, LG Display) will help to mitigate more than 99 per cent of on-screen reflections.

Furthermore, this RGB Tandem OLED 2.0 panel can now reach refresh rates up to 165Hz with VRR – and this is where we get onto the OLED911's next best feature. Philips has opted to equip this TV with the slightly less powerful MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset rather than the Pentonic 1000.

That sounds like a downgrade on paper, but it actually means that the OLED911 has four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets, all of which support 4K gaming at high refresh rates with VRR and ALLM. This catapults Philips into the best gaming TV conversation with the likes of Samsung and LG.

Philips has achieved this by moving away from Google TV, and instead opting for Titan OS on its entire 2026 range. This operating system was developed in Barcelona, and Philips has been a key player in bringing it to market as an alternative to Google’s operating system. With this streamlined and less demanding OS, the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset becomes more than powerful enough, and the gaming benefits speak for themselves.

Picture processing, however, is handled by Philips’ own 10th Gen P5 AI processor. As the name suggests, AI is integrated deeply into the picture processing here, with some examples including AI HDR tone mapping, and a new AI HDR expansion/restore feature that uses “frame-by-frame analysis to measure the incoming HDR signal and restore the original light output of the content, matched to the peak light output of the display.”

And, if you thought the Philips OLED911 had run out of sleeves up which to hide its tricks, here's where we reveal that this is the world's first OLED TV to support Dolby Vision 2 Max. HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ are also on board, making this among the most versatile TVs around when it comes to HDR format support. The inclusion of the hotly anticipated Dolby Vision 2 makes this one of the most exciting OLED TVs of 2026.

Dolby Vision 2 Max supports the likes of Authentic Motion and Light Sense, on top of the benefits of “standard” Dolby Vision 2. The former adjusts motion in real time to ensure judder is minimised without introducing the soap-opera effect, whereas the latter will take the ambient light of your viewing area into consideration and adjust the picture accordingly.

Last, but by no means least, is the built-in sound system. This is probably the most “hi-fi adjacent” built-in TV sound system we have seen, which makes sense as it comes from legendary British speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins.

The new sound system features dedicated left, centre and right channels, each of which features two new 45mm midrange glass-fibre drivers alongside a 19mm titanium-dome tweeter and a slimmer 75mm subwoofer supported by four force-cancelling passive radiators.

If that built-in woofer doesn’t deliver enough bass for your liking, you can directly hook up an external subwoofer to the TV for more low-end punch.

In total, this system features a combined power output of 81W, with eight dedicated channels of amplification powering each speaker.

Picture

Our time with the Philips OLED911 was mostly spent watching a short clip from the beginning of A Quiet Place: Day One via an Apple TV 4K alongside some of Philips’ bold and punchy demo-reel content. Still, we were able to make some preliminary assessments based on our fairly limited time with the TV.

Our findings here, though, certainly don’t reflect our final verdict on this TV. You’ll have to wait for our full review for that.

Still, the TV appeared to look fairly balanced and cinematic during our demo of A Quiet Place (this clip was played more to highlight the audio capabilities of this TV, which we'll come to), with rich colours that didn’t look oversaturated.

The yellow coat and orangish-red of Lupita Nyong’o’s character, Samira, had a nice touch of vibrancy against the mostly grey backdrop of New York City. The mix of sharpness and contrast also seemed to give a very solid sense of three-dimensionality to the picture.

That being said, during a sequence in which a lot of what appeared to be smoke or dust is kicked up, there was some fairly severe banding on display. This could be due to the lower bitrate of the streamed content, but it caught our eye nonetheless.

Moving on to Philips’ punchy demo content, while we hesitate to call the panning shots of nature and cities particularly natural-looking, they did a great job of highlighting this TV’s capabilities when it comes to delivering punchy colours and dazzling brightness.

The argument that OLEDs aren’t capable of reaching Mini LED levels of brightness is slowly becoming redundant, and the rich, luscious colours mixed with this intense brightness sure do make for a show-stopping debut performance from the OLED911.

Sound

Few TVs on the market can boast the same sonic credentials as the Philips OLED900-range. As we have established, the TV’s sound system was developed by Bowers & Wilkins, and representatives from the British audio company gave us an in-depth look (and listen) at the OLED911’s new speaker setup.

It’s too early to tell if this sonic hot streak will continue with the OLED911, especially with the redesigned speaker enclosure and slimmed-down subwoofer. We will certainly need to test this TV’s sound system thoroughly in our own AV testing room. The early signs, however, are promising.

We saw the 55-inch model, which features the slightly smaller speaker lozenge, yet the sound it produces is anything but small. During that brief demo with A Quiet Place: Day One, we found the sound to be superbly atmospheric, with a spacious sonic field that placed sound effects with impressive accuracy.

A helicopter passing overhead was placed with impressive height, and the sound of a police car’s siren speeding past in the background of the shot moved dynamically from right to left, and extending past the confines of the screen to provide a sense of cinematic scale that we don't often hear with built-in sound systems.

Bowers & Wilkins also demonstrated the OLED911’s sonic capabilities with music, playing Ezra Collective’s God Gave Me Feet For Dancing (feat. Yazmin Lacey). The track’s lively energy was presented with a solid sense of rhythmic drive, while the vocals were clean and clear.

While the overall sound from the OLED911 seemed to be big, bold and crisp, we felt voices lacked a touch of warmth perhaps, although we should stress that the listening space was by no means ideal. Once again, final judgement must wait for when we test this set in our dedicated home cinema room.

Early verdict

In a year with potentially fewer flagship rivals than before, Philips could easily have rested on its laurels and delivered a modest follow-up to the excellent OLED910. We're pleased to see that the company has done the exact opposite.

With a super-bright OLED panel, superb gaming specification, an upgraded sound system, a sleek new design and a bold new take on Ambilight, the OLED911 is shaping up to be a TV that could truly steal the spotlight from the superb Sony Bravia 8 II, as well as, potentially, the upcoming LG G6 and Samsung S95H.

MORE:

Read our full Philips OLED910 review

As well as our Philips OLED760 review

And check out our picks for the best OLED TV