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Philips Brilliance 499P9H
Curved,
UltraWide,
49-inch
monitorr
monito
Review by
Nicholas Vinen
This monitor is unlike anything we have seen before.
A typical monitor is about twice as wide as it is tall. This one has an
aspect ratio of 32:9, meaning that it’s about three and a half times as wide
as it is tall! It’s also concave, as you can see from the photos.
While that might seem strange, once you get used to it,
it’s actually really good.
Y
ou may recall that we previously reviewed two Philips 4K
monitors, a 40-inch (100cm)
set in the September 2015 issue
(siliconchip.com.au/Article/9003) and
a 43-inch (109cm) set in the March
2017 issue (siliconchip.com.au/Article/10572).
I liked the 40-inch 4K monitor so
much I purchased one – in fact, I am
still using it as my primary screen and
I am quite happy with it. The 43-inch
monitor we reviewed later is even better and I’ve just recently ordered one
of those.
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Silicon Chip
There are many reasons why I like
these large, high-resolution monitors.
At home, I have two high-resolution
30-inch monitors side-by-side. But a
single, larger monitor is better for jobs
like PCB layout, where you want to expand one piece of software to fill up
all your screen real estate.
That lets you see the whole circuit board with all the details in one
glance. You don’t have to zoom and
pan around; you just use your eyeballs.
It’s a very natural way to work. You
can do it with multiple monitors but
the section you’re interested in alAustralia’s electronics magazine
ways seems
to be in the gap where
the bezels meet. It is very annoying.
But two slightly smaller monitors
will have a greater total area, so that
set-up can be better when you are using two applications at the same time. I
do that frequently; for example, I might
write or edit an article on one monitor
while viewing PDF data sheets, circuit
diagrams, component data on supply
websites and other reference material
on the other monitor.
So clearly, both configurations are
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excellent but
for different reasons.
Enter the challenger
This time, rather than reviewing
yet another huge monitor, we thought
we would look at something a bit different.
And we certainly found something
very different when Philips Monitors
Australia dropped off this weird looking beast into our office for review.
It’s 1.2m wide and 370mm tall, with
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a native resolution of 5120 x
1440 pixels (called “DQHD” or “5K”).
That’s around 7.4 megapixels, compared to around 8.3 megapixels for a
4K display. Its total screen area is very
similar to that of a 40-inch 4K monitor, at just under half a square metre.
It comes with a heavy height-adjustable, swivelling and tilting stand, necessary to keep it from toppling over if
you give it a bump. This is one of the
best monitor stands we’ve used; the
adjustment range is wide and adjustments are smooth.
It also has an integrated webcam
Australia’s electronics magazine
and USB-C support, which opens up
some intriguing possibilities that we’ll
come to later. It has quite a few useful features available via its on-screen
interface, which are described below.
Daily use
The real question with this monitor is whether it’s better than a more
traditional large monitor, such as the
two 4K displays mentioned above. The
answer is that it depends on what you
are doing with it.
You can think of this screen as if
it is two 27-inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel
February 2019 89
These two shots, from the side and from above, give an excellent idea of the amount of curvature
of the display. It takes arguably a couple of hours to get used to but then it is a real bonus!
monitors side-by-side on your desk.
The main difference is that you don’t
have the annoying bezels running
down the middle of the two screens.
You can bring up two applications
side-by-side, in which case, it’s just
like having two separate monitors. But
you can still run a single large program
seamlessly.
So it definitely has greater flexibility than two separate displays – except
for the fact that with separate displays,
you can rotate one or both into portrait
mode. But in practice, we found in the
past that we rarely did, even when we
had monitors that allowed it, as it was
too much of a hassle.
I think the primary purpose of a
monitor like this is for playing 3D
games. They will definitely benefit
from the ultra-wide aspect (which sort
of mimics the field of human vision,
although it should be a bit taller in my
opinion). I have played games on dual
monitors setups before and while you
do eventually get used to the bezel in
the middle, it’s much better without it.
But I expect many of our readers are
more interested in using their computer for ECAD tasks than games, so it’s a
fair question to ask how well it works
for drawing circuit diagrams and laying out PCBs.
The answer is that it does work well
for those sorts of jobs, but not quite
as well as the 43-inch 4K Philips BDM4350UC that we reviewed previously.
On the other hand, this new 499P
monitor is probably better overall for
other tasks such as web browsing, email, word processing and viewing
PDFs. That’s because it’s better suited
for use with side-by-side application
windows.
It allows a display set-up that I’ve
never really used before, too, with
three different programs arrayed side90
Silicon Chip
by-side, each taking up about 1/3 of the
screen. When you do that, each window is approximately square, and of
course, the middle one is centred in
the display, right in front of your eyes.
It’s a pretty good way to work and
something that I think I would find
myself using more and more if I keep
this monitor long-term.
Other aspects of the display
I can’t fault this display on sharpness or colour accuracy. The latter is
especially good. It’s way better than
on my older 40-inch Philips BDM4065UC, which sometimes displays
light colours with a completely incorrect hue, despite being in a semi-calibrated sRGB mode (the 43-inch BDM4350UC we reviewed later was a lot
better in that respect).
It’s also very bright. On maximum
brightness, it’s probably TOO bright,
at least in a typical office environment. But that’s a good thing in case
you need to use it in a more brightly lit
room, or you need more contrast. The
backlighting is via LEDs, as is common
these days, which is part of the reason
for the very even brightness and excellent colour rendition.
Philips refers to this monitor as having “Ultra Wide-Color Technology”
which means that it can reproduce the
entire RGB colour space and more. It
has 117.3% of the sRGB colour gamut
so it should satisfy all but the pickiest photographers and digital artists.
As for the curvature, I found it pretty odd at first but quickly got used to
it. If a monitor this wide was flat, you
would have a few problems because
the edges and corners are so much
further away from your eyes than the
centre. That would mean that the viewing angle would be quite significant at
the edges.
And while this monitor’s perforAustralia’s electronics magazine
mance is not bad off-axis, it doesn’t
have the best viewing angle I’ve ever
seen; it starts “washing out” once you
are more than about 30-40° off-axis.
That’s because it’s an MVA type panel (multi-domain vertical alignment),
which does not have quite as good
a viewing angle as an IPS (in-plane
switching) LCD panel.
The curvature helps to make the
viewing angle pretty much consistent
across the display, so that you don’t
notice that during normal usage.
Also note that with a wide, flat monitor, the edges would look a bit distorted because the pixels are further
away and therefore appear smaller
compared to those in the middle. The
curvature helps with that, too, as the
edges are closer to your eyes than the
would be on a flat monitor.
One caveat, though, is that since the
curvature is fixed, that means the ideal
viewing distance is fixed. And it’s a little further away from the monitor than
I am used to, or would prefer. That’s
because, at the ideal viewing distance,
it does not fill my field of vision.
I’m probably nit-picking here; it isn’t
that bad, but I would have preferred
more curvature, to allow me to get my
head closer to the display while still
retaining the advantages conveyed by
the curvature. But perhaps a monitor
that curved would be impractical to
manufacture. Again, this is something
that I am starting to get used to.
By the way, there is an advantage
to the MVA type panel over IPS: increased contrast with deeper and more
consistent blacks. And you can certainly notice it on the 499P; its contrast and the blacks on this monitor
are excellent.
Interestingly, the monitor reports its
native resolution to the PC as 3840 x
1080, even though it actually has 5120
x 1440 pixels. We suspect that this is
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Australia’s electronics magazine
February 2019 91
because a lot of devices cannot handle the higher resolution. Those that
do support it can generally be forced
into the monitor’s native resolution.
This monitor supports a 120Hz refresh rate, which would be great for
games, but we suspect that it’s only
possible at the 3840 x 1080 resolution.
It’s far less critical to run the monitor
at its native resolution for games since
you won’t notice the slight resulting
softness, and it’s less work for the
graphics processing unit (GPU), so you
will likely get a higher frame rate too.
The very fast display update rate
(5ms grey to grey) is also what you
want for playing games, to minimise
“ghosting” of fast-moving objects
across the screen.
Unlike some cheaper monitors, the
499P has a proper anti-glare coating.
I think that’s important since glossy
monitors tend to reflect what’s behind
them and it can make them very hard
to view in brightly lit areas.
One small disadvantage of the
curved screen, though, is that it’s harder to adjust the monitor’s angle to avoid
glare, compared to a flat screen which
only reflects light at one angle. But the
anti-glare coating certainly helps to reduce the severity of any light which
may be reflected.
Additional features
I am using a DisplayPort cable from
my video card to the monitor, to allow
me to run it at full resolution with a
60Hz refresh rate. It was basically
“plug-and-play”; I spent a few minutes
going through the graphics settings on
my PC and the monitor’s menus but it
worked straight away.
It also has two HDMI inputs but unless you have a very new video card
which supports HDMI 2.0, you probably won’t be able to run it at its native resolution with a decent refresh
rate that way.
One of the neat features of this monitor (and many other Philips monitors)
is that you can split the monitor in half
and show the display from one input
on one half, and another input on the
other half.
So if you had a video card capable of driving two 2560 x 1440 monitors via two separate outputs, but not
a single 5160 x 1440 monitor on one
output, you could still run the monitor at its native resolution. From the
computer’s point of view, it’s two separate monitors.
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Silicon Chip
Or you could connect two different
computers and have the display from
each shown simultaneously.
The menu system of this monitor
is easier to use than that of the 40inch and 43-inch monitors mentioned
above since the control buttons are
arrayed along the bottom edge, rather
than it having a joystick hidden behind the screen.
USB C support
There is actually a fourth display input and that is via a USB C port. Yes,
video can be transmitted on a USB C
cable, along with data and power.
One of the neat aspects of this is
that if you have a laptop or notebook
with a USB C port, you only have to
plug in a single cable to use the monitor and it will also connect your USB
peripherals AND charge the battery
at up to 60W.
That’s extremely handy!
We tested this feature out with a
Macbook lent to us by Philips Monitors for testing purposes and found
that it was indeed just a matter of plugging the USB C micro cable in at both
ends and no further configuration was
necessary.
However, we were unable to use
the monitor at full resolution in this
manner; it dropped to 3840 x 1080. We
suspect this is a USB C video limitation. It’s a pity since while the monitor is usable at this resolution, it’s a
bit fuzzy. You really want to run it at
its native resolution.
Still, the all-in-one connectivity offered by USB C is excellent and something that we hope will become more
widespread in future.
Like most monitors, this one has a
built-in USB hub which also incorporates standard full-size ports in addition to the USB C micro port that we
used to test the above features. So even
if your computer doesn’t support USB
C, you can still connect your keyboard
and mouse (or whatever) via its hub,
so you only need one USB cable running back to the PC.
The various inputs, USB sockets and
power connector are arranged along
the bottom of the monitor which makes
it a bit fiddly to plug them in but it is a
bit tidier than having cables that plug
into the back of the monitor. However,
while the real benefit of sockets on the
bottom should be that you can push
the monitor’s back up against a wall
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CAUTION: CHILDREN ABOUT!
We mentioned it briefly in the text
but with any large flat screen monitor,
you have to be extremely careful if you
have young children about.
There have been several reports of
children tipping the monitor over on
themselves, resulting in serious injury
– and worse. These things are heavy!
or other object, the stand doesn’t allow you to do that.
Conclusion
I’ve been using the Philips Brilliance
499P monitor for a variety of tasks for
a couple of days and I’ve come to like
it a great deal. I am planning on buying a new monitor soon and will be
considering this one, along with the
43-inch, 4K BDM4350UC. Which is
better depends on what you are planning to do with it.
If you’re into gaming at all, or you’re
mainly going to use it for web browsing, e-mail, word processing or even
programming, the widescreen 499P
has a lot going for it. It’s just a bit more
flexible in terms of multi-window layouts and lends itself better to having
several applications open at a time.
But if you do a lot of photo editing,
PCB layouts, drawing large and complex diagrams or other work where a
single colossal window is what you
want, a large 4K monitor with a more
traditional aspect ratio such as the BDM4350UC is probably better.
By the way, the BDM4350UC will
likely be replaced with a newer model during 2019. We expect that its replacement will be even better, based
on our experience with the 499P.
Having said that, it’s hard to go past
the 499P for the “wow” factor. Pretty
much everyone who’s seen it while
I’ve been working on this review has
commented on it!
I would strongly recommend both
of those Philips monitors as I feel
that they are both excellent value for
money.
The UltraWide 499P has an MSRP
$1999 but you can expect to pay a little less “on the street”.
The monitor is expected to be available by early this month. Contact your
favourite computer store to find out
when they will be available for purchase.
SC
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