Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

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. 88 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 siliconchip.com.au 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 siliconchip.com.au 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 siliconchip.com.au siliconchip.com.au 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. 92 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 Australia’s electronics magazine 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 siliconchip.com.au