Philips 498P9 Brilliance review: Two high-performance QHD displays in one SuperWide 32:9 monitor Review

The Philips 498P9 Brilliance is a SuperWide curved Lcd with a 49-inch (124cm) diagonal and 32:nine part ratio that can exchange a twin show set-up. It offers the equal of two 27-inch QHD (2,560 x one,440) displays facet by facet. You can show the video from two PCs and flip a solitary keyboard and mouse back again and forth in between the PCs utilizing the crafted-in KVM change.

Finished in a textured black, the styling of the 498P9 is unobtrusively minimal and the only seen branding is a small PHILIPS logo in the the centre of the base edge and ‘Brilliance 489P’ on the decreased remaining corner.

Person controls

Person manage is through the typical row of buttons, concealed less than the edge of the enclosure close to the base proper corner. The fifth button, past on the proper, is the electric power ON/OFF button. With the show turned off from this button the 498P9 is still consuming about .three Watts. There is a correct electric power ON/OFF rocker change positioned following to the IEC electric power socket. When on and in regular procedure the 498P9 commonly consumes seventy seven.2W and has a ‘B’ power rating. Our measurements demonstrate .3W and 63W for the evaluate sample. Two typical 27-inch QHD displays with an ‘A’ power rating could possibly eat 50W to 55W combined.

The other 4 buttons are context connected, twin-operate buttons. The initially is the SmartImage very hot essential: repeated presses cycle by way of the eight SmartImage selections, with a ninth alternative to convert SmartImage off. With the OSD (on-monitor show) menu chosen this gets to be a return-to-past-menu-degree button. The next button selects for signal enter and the third is a customisable user operate button. With the OSD exhibited, these two buttons are up/down menu navigation buttons. The fourth button either opens the OSD or, with the menu open up, confirms a assortment.

The user handbook mentions a handheld distant, but this is only available in China.

Audio

A crafted-in 5W stereo electric power amplifier drives two inner loudspeakers with downward experiencing grilles positioned together the base of the show enclosure. Audio enter is through the HDMI or DisplayPort connections.

Computerized image optimisation

Like many Philips show solutions in the past handful of a long time, the electronics driving the show on the 498P9 incorporates the computerized image optimisation characteristics SmartImage and SmartContrast. For both of these characteristics, the incoming video signal is analysed and dynamic adjustments are manufactured to the show parameters. Each can be turned off, if expected, through the OSD.

SmartImage dynamically adjusts contrast, colour saturation and sharpness in accordance to a chosen written content style. It provides a selection of Motion picture, Sport, Economy, LowBlue mode and SmartUniformity.

SmartContrast dynamically adjusts the brightness of the backlight to present optimum image contrast. It can also support to minimize electric power use.

Display screen engineering

The 498P9 has a forty eight.8-inch diagonal (124cm) Vertical Alignment Lcd panel with a 1800R curvature (a one.8-metre radius). The indigenous resolution is 5,120 by one,440 pixels with a pixel pitch of .233 by .233mm.

Colour gamut is specified as 121% of sRGB, 103% of NTSC and ninety one% of Adobe RGB. Which is fantastic for a W-LED backlit VA Lcd. Displays with quantum dot backlights can do improved, nevertheless: one of the handful of Philips displays to use a quantum dot backlight, the 436M6, provides a gamut of 145% of Adobe RGB.

The colour gamut for this show is significantly improved than would generally be anticipated for a classic VA-Lcd panel. Relatively than use a quantum dot backlight to extend colour gamut, Philips has applied a engineering it calls Extremely Large-Coloration. This achieves an improvement in gamut by tweaking the chemistry of the backlight LEDs and the transmission attributes of the colour filters in the Lcd panel for a improved response match.

W-LEDs commonly applied in show backlights are seen blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor, and even though their light seems ‘white’ to the human visible system, it is just not a especially pure ‘white’. This is generally not a fantastic match to the response of the R,G and B colour filters in an Lcd panel, which restrictions gamut.

Each individual 498P9 is supplied from the manufacturing facility with a calibration chart. Brightness and colour uniformity are measured at twenty five details throughout the show. Relative to the centre point, measurements need to be in between ninety seven% and 102% for brightness uniformity and significantly less than 2 for common Delta E.

Connections

All connections to the Philips 498P9 are downward experiencing together the leading of a recess that operates together the back again of the show, earlier mentioned the decreased edge. Viewed from the back again, the three pin IEC socket for the electric power direct is situated at the remaining conclusion of the recess, together with a mechanical electric power on/off rocker change. The I/O connections are grouped at the proper conclusion. The video connections involve two HDMI connections one and 2 which are HDMI 2. compliant and one DisplayPort relationship which is DP1.4.

A crafted-in USB three.2 hub is included which has two upstream connections and 4 downstream. One of the downstream connections supports BC one.2 quickly cost. A three.5mm jack socket caters for headphone relationship. 

SEE: Top one hundred+ recommendations for telecommuters and supervisors (totally free PDF) (TechRepublic)

The USB hub supports Keyboard Online video & Mouse (KVM) switching for use when the show is connected to two PCs (in fact it truly is keyboard and mouse switching). Switching is accomplished either by way of the OSD menu, or the Person Purpose button — the third of the 5 user controls — can be assigned as a KVM toggle. Despite the fact that Philips claims in the literature for the 498P9 “A handy button permits you to swiftly change in between resources,” there is no trace of a committed KVM button on our evaluate monitor.

Included extras

Included with the 498P9 are an IEC mains cable, a DisplayPort cable, an HDMI cable, a Swift Start off leaflet, the calibration sheet and a user handbook on CD.  

Conclusions

The 498P9 is a neat all-in-one answer for consumers who would otherwise have to have to use two substantial Quad Hd displays. The use of a SuperWide panel ensures image uniformity and colour equilibrium, which is often much more complicated to accomplish with two different displays.
 
In use, despite the fact that it can be operated as a entire-width 5,120-by-one,440 show, it will make minor sense to do so for standard computing tasks. At entire width, even though manage menus keep together the edges of the show, pop-up manage panels, world wide web pages, or textual content files naturally look in a narrow strip one quarter of the monitor width, down the centre of the show. Placing doc zoom to web site width utilises the overall width of the show, but vertically only displays a strip of maybe ten sentences. Whole-monitor YouTube video occupies the centre half of the show.

The Extremely Large-Coloration gamut-boosting engineering, together with Philips sensible image processing, does deal with to extract quite fantastic image quality from the VA Lcd panel in the 498P9.

The crafted in audio lacks bass but is otherwise of realistic quality and is surely handy, even though the crafted-in KVM is crippled by the lack of the promised ‘convenient button’. Preferably this would be an exterior button on a traveling cable that could be situated close to a keyboard and mouse.

New AND Associated Information

Operating from house on a laptop? Test out these exterior displays

Get the larger picture: multi-tasking displays for electric power consumers

Study much more assessments