Philips Evnia 42M2N8900 Assessment: Magnificence and the Beast

Verdict

The wonderful 42-inch 4K OLED panel is the star of the present, however the 138Hz refresh charge is on the low facet for a gaming monitor and the ports have been awkwardly positioned.

Introduction

Someday we’ll all be utilizing OLED gaming displays, just like the Philips Evnia 42M2N8900. However in the present day shouldn’t be that day. In the intervening time, OLED gaming displays are costly and might’t match their VA and IPS brethren on the subject of refresh charges. As soon as these two points are handled, then the successors of the Evnia 42M2N8900 will roam the earth just like the dinosaurs as soon as did, devouring all earlier than them.

As an OLED panel, the Philips Evnia 42M2N8900 delivers distinction ranges that large-screen IPS and VA gaming shows can solely dream about however these qualities come at a value, virtually £1,800 to be exact. That’s some huge cash for a gaming show with a most refresh charge of 138Hz, a quantity so low that I can virtually hear eSports followers click on to the following assessment on the location as I kind this.

Yet another factor must be stated concerning the new Evnia 42M2N90 that has nothing to do with its display screen expertise however every thing to with it being a 42incher: it is rather massive and really heavy. Wrestling a monitor like this into place shouldn’t be a straightforward factor to do single-handedly and you could take into consideration the place you will place it. I’d say you could be sitting no less than 1m away for it to be usable.

Design and Options

• Very trendy
• Large and heavy
• Excessive-quality 2 x 10W speaker system

On the threat of stating the apparent for a monitor with the quantity 42 in its title, the Evnia 42M2N8900 is each massive and heavy. With the stand, the bundle weighs in at 17.3kg and at 932 x 689 x 359mm, it’s fairly a handful.

As soon as in situ, the dimensions and weight can nonetheless trigger issues if you wish to plug or unplug something. With all of the ports dealing with downwards on the again and a small 190mm distance between them and a desk, it’s very tough to insert your cables. From a usability standpoint, it could have made extra sense for the ports to have been positioned on one of many sides.

The width of the panel makes getting across the again fairly a job. Fortunately, to keep away from the necessity to get on the menu joystick, Philips provides you a helpful distant management (albeit one that appears and feels low cost) that permits you to entry the OSD.

Regardless of its dimension, the {hilips Evnia 42M2C8900 is a great and trendy little bit of package and, like the opposite shows within the Evnia sub-brand, it eschews the standard gaming monitor black in favour of a white color scheme. It’s a design aesthetic similar to that adopted by Alienware and I can’t fault it. As befits a high-end monitor, the bezels are impressively slender, at simply 5mm on the highest and sides then 10mm on the backside. The show is totally laminated so there is no such thing as a unpleasant plastic. It is without doubt one of the most really “edgeless” displays I’ve used.

By placing all of the electronics within the rear a part of the two-section cupboard, Philips has managed to maintain the precise show part impressively skinny, at simply 20mm. This makes the entire meeting really feel much less cumbersome than it could if it had a traditional one-piece cupboard.

Displays of this dimension normally see weight adjustability take a success. You get 120mm of top adjustment, 20° of swivel to the left and proper and tilt from -5 to +15° however, when it comes pivot, there’s nothing in any respect within the offing. Philips bundles a 100mm x 100mm VESA bracket, that makes use of the identical quick-release mount because the stand, if you wish to repair the massive Evnia to a wall or desk.

Contained in the monitor housing are two 10W loudspeakers that produce a helpful quantity of quantity: 84dB(A) at a 1m distance by my measurement. The audio system include DTS Sound audio processing although that doesn’t forestall them from sounding just a bit raucous at most quantity. At 80% quantity or much less, there’s sufficient bass, treble and composure to make for a really nice listening expertise.

The six USB ports all transfer information at 5Gbit/sec and two of them help 7W quick charging whereas the Sort-C port helps 90W PD charging. The KVM change labored completely, mechanically swapping between the Sort-C or Sort-B information stream relying on video enter. The three foremost video inputs are all bang updated with each HDMI ports being VRR-supporting 2.1 spec whereas the DisplayPort is the anticipated v1.4.

The Evnia comes with Philip’s Ambiglow (the monitor iteration of the TV Amblight system) reactive lighting system which consists of 25 particular person LEDs and an LED strip that runs centrally from prime to backside breaking solely the place the stand is connected. The RGB mild present is impressively vivid at its highest setting and could be set to work in concord with the show or the audio system or to pulse or static glow independently. It’s a matter of non-public opinion however I feel the system provides a real further dimension to the gaming expertise and even simply when watching video.

Picture High quality

• Vast color gamut protection and good color accuracy
• Complete-screen brightness can’t match one of the best VA or Mini LED IPS panels
• The utmost refresh charge of 138Hz is low for a gaming show

Regardless of its 3,840 x 2,160-pixel matrix, the 42-inch Evnia solely has a dot density of 106.3dpi, which is an efficient bit lower than a Full HD 16-inch laptop computer display screen, which might handle 137dpi. Pixelation isn’t a difficulty although, until you press your nostril proper up in opposition to the glass. Usually use, it’s completely crisp and sharp.

The large Evnia definitely doesn’t lack color, with 100% of the sRGB gamut at 146.3% quantity and 95.4% of the DCI-P3 area at 103.7%. The Adobe RGB area was slightly decrease at 89.8% protection from a 100.8% quantity however that’s nonetheless superb for a gaming show. The Delta E color accuracy got here in at a wonderful 1.42 with the sRGB clamp engaged so that you received’t have any points with colour-accurate work necessities.

As at all times with OLED displays brightness is extra of a gray space. In SDR mode, the entire display screen brightness got here in at 205cd/m2; in HDR I measured the small-area (<10%) most brightness at 501cd/m2. In on a regular basis use, the comparatively low SDR brightness merely isn’t a difficulty until you’ve gotten very robust direct mild shining on the display screen as a result of this being an OLED panel, blacks are completely black so the distinction ratio is infinitely excessive.

A helpful characteristic to be discovered within the menu system is known as Dynamic DarkBoost. This raises the brightness of darkish areas so if you’re gaming with mild falling onto the display screen any darkish areas are introduced extra clearly into view with out washing out different colors or including a gray tinge to every thing. There’s additionally the same setting to be present in Private HDR settings although I discovered that Sport HDR mode did a lot the identical of its personal accord.

Movement dealing with is superb throughout the board with official help for AMD’s FreeSync Premium and, unofficially, Nvidia’s G-Sync eliminating display screen tearing whereas the 0.1ms GtG response time signifies that movement blur is as little as could be anticipated for a 138Hz show.

The elephant within the room, in fact, is the refresh charge: 138Hz shouldn’t be excessive for a gaming monitor and a few eSports followers received’t take into account something beneath 240Hz. For console customers, it’s not a difficulty, 120Hz is all they actually need however PC gaming methods that may run Triple-A titles at 4K and 165Hz or above have gotten extra widespread nowadays because of Nvidia’s newest DLSS 3 upscaling expertise and the sheer grunt of the newest Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

Regardless of not having a VESA HDR certification past the essential HDR10 functionality to handle an HDR sign in any respect, HDR content material does look good on the Evnia 42M2N8900 with colors coming out and dramatic ranges of distinction. The gloss-finish glass display screen helps make every thing look slightly bit extra luxurious. Picture processing isn’t maybe fairly at the usual of the easiest OLED TVs like Philips’ excellent 55OLED907 however being life like you aren’t going to note the distinction. I spent many hours taking part in Returnal in HDR on the Evnia 42M2N8900 whereas getting ready this assessment and it seemed totally, totally attractive.

I can’t go away a assessment of an OLED show with out addressing the difficulty of burn-in which is at all times extra of a difficulty with OLED displays than TVs just because displays spend extra time with static photographs on display screen like a Home windows or Mac desktop.

Philips handle this with three methods: Pixel Orbiting which strikes the entire display screen picture left or proper by just a few pixels, Display screen Saver which regularly adjusts lighting ranges by a small quantity when no movement is detected and Pixel Refresh which advises you to reboot the display screen after 4 hours of steady use and takes about 2 minutes 30 seconds to do its factor. Pixel Orbiting and Display screen Saver occur with out the viewer noticing (and could be disabled) however if you happen to ignore the Pixel Refresh advisory notices for 16 steady hours it is going to reboot of its personal accord.

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