Gaming Monitor4K HDR display with Ambiglow

If you are gaming on the Xbox series X, you couldn't ask for a better monitor. The color, the quality the ambient glow it puts off, everything you would ask for is there. The HDR settings that are compatible with the Xbox make the picture even more immaculate. If you would like to read a more detailed review on this monitor, go to totalgamingaddicts.com

Coming from LG 27UL500 my observations are: Pros - Very good brightness and contrast preset. Overall XBox preset is good for non HDR and HDR settings, no need for you to configure the monitor settings just the Xbox HDR calibration - Excellent if you are looking for the HDR600 monitor for a reasonable price Cons - Firmware can be improved a lot. A firmware update via USB would be good to future proof the product - This monitor doesn't save profiles for each input, meaning if my HDMI 1 is for Xbox I have Xbox profile, for HDMI 2 I have Economy mode. Every time you switch input you will set the joystick to preset you want. Same thing with Ambiglow(I only use it at night), crosshair you need to switch it off - Switching HDR to non-HDR mode takes the monitor from 5 - 10 seconds which LG does it for maybe 2 - 3 seconds. Same with the first time you boot up XSX, you will only see half of the Xbox startup animation or sometimes not - Follow video has maybe a delay of 30ms - No FPS counter - With the new xbox feature as of October 2022 to adjust volume via Xbox dashboard using HDMI CEC, firmware doesn't support this at the moment even if Monitor CEC is On

I have used this monitor at home for the last year, both for work and occasional gaming use with an Xbox Series X. The general build quality seems excellent, and the stand, while not the most eye catching, is pretty solid. For work, I connect a 2019 MacBook Pro 16" to the monitor via USB C. This gives me a max 4K60 resolution and allows for use of all the USB ports in the monitor's hub (into which I currently have a MIDI keyboard, charging cable for a phone and USB software licenser). No complaints here: as this isn't a thunderbolt monitor I wasn't really expecting it to produce 4K @144 Hz over the USB C connection, AND allow for all those USB ports to function, but the display runs very smoothly over this connection type, albeit at 60Hz. That being said, I'd avoid using the HDR setting for day to day computer use. Mac OS just appears weirdly desaturated and not pleasant to use. For gaming, the monitor is pretty excellent! I set the response time to 'Faster' or 'Fastest' when playing FPS games like Call of Duty, and I feel like using this monitor has genuinely made me better at these games for the response time alone. Having occasionaly played video games on TVs since, I found I was surprised at how big the difference felt to the old Samsung TV I used to use my Xbox on. It's worth mentioning here that colour accuracy is awesome, and being able to adjust the gamma and brightness settings for late night viewing is really helpful. Even viewing at low brightness settings, the monitor is still awesome to look at. The monitor runs really well with the console outputting at 120 Hz and the AMD FreeSync function is super easy to set up with the Xbox Series X console. I've only tried running one game in HDR so far in the last year - Assassins Creed Origins - but I'll be honest, the game displays really weirdly when the console is set to output HDR video. Perhaps this is down to my bad calibration, for I have viewed some 4K HDR content on YouTube, setting the monitor to HDR600, and it did look pretty stunning. But suffice to say I play most of my games in SDR and they still look great on this screen. The speakers are, well, fine. I don't really expect them to blow my socks off as they're device speakers, but fine enough for casual YouTube video watching or whatever. I make use of the monitor's headphone out port with an aux lead, meaning instead of plugging headphones into my controller for gaming, which drains the batttery life out of it, I plug directly into the monitor via my aux extension lead which is very useful. Now, the Ambiglow feature is an interesting one. I thought it'd be really cool to have the edges of the screen basically 'extend' my gaming experience with the 'follow video' function, but in reality there's a noticeable lag with the backlights updating to follow what's happening on screen, so I don't really use that feature. Its the sort of thing that I imagine they'll make happen faster on future monitors, but I'm surprised its a selling point of this one, as it's not entirely useful. However, I do use Ambiglow on 'Static Mode' with the lights set to Orange to create a nice warm glow on the wall behind the monitor on evenings. The other Ambiglow settings (e.g.Color Wave, Color Breathing) are a little gimmicky for use as they're, beyond anything, just distracting to use while doing anything else with the monitor. What surprised me is how basic the choice of colour options are: 'Orange', 'Blue', 'Aquamarine', 'White' (this one's horrible to look at), and so on. Like I said, orange works for me as a nice warm colour to have in the evenings that doesn't strain the eyes, but I'm surprised they didn't build in a simple RGB selector which could have boasted as many colours as you like. Probably something they'll implement on a future monitor to be honest! I make regular use of the Smart Image function, which basically gives you a menu of picture profiles to choose from for different use cases. I use the 'SmartUniformity' profile with my laptop for example, as its a perfect combination of brightness, saturation and colour temperature settings for everyday use in a desktop environment. These picture profiles also affect the response time setting, (which for 'SmartUniformity' uses the least power consuming picture response time) though this can be changed independently. The rest of the profiles are largely aimed for gaming use, with 'FPS, 'Racing', 'Gamer 1' and 'Gamer 2' offering other combinations of response time and colour settings for specific purposes. There is also an 'Xbox' profile which seems to provide calibrated settings for daytime use of the console, in terms of brightness, sharpness and response time. As far as I can tell, the monitor does remember if you've made changes to a screen profile when switching between them, which I find useful, HOWEVER, the xbox profile bizarrely always automatically turns on Ambiglow and sets it to Xbox's trademark green colour, and then leaves that setting on even if you switch back to another profile. Why would you want a permanent green colour lighting up your viewing environment? Green?! I'm being harsh. On the whole, this IS a great monitor. The screen itself is of a fantastic quality and colour reproduction seems excellent. Its gaming features are of an incredibly high spec and its other USB features are very useful to my home setup. I've seen other reviews claiming that the monitor does occasionally turn off or misbehave, and very, very occasionally I have seen the screen go off, almost like its restarting itself, but normally doing the old power-off-power-on routine seems to iron out any misbehaviours. Hope this review helps!

One of the selling points when I bought this monitor is because of the KVM feature. But to my surprise when I finally got my hands on this, I can't find the toggle from the OSD menu, variant 71 doesn't have it. The USB Type C power delivery is not enough to power MacBook display.

I bought this monitor for casual gaming on the Xbox and for work purposes. Three weeks in the screen started flickering. After reporting this to Philips I was told I would be contacted within 48 hours. Multiple phone calls and three months later and still no contact the inbuilt speakers stopped working (blew out) giving me and electric shock in the process. Philips then finally got round to dropping off a refurbished screen replacement in the most dirtiest box I'd ever seen. When setting up the refurbished monitor I found that the monitor's HDR and 4k did not function. After complaining and asking for a monitor replacement that actually works the very same day I have been left waiting another two weeks with no resolution in site. QUITE SIMPLY DO NOT BUY!