Philips Enters the QD-OLED TV Market

Philips Enters the QD-OLED TV Market

Philips has debuted a new series of monitors, which it calls the Evnia monitor range.

Samsung Display developed QD-OLED technology and Samsung Electronics has since used it for one of the year’s most acclaimed new TVs. That technology has also been licensed to Sony for a well-received TV of their own. Earlier this year, Dell brought out a QD-OLED Alienware gaming monitor. Now, another manufacturer is readying a QD-OLED product

According to What Hi-Fi, Philips has debuted a new series of monitors, which it calls the Evnia monitor range. One of them, the Philips 34M2C8600, features a 34-inch QD-OLED screen. The products are geared toward gamers. 

“Philips says the monitor delivers deep blacks and high contrast thanks to its QD-OLED panel, as well as true HDR capabilities (specifications suggest HDR10) - despite how vague that is, it sounds like the monitor should deliver solid black depths and punchy colours,” the site said. 

“The 34-inch QD-OLED monitor (34M2C8600) is based on the same panel from Samsung Display as the existing Dell, Samsung and MSI QD-OLED monitors,” Flat Panels HD said. “It features 3440x1440 resolution, 1800R curvature, 0.1 ms true response time, deep black and high contrast, a 175Hz refresh rate, VRR, and true HDR capabilities. It is equipped with 1x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2x HDMI 2.0 ports.”

The monitor is priced at €1,850, which amounts to about $1,825. Other parts of the lineup use OLED and Mini-LED screens. 

In 2008 Philips, as part of its Royal Philips Electronics joint venture, exited TV manufacturing for the U.S. market, although it licensed the Philips name to the Japanese manufacturer Funai. Five years later, it sold the rest of its U.S. home entertainment business, also to Funai. 

RTINGS’ current rankings of the best TVs available on the market place the two existing QD-OLED models, the Samsung S95B and Sony A95K, in the top two spots, ahead of LG’s C2, B2 and G2 OLED TVs from this year. 

The site gave the Samsung S95B OLED a 9.1 mixed-usage score, praising its “near-infinite contrast ratio for perfect blacks.” 

“The Samsung S95B is a fantastic TV overall. Its self-emissive panel technology is superb for watching movies or gaming in a dark room. HDR content looks superb thanks to its high peak brightness and exceptional color gamut,” the review said.

“It also has an exceptional viewing angle, so you can enjoy an accurate image from any angle, making it amazing for watching sports or TV shows. Sadly, it uses an extremely uncommon pixel layout that results in noticeable color fringing and blurry text, so it's not well-suited for productivity use as a PC monitor. It's also best suited for completely dark rooms, as it has raised blacks in a room with any ambient lighting, and the screen has a pink tint to it.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.