Hello,
I've stumbled across this monitor which apparently uses the same panel as the highly praised HP LP2475W. Unfortunately there is little information on this monitor seeing as it's rare outside of Asia and Europe.
I can't find any information on input lag nor if it's noisy. Why am I interested then in this monitor if it's so unknown? It's easy, not only does it seem to be free of some of the HP's problems (pink hue, etc) it's much cheaper, almost 200 € cheaper.
Some threads:
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=340548
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showt ... ?t=2144004
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php ... t=240PW9EB
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php ... t=240PW9EB
Philips 240PW9EB / 240PW9ES
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Hi,
I've just purchased this monitor (Philips 240PW9ES).
I can confirm it is silent enough. And you can trust me, I am quite sensitive to noise.
It is not completely silent, though, except maybe at 100% brightness (which seems to be the case with many, if not all, LCD monitors?). When I lower down brightness, I can hear a very small buzz/whining (if I try hard enough and if I am close enough to the monitor), then when approaching 60% brightness the level of sound will start getting lower and lower and so on. I use this monitor at around 50% brightness anyway and I can not really hear it. My ambient noise is: my computer (fairly silent) and lamps that emitt some buzz/whining - do not know why - maybe we do not have a very "clean" 220V "signal" - maybe this is the reason this monitor emitts a little sound after all?
Before this one, I purchased some Samsung monitor (2443BW) and it was pretty loud - it emitted a very audible buzz/whining (expect when at 100% brightness). I returned it to the store.
I still have Philips 19 inch 190P, which is completely silent. I use it for dual screen now.
I hope this helps anyone.
As far as silence of Philips 240PWES is concerned, I am satisfied. But there is one other thing I personally find not so good: my previous monitor was 19 inch, and this is 24 inch and 1920x1200 and it has smaller dot pitch, which means that things (especially fonts) are a bit smaller. I had known that before I purchased it, but did not think it will bother me. I changed DPI in Windows Vista from default 96 to 106, now text for me is OK. Note that when in Ubuntu Linux, fonts are big enough for me at default 96 DPI. Interesting. This is my personal preference that I like text to be large and legible - those of you who are used to reading text on laptops with high resolution would probably not find that a problem at all.
So, now I am thinking of buying a 26 inch monitor (and selling this one) with the same resolution (1920x1200) that obviously has a higher dot pitch (pixel size) and should not require changing DPI. The problem is there are not so many 26 inch monitors on the market yet and that they are fairly expensive - at least if one wants quality.
EDIT: spelling and terminology
I've just purchased this monitor (Philips 240PW9ES).
I can confirm it is silent enough. And you can trust me, I am quite sensitive to noise.
It is not completely silent, though, except maybe at 100% brightness (which seems to be the case with many, if not all, LCD monitors?). When I lower down brightness, I can hear a very small buzz/whining (if I try hard enough and if I am close enough to the monitor), then when approaching 60% brightness the level of sound will start getting lower and lower and so on. I use this monitor at around 50% brightness anyway and I can not really hear it. My ambient noise is: my computer (fairly silent) and lamps that emitt some buzz/whining - do not know why - maybe we do not have a very "clean" 220V "signal" - maybe this is the reason this monitor emitts a little sound after all?
Before this one, I purchased some Samsung monitor (2443BW) and it was pretty loud - it emitted a very audible buzz/whining (expect when at 100% brightness). I returned it to the store.
I still have Philips 19 inch 190P, which is completely silent.
I use it for dual screen now. I hope this helps anyone.
As far as silence of Philips 240PWES is concerned, I am satisfied. But there is one other thing I personally find not so good: my previous monitor was 19 inch, and this is 24 inch and 1920x1200 and it has smaller dot pitch, which means that things (especially fonts) are a bit smaller. I had known that before I purchased it, but did not think it will bother me. I changed DPI in Windows Vista from default 96 to 106, now text for me is OK. Note that when in Ubuntu Linux, fonts are big enough for me at default 96 DPI. Interesting. This is my personal preference that I like text to be large and legible - those of you who are used to reading text on laptops with high resolution would probably not find that a problem at all.
So, now I am thinking of buying a 26 inch monitor (and selling this one) with the same resolution (1920x1200) that obviously has a higher dot pitch (pixel size) and should not require changing DPI. The problem is there are not so many 26 inch monitors on the market yet and that they are fairly expensive - at least if one wants quality.
EDIT: spelling and terminology
Last edited by ZaphodB on Wed Jul 08, 2009 12:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I forgot a few things about 240PWES: All other things are just amazing: the viewing angle is - well - unbeliveable - I did not think LCD monitors can have such a good view angle. And colors - so vivid I thought they were not accurate at first, because I had not been used to that. Picture quality is supreme.
Picture quality is supreme.Perhaps the enhancement technologies were switched on by default, such as: SmartImage, WideColor, SmartContrast.ZaphodB wrote:Matija, yes, I am in a process of realizing that ... :-/ Colors are a bit over-saturated (I think this is the right terminology), a bit too vivid. Looking for a solution, if there is any.
This is what the user manual says about SmartImage:
SmartImage is an exclusive leading-edge Philips technology that analyses the content displayed on your screen. Based on a scenario you select, SmartImage dynamically enhances the contrast, colour saturation and sharpness of images and videos for ultimate display performance - all in real time and at the press of a single button.
What is your experience now after some weeks of use?
I was happy to see you write earlier that the monitor was almost silent. Is it still that way? I'm sensitive about that too.
Like to hear from you. Cheers!
Yes, it is still silent. In fact, I think it got more silent or is it just my perception. Anyhow, it did not get any noisier at all, if that is what you meant to ask. I use it at around 50% +-7% brightness level (I adjust it often according to ambient conditions) and it is ok at this level. So, everything I wrote in my post above still holds true.
As far as colors are concerned, I am not giving them attention now. I gues I got used to them. I did not even try all the possibilities yet, maybe I will some day. I use the monitor mostly for text (reading, writing), because I am a software developer, so colors are not that much important for me anyway.
I have never been much keen of this "smart" technologies that most brands of monitors ship with. Somehow I just don't find much use in them or maybe it is just my simple use case of using a monitor, which is - as I said - reading and writing text most of the time And of course I watch a movie or two once in a while. These "smart" technologies are off by default, I think. I gave them a little try, and I, us usual, don't find much use of them, so I keep them turned off. As said, my simple use cases of using a monitor might be the reason for not using this stuff.
That's it. I hope it helps.
As far as colors are concerned, I am not giving them attention now. I gues I got used to them. I did not even try all the possibilities yet, maybe I will some day. I use the monitor mostly for text (reading, writing), because I am a software developer, so colors are not that much important for me anyway.
I have never been much keen of this "smart" technologies that most brands of monitors ship with. Somehow I just don't find much use in them or maybe it is just my simple use case of using a monitor, which is - as I said - reading and writing text most of the time
And of course I watch a movie or two once in a while. These "smart" technologies are off by default, I think. I gave them a little try, and I, us usual, don't find much use of them, so I keep them turned off. As said, my simple use cases of using a monitor might be the reason for not using this stuff.That's it. I hope it helps.
The naturalness of the colors is important to me as I will be using the monitor for photo and video editing. In your estimation, are the colors "natural" when the enhancement modes are off? I would be disappointed if the colors were over-saturated or too vivid even with the enhancements off, as that would likely mean there's no easy fix.
Perhaps you have some minutes to look at a few pictures to get a feel for that, and turn on the SmartImage - Image Viewing option, and Entertainment option - to see how much they affect the "normal" state of the image. SmartImage is accessed by pressing the left button on the front panel, according to the manual. There's also an Office Work option in there that you might find useful for your work with texts.
Matija said: "It's wide gamut, unfortunately, so not a good option for people who value colour reproduction."
I don't know if WideColor is user-switchable (I gather there is some processing which goes on to help create the wide gamut which Matija thinks is not good.)
One last thing, have you noticed any dead or stuck pixels, or ones that show the wrong color?
'bye for now ....
Perhaps you have some minutes to look at a few pictures to get a feel for that, and turn on the SmartImage - Image Viewing option, and Entertainment option - to see how much they affect the "normal" state of the image. SmartImage is accessed by pressing the left button on the front panel, according to the manual. There's also an Office Work option in there that you might find useful for your work with texts.
Matija said: "It's wide gamut, unfortunately, so not a good option for people who value colour reproduction."
I don't know if WideColor is user-switchable (I gather there is some processing which goes on to help create the wide gamut which Matija thinks is not good.)
One last thing, have you noticed any dead or stuck pixels, or ones that show the wrong color?
'bye for now ....
Wide gamut is an inherent property of the backlight, and the electronics of the panel aren't capable of toning it down to sRGB. Whatever WideColor is, it carries no relevance to the subject of gamut.
That said, if you are using the monitor in a colour-managed environment (and photo and video-editing apps belong there), then it could be a good purchase - as long as you don't mind inaccurate colours in every other app or game.
That said, if you are using the monitor in a colour-managed environment (and photo and video-editing apps belong there), then it could be a good purchase - as long as you don't mind inaccurate colours in every other app or game.
I think everything will be fine, according to what I just found in the user's manual (240PW9ES_05_dfu_eng.pdf) . This is what it said:
4. When SmartImage is enabled, the sRGB scheme is disabled automatically. To use sRGB you need to
disable SmartImage with the button at the front bezel of your monitor.
Think I'll give it a try. (':D')
4. When SmartImage is enabled, the sRGB scheme is disabled automatically. To use sRGB you need to
disable SmartImage with the button at the front bezel of your monitor.
Think I'll give it a try. (':D')
From Matija's posts I see he has some knowledge in the area of colors that we are discussing, so I think you should trust him. What he is saying is also what I found out when doing a quick small research on the Web. Using video and imaging editing software should be OK.
I don't know if you could trust my subjective analysis, but here it is: I think that colors are not completely natural when the special modes are off. And even if I turn on Image Viewing, I think it is a bit better, but still. As Matija said, it depends on the application and wheter it knows how to handle color-profile tags inside videos and pictures. Professional video and image editing apps should do that fine. The problem is with untagged pictures flying over web, that we display in browsers, if I understand my research correctly.
I also do not know, why Image Viewing sets brightness to 100%. This hurts my eyes, I mean, this monitor is 400cd, it is impossible to look at it at 100% brightness. If I lower the brightness in Image Viewing mode, turn this mode off, and later turn it on again, brightness will be 100% again.
There is one color that I think one can most easilly notice is over-saturated: that is color red. For instance, looking at pictures with people (where they show their skin), the skin looks too reddish. Looking at images with red objects: red is very very vivid, maybe too vivid. Hard to tell. Maybe this is the right way and I have just been used to something that was not right.
I certainly did not notice any dead pixels or pixels showing wrong colors. Which is what I expect for a monitor of this price-range.
I think you should read one or two reviews and tests where they actually test colors with a calibrator, like this one:
http://www.monitor.si/clanek/meje-digit ... dljivosti/
Unfortunatelly this one is in Slovene and does not include the monitor we are discussing here.
I don't know if you could trust my subjective analysis, but here it is: I think that colors are not completely natural when the special modes are off. And even if I turn on Image Viewing, I think it is a bit better, but still. As Matija said, it depends on the application and wheter it knows how to handle color-profile tags inside videos and pictures. Professional video and image editing apps should do that fine. The problem is with untagged pictures flying over web, that we display in browsers, if I understand my research correctly.
I also do not know, why Image Viewing sets brightness to 100%. This hurts my eyes, I mean, this monitor is 400cd, it is impossible to look at it at 100% brightness. If I lower the brightness in Image Viewing mode, turn this mode off, and later turn it on again, brightness will be 100% again.
There is one color that I think one can most easilly notice is over-saturated: that is color red. For instance, looking at pictures with people (where they show their skin), the skin looks too reddish. Looking at images with red objects: red is very very vivid, maybe too vivid. Hard to tell. Maybe this is the right way and I have just been used to something that was not right.
I certainly did not notice any dead pixels or pixels showing wrong colors. Which is what I expect for a monitor of this price-range.
I think you should read one or two reviews and tests where they actually test colors with a calibrator, like this one:
http://www.monitor.si/clanek/meje-digit ... dljivosti/
Unfortunatelly this one is in Slovene and does not include the monitor we are discussing here.
Last edited by ZaphodB on Sat Jul 25, 2009 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
No, that's probably the biggest problem with wide gamut monitors. People start looking like tomatoes. Green is also an issue, but a smaller one.ZaphodB wrote:There is one color that I think one can most easilly notice is over-saturated: that is color red. For instance, looking at pictures with people (where they show their skin), the skin looks too reddish. Looking at images with red objects: red is very very vivid, maybe too vivid. Hard to tell. Maybe this is the right way and I have just been used to something that was not right.
If graphics cards manufacturers would create per-channel saturation controls, you could make the problem less obvious... Right now, you can only change saturation on all channels, which is rather bad.
Wide gamut is just an evil marketing ploy. Nobody benefits from it.
Don't most monitors include, besides the various "color temperature" selectors, an individual color level adjuster on a per-color-channel scale?
My Phillips 190/S has this option. Unfortunately it's no longer accessible to me as something with the OSD/Control buttons went wonky about 6 months ago and the only thing I can do is change the language to Spanish from English.
Interestingly, the 190/S is the first and only LCD I have owned. All of this talk about squeaky LCD's/ CCFL backlights is completely foreign and unfathomable to me. I feel like a flatlander in the noisy LCD conversations.
My Phillips 190/S has this option. Unfortunately it's no longer accessible to me as something with the OSD/Control buttons went wonky about 6 months ago and the only thing I can do is change the language to Spanish from English.
Interestingly, the 190/S is the first and only LCD I have owned. All of this talk about squeaky LCD's/ CCFL backlights is completely foreign and unfathomable to me. I feel like a flatlander in the noisy LCD conversations.
They do. Since your monitor's controls are broken, go into your graphics card settings and you'll find some colour sliders there - lower one of the channels and see what happens to the picture.psyopper wrote:Don't most monitors include, besides the various "color temperature" selectors, an individual color level adjuster on a per-color-channel scale?
Oh, another thing - monitor temperature settings also don't usually work
Thanks for this. I'll have to see if there exists a Linux equivalent somewhere for it. I gave up on Windows for my home PC a few years ago.
line wrote:@ psyopper
Also try softMCCs which controls the OSD directly and appears to be compatible with many displays.
Zaphod, regarding this phenomenon, did you go thru all the setup steps in the SmartControl Wizard that comes with the monitor? It seems to be a very thorough setup procedure. Even if you did, it can become disabled sometimes (see below):ZaphodB wrote:
There is one color that I think one can most easilly notice is over-saturated: that is color red. For instance, looking at pictures with people (where they show their skin), the skin looks too reddish. Looking at images with red objects: red is very very vivid, maybe too vivid. Hard to tell. Maybe this is the right way and I have just been used to something that was not right.
"Q3. The SmartControl functions well at the beginning, but it is not working now, what can I do?
A. If the following actions were executed, the monitor driver may need to be re-installed.
â—
As Matija wrote, wide gamut monitors are prone to over-saturate some colours. Monitor software such as SmartControl might be able to make colours a bit less saturated, but compared to a monitor with standard gamut a wide gamut monitor will always have more saturated colours.
When/if this becomes a problem, i.e. colours are over-saturated and photos are looking unnatural, the only solution is colour management. However, there are not that many applications that are colour "aware", so, at least in everyday computer use, the overly vivid colours will still be noticeable. Some people can't stand it while others get used to it.
When/if this becomes a problem, i.e. colours are over-saturated and photos are looking unnatural, the only solution is colour management. However, there are not that many applications that are colour "aware", so, at least in everyday computer use, the overly vivid colours will still be noticeable. Some people can't stand it while others get used to it.
I am wondering how we define "wide gamut". According to Philips, this monitor covers 102% of the NTSC standard (which seems to be a reference for some reason). To me, simplistically, it implied I will be seeing things as they are supposed to be. "Wide" perhaps is being used with reference to most of the LCD monitors out there until recently.Tephras wrote:As Matija wrote, wide gamut monitors are prone to over-saturate some colours. Monitor software such as SmartControl might be able to make colours a bit less saturated, but compared to a monitor with standard gamut a wide gamut monitor will always have more saturated colours.
Matija,Matija wrote:sRGB is 72% of NTSC gamut. Everything above that is considered wide gamut, and the higher the number, the less accurate the colours.
Do you happen to know the % gamut relative to NTSC of the 2009 iMac 24 inch screen? I am happy with what I see on it, so it's a solid reference point for me.
Yes, I did. I used the Windows program to calibrate monitor. It is a nice app and it helped. But I also hand-played with settings later on and that changed things to a bit worse, and I did not bother to do the procedure again. However, calibration did not resolve the "problem", it just got a bit better. Well it did a nice job for contrast, though.mrB wrote:
Zaphod, regarding this phenomenon, did you go thru all the setup steps in the SmartControl Wizard that comes with the monitor? It seems to be a very thorough setup procedure. Even if you did, it can become disabled sometimes (see below):
Now, the bad thing with these applications is this: A monitor should work everywhere, not just in Windows, but this applications are just for Windows.
Guys,
I found something relevent to our discussion in the pdf manual for the Philips 240PW9. In the glossary it said:
sRGB
sRGB is a standard for ensuring correct exchange of colors between different devices (e.g. digital
cameras, monitors, printers, scanners, etc.)
Using a standard unified color space, sRGB will help represent pictures taken by an sRGB
compatible device correctly on your sRGB enabled Philips monitors. In that way, the colors are
calibrated and you can rely on the correctness of the colors shown on your screen.
Important with the use of sRGB is that the brightness and contrast of your monitor is fixed to a
predefined setting as well as the color gamut. Therefore it is important to select the sRGB setting in
the monitor's OSD.
To do so, open the OSD by pressing the OK button on the front of your monitor. Move the down
button to go to Color and press OK again. Use the right button to go to sRGB. Then move the down
button and press OK again to exit the OSD.
After this, please do not change the brightness or contrast setting of your monitor. If you change
either of these, the monitor will exit the sRGB mode and go to a color temperature setting of 6500K.
I found something relevent to our discussion in the pdf manual for the Philips 240PW9. In the glossary it said:
sRGB
sRGB is a standard for ensuring correct exchange of colors between different devices (e.g. digital
cameras, monitors, printers, scanners, etc.)
Using a standard unified color space, sRGB will help represent pictures taken by an sRGB
compatible device correctly on your sRGB enabled Philips monitors. In that way, the colors are
calibrated and you can rely on the correctness of the colors shown on your screen.
Important with the use of sRGB is that the brightness and contrast of your monitor is fixed to a
predefined setting as well as the color gamut. Therefore it is important to select the sRGB setting in
the monitor's OSD.
To do so, open the OSD by pressing the OK button on the front of your monitor. Move the down
button to go to Color and press OK again. Use the right button to go to sRGB. Then move the down
button and press OK again to exit the OSD.
After this, please do not change the brightness or contrast setting of your monitor. If you change
either of these, the monitor will exit the sRGB mode and go to a color temperature setting of 6500K.