Philips Brilliance 275P4VYKEB
Do you really need 14 million pixels?
IS THERE A POINT at which adding more pixels becomes futile? This question hits home the moment you fire up Philips’ new Brilliance 275P. Actually, it’s not quite the first thought to cross your mind—that’s more likely to be, “Does this thing really need two DisplayPort cables?”
Indeed it does, for the 275P boasts no fewer than 5120x2880 pixels. Yes, that’s 5K. Sorry, folks, but your 4K screens suddenly look positively puny. The downside, of course, is that the prevailing DisplayPort 1.2 specification maxes out at 3840x2160 at 60Hz refresh. Driving the Philips’ full pixel grid at 60Hz is beyond the means of a single DisplayPort 1.2 interface, which is why you’ need two of ’em. That throws up compatibility issues with video cards that only offer a single port, and can make for niggling issues with multi-GPU setups.
But let’s assume you have the basic graphics grunt to drive the 275P in 2D desktop mode. What then? Your initial impression will be shock and awe, most likely. This isn’t a particularly large display in physical terms, measuring 27 inches in diagonal, but that only adds to the impact of those 14 million pixels. The consequence is a super-tight pixel pitch and razor-sharp images, the likes of which you’ve probably never seen in a PC monitor.
In fact, the overall spectacle is more akin to a high-density smartphone display. The image is almost seamless, while normal monitors have a very visible pixel grid. It’s punchy as hell, too, thanks to a combination of IPS panel technology, a glossy screen coating, and full 10-bit-per-channel color support. This thing has contrast in spades, and the color saturation is off the charts. At a glance, you could be forgiven for thinking its a VA-type panel, that’s how rich, vibrant, and saturated it looks.
But thanks to that IPS technology— strictly speaking, it’s PLS not IPS, but PLS is essentially a subtype of the broader IPS genre—it’s much more accurate than any VA panel. Philips claims 99 percent Adobe RGB and 100 percent sRGB consistency, courtesy of factory calibration. The viewing angles are pretty exceptional, too, if you ignore the reflectivity that’s part of the glossy-screen package. The pixel response is also reasonably zappy, and given the roughly $1,400 sticker, you won’t be surprised to learn that the stand offers a full range of adjustability.
BROKEN WINDOWS
If that’s the good news, here comes the bad. For starters, Windows still doesn’t do scaling properly. Bump the built-in scaling option up from 100 percent, and there’s brokenness everywhere. A lot of this isn’t Microsoft’s fault. The fact that most of the web is built up from non-scalable bitmaps is beyond Microsoft’s control. Ditto patchy support for high-DPI displays like this across the Windows app ecosystem.
As for gaming, well, running this thing at native resolution in modern games is going to take one hell of a 3D rendering solution. Even Nvidia’s latest GTX 1080 will struggle. All of which means the appeal of the Philips Brilliance 275P is awfully narrow. If you are a graphics or video production professional, who uses apps that can make full use of the huge 5K pixel grid, great. But for the rest of us, running this kind of highDPI display in Windows still presents too many problems.