Philips BDM3470UP Monitor Review

Overview

 

UltraWide… not wide but… UltraWide!!! Now there’s a lovely word when it comes to monitors or displays, so you can imagine how happy we were when the Philips BDM3470UP came to pcG for us to review. The Philips BDM3470UP has a 34 inch LCD display with MultiView which uses advanced AH-IPS panels for superior colour reproduction, response time and power consumption. The Philips BDM3470UP boast CrystalClear images with UltraWide QHD 3440 x 1440 pixels and an Ultra-narrow bezel for maximum view and minimum distraction. Also, the Philips BDM3470UP features ergonomic adjustments and USB 3.0 for fast data transfers. So, let’s see if size really does matter, or width in this case…

 

 

 

The Philips BDM3470UP arrived at pcG in a rather unexciting white box, albeit from the size that is. This box was the size of a small bed, luckily I have a long reach so I could grab this behemoth by both handles on each side. The front of the box has an image of the Philips BDM3470UP with a slight reflection and the Philips logo directly above it. Underneath the image we are told that the product is ‘Wide enough for your best ideas’ (which incidentally I have a lot of 🙂 (quiet Ed!)). The right side of the box highlights various features of the BDM3470UP which include the 34″ display, Ultra Narrow Bezel, MultiView and Smart Connect.

The sides and back of the box have nothing new to offer, just the same specifications and features that were found on the front. The top of the box features a five step diagram of how the Philips BDM3470UP is packed and how to fit the stand to the monitor. Apart from this there is nothing else to really report on the packaging for the monitor, everything is designed in standard electronic fashion with very little design or excitement put into it. 🙁

 

 

The first item we get to when we open the box is the monitor screen itself which is wrapped in a foam bag inside the polystyrene packaging. The next layer down we have the rest of the box contents which are all fitted into their custom designed space in the polystyrene. The packaging is a bit of a tight squeeze so you might find it easier to have someone hold the box when you remove the contents as I did, this will ensure you don’t drop anything (remember, size of a bed). 😉

 

 

The base and the stand of the Philips BDM3570UP are on the heavy side (nearly 3 kg) so it is best to take them out and place them to one side so as not to risk damage to the monitor screen itself.

 

 

The rest of the contents are all individually bagged and the Philips BDM3470UP comes with Quick Start guide which is in both English and German. The guide shows you how to attach the stand to the monitor, a diagram on the input/outputs and an explanation of the control panel.

 

 

At the time of writing the Philips BDM3470UP is currently retailing for approximately £665 on Amazon and comes with a 2 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Philips

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

The front of the Philips BDM3470UP features a panel measuring 799.8 x 334.8 mm, which gives us the UltraWide 3440×1400 34″ screen size. The Ultra-narrow bezel is made from a textured plastic and is only 2.5 mm wide (more on this later). The bottom of the Philips BDM3470UP has a silver strip which widens in the middle, it is here that the Philips logo has been incorporated giving the monitor a very well polished look. There is a removable sticker which highlights some of the features of the monitor (see photo below) but sadly when I removed this it also took off part of the textured finish underneath it leaving a rectangular shiny area instead 🙁 (and I was careful). The Philips BDM3470UP screen areas aesthetics are clean and solid looking, you really get the sense of width even before switching the monitor on.

 

The back of the Philips BDM3470UP has the same textured black finish covering the rear of the monitor with the Philips logo embossed into the central area at the top. The base attaches to the vertical part of the stand by way of an awkward metal clip and a thick screw with a little handle. The vertical part of the base is connected to the monitor with four black screws which bring everything snuggly together. There are also two 3W speakers incorporated into the back on the monitor.

 

 

The base and the stand are not the most exciting thing in the world and I guess they don’t have to be, as long as they do the job right? But after recently reviewing the BenQ XL2730Z Monitor with a stand that had had many bells and whistles and design maybe I was a little spoilt. The Philips BDM3470UP can either be viewed horizontally or vertically, one thing that I found though was that when you turn the monitor to its vertical position you have to angle the screen towards you and turn as the stand is not tall enough to do this in its flat position. The stand has a height adjustment of 180 mm, a pivot of 90 degrees, tilt of -5/20 degrees and a swivel of -170/+170 degrees, so there is plenty of adjustment to be had to make sure you get the perfect viewing position and angle.

 

The Philips BDM3470UP control panel features five small round physical buttons which are positioned underneath the bottom right hand corner of the monitor bezel. The buttons have a strong feel to them and they take a certain amount of pressure to activate them which causes the monitor to wobble a bit. The first button brings up the Smart Image menu and this has 6 preset modes which include Game, Movie, Office and Photo. The next button is for the MultiView options, after that the next two buttons are for Audio, Input, Language and Settings, the last button is the power on/off button. The control panel buttons do have indicators on the bezel of what they are but when it is dark it can be a bit fiddly to find the button you are after.

 

INPUTS & OUTPUTS

 

 

As we can see from the above images, the Philips BDM3470UP has a fairly extensive set of inputs and outputs. The Monitor features a DisplayPort, D-Sub, DVI and a HDMI inputs, Earphone Out and Audio In socket, should be plenty enough to suit the needs of most Gamers.

 

Overall my first impressions of the Philips BDM3470UP were very high, it’s not the most exciting monitor in the terms of design but when you have a screen this wide on your desk you will forget about the small things. Now we need to power this big boy up and see how it performs…

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

The Philips BDM3470UP was tested using our Test Rig with a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate N 64bit (service pack 1) installed together with all the latest relevant drivers and software. No additional screen calibration software was used, all of the default modes were tested and then the screen was calibrated by hand and eye to the best of my ability.

To help in the evaluation of the Monitor we will also be using the XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition.

During the review I used the following Benchmarks and Games to help in the evaluation of the monitor.

 

 

Hardware Performance

 

With the Philips BDM3470UP connected to our Test Rig it was time to power this UltraWide monitor up, pressing the on/off button on the control panel and the first thing we are greeted with is the white Philips logo against an all blue background. There we have it, my desk is swathed in illumination from the glorious 34″ 3440 × 1440 screen letting me know who is in charge of this desk from now on, what a beautiful sight it was too!

 

 

I went through the various checks that I do to look for any dead/stuck pixels and I could not find any at all, also, I was happy to see that there was very little backlight bleed. What I was not happy to see though was that there was a fake bezel of 9 mm between the edge of the display and the plastic bezel. Now normally I would not think too much of this but when one of the main selling points is ‘Ultra-narrow bezel for maximum view and minimum distraction’ you expect to get just that, what starts off as a 2.5mm bezel turns into a 11.5mm bezel. 🙁

I was very happy with the picture calibration straight out of the box, I tinkered around with the manual settings but ended up going back to the 50% across the board (Brightness, Contrast etc) in the picture settings. The only one I tweaked a little was the brightness which I put back up to 60% which was more of a personal preference than anything else. The Philips BDM3470UP does have some Smart Image modes for Office, Photo, Movie and Game, but they either made the screen too dark, slightly blue in Movie setting or extremely bright in Game mode so I just kept this off as I was happy with the image already.

I had a really great time testing the Philips BDM3470UP and seeing what all my games looked like on the UltraWide panel. The feeling of scope I had when playing games such as Battlefield 4 and especially Witcher 3 was tremendous, the grass plains going off from the left and the right as I rode my horse into the sunset was awe inspiring! I was a little bit worried at first in Witcher 3 because the HUD display did not go into the corners of my screen as with a regular 16.9 Widescreen monitor. This annoyed me every time I played the game as the HUD was always hovering around the inner part of my screen and distracting me, but… one day I booted up the same game and lo and behold everything was fixed and the HUD was where it should be. Thank you to whoever sorted out this patch for the UltraWide, you are a star. 🙂

There’s no doubt that the Philips BDM3470UP enhanced my gaming experience no end, it will be hard for me to go back to my regular size screen after this, I will feel like a horse with blinkers on (much like my trusty steed Roach in Witcher 3). The picture quality was amazing, this is due to the AH-IPS panel which Philips claim solves any problems previous LCD panels had in the past with colour shifting. I had no problems viewing the screen from whatever angle I looking at if from and for such a wide display it kept its colour throughout all the games I tested. As you can see the the specifications the Philips BDM3470UP does not have the quickest Response Time (Response time (typical) 14 ms / SmartResponse (typical) 5 ms (Grey to Grey)), but for me I found no issues at all during my time spent gaming and did not encounter any blurring or ghosting issues.

The only problem I will mention about owning the Philips BDM3470UP or any 4K monitor for that matter, is that you will need plenty of GPU power, you should probably budget for getting more than one Graphics Card to run this baby. It’s not the end of the world but I had to put my graphics settings down to Low in Witcher 3 just to get 56FPS, on the Ultra setting I was only getting 28FPS (47FPS Medium and 38FPS on High). So to get the most out of your gaming experience you will need to dig deep and purchase more power as that is what a monitor like this requires…

 

Final Thoughts

 

Rest assured, the Philips BDM3470UP monitor will enhance your gaming experience tremendously, but, to run something this powerful your going to need the engine to drive it…

The Philips BDM3470UP arrived at pcG in a very large rather unassuming box, but it is what is inside that counts, after all. Everything inside was well packaged in separate bags and had their own place in the polystyrene packaging, all that was missing was some sort of Wow! factor. I just wished there was a little bit more to the inside of the box, I have brought toasters which had more flare to how they present themselves when unboxing. 🙁

The assembly was very easy after you work out how to attach the awkward metal clip that attaches the vertical stand to the base. Once this part is screwed securely in place it is just a matter of attaching the stand to the monitor by way of four small black screws. Once this has been done you can now put the Philips BDM3470UP upright and adjust the screen to whatever angle suits you the best. The monitor has very good height adjustment, tilt, swivel and pivot, even thought the stand is a bit on the boring side there is very little to complain about here.

Once you have powered up, any niggles about design will be far from your mind as you will be in awe of the UltraWide screen that has presented itself to you. Out of the box the Philips BDM3470UP looks glorious, no backlight bleed or dead pixels in sight. You will probably spend the first hour looking for a suitable wallpaper that not only shows off the width but also the beautiful resolution of this monitor.

After playing around with the different picture modes and then manually tinkering with all the brightness, colour and contrast settings I eventually went back to the preset Standard mode and added a sprinkle of brightness to suit my needs. The image the Philips BDM3470UP delivers is unquestionably great with amazing detail and colour depth no doubt due to the AH-IPS panel solving previous LCD colour shifting problems. But truth be told, it’s the width of the screen that gives you the game immersion you have been looking for. You will find it hard to go back to anything smaller again, I know I will…

The price of the Philips BDM3470UP monitor is very good at approximately £665, but unless you are happy to be playing games with lower frame rates you may need to shell out for some extra GPU horsepower. That aside, the time I have spent with this monitor has given me a totally immersive gaming experience that I have never had before and one that I will surely miss…

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to MMD for providing this sample for review