Philips has become the latest brand to embrace Samsung Display’s new QD-OLED display technology with the launch of its new Evnia gaming brand.
With Evnia, Philips is making a big entrance into the world of gaming, with a host of new monitors and various other gadgets, including specialised gaming mice, keyboards and headsets.
However, it’s the new monitors we’re interested in, and all three of its new models look extremely slick - but none more so than the new Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 (pictured above), which is based on the QD-OLED technology.
QD-OLED is a new kind of display tech that we’ve heard quite a lot about this year. It was developed by Samsung Display and is said to improve on traditional OLED displays with a broader colour range and higher brightness, ensuring superior contrast and cleaner images overall.
The first QD-OLED displays were monitors, with two models built by Samsung Electronics and Dell Alienware that both received rave reviews. They were followed by the first two QD-OLED TVs, from Samsung and Sony, that similarly wowed everyone who saw them with their dazzling image quality. Since then, we’ve seen a third QD-OLED monitor from MSI.
Now, Philips is becoming the fifth major brand to launch a QD-OLED product with its Evnia 34M2C8600, which is a 34-inch curved monitor that boasts the same panel found in those earlier products. It offers 3440x1440 resolution, 1800R curvature, a 0.1 ms true response time, deep blacks and exceptionally high contrast, a 175Hz refresh rate, true HDR and Variable Refresh Rate. It is equipped with 1x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2x HDMI 2.0 ports.
If that packed list of features isn’t enough to get you interested, bearing in mind that Samsung’s, Alienware’s and MSI’s displays all boast similar specs, it does have something totally unique. The Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 is the first QD-OLED gaming monitor in the world to incorporate the company’s Ambiglow mood lighting system, which syncs to the colours on screen just as Ambilight does on Philip’s high-end TVs.
Philips said the Evnia 34M2C8600 will go on sale in Europe in January with a price tag of 1,850 euros.
Besides dipping its toes into QD-OLED, Philips has also rolled out a regular OLED gaming monitor called the Philips 42M2N8900 (below). This one is slightly bigger at 42-inches and is built using one of LG Display’s WOLED panels, featuring a matte coating.
Feature-wise, it stands out with 4K resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio and the promise of deep blacks and high contrast, with a 138Hz refresh rate and true 0.1 ms response time, plus true HDR capabilities. It also comes with Ambiglow, an adjustable stand to get the positioning just right, and has two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DisplayPort 1.4 connection. Philips said it’ll also arrive in January, with a price tag of around 2,000 Euro.
Last but not least is the Philips Evnia 34M2C7600MV, which is a somewhat less advanced 34-inch MiniLED VA LCD monitor. Just because it’s not as advanced doesn’t mean it’s not very good however, for the display boasts an impressive 1,152 dimming zones, 3440x1440 resolution, a 2.5 ms response time, 165Hz refresh rate and up to 720 nits of brightness, with Ambiglow also on board.
For an LCD-based monitor, such specs are not bad at all, but the price tag is still a bit of an eyebrow raiser, with Philips set to ask for around 2,100 Euros when it launches in December.
