Review Phillips 328E1CA Curved 4K Monitor Review: Colorful, Feature-full

[Admin]

The Phillips 328E1CA is a super colorful 32-inch 4K monitor that looks good on your desk; however, we’d like more ports.

Phillips 328E1CA Curved 4K Monitor Review: Colorful, Feature-full : Read more

 

[waltc3]

What's nice about this monitor is the resolution & price. What I don't care for:

(As you can tell, I have strong opinions about 4k monitors...)

1) Lack of at least HDR 10 compatibility. Makes a huge difference in games like Baldur's Gate 3, No Man's Sky, & Red Dead Redemption 2, just for starters. These games all look great on my 4k 32" HDR 10 monitor--such that I no longer run them in normal SDR mode. Game developers are getting the hang of HDR, now, and the results can be outstanding. Microsoft is introducing a new feature called "Auto HDR" which aims to automatically convert all SDR D3d11/12 games to HDR on the fly. In v2004 b21337.1000, this feature makes its debut--and it does a good job for a beginning effort. Doubtless HDR in Windows is going to be big--so no one should write it off just because it hasn't been much good before now--as I was tempted to do. It's getting much better, very fast!

2)No Display Port 1.4 compatibility. My 20-month-old AMD 50th Ann Ed 5700XT supports DP 1.4 and HDR, most monitors do today.

3) Curved screen. Moving the screen more than 4 feet from you as this review mentions, is not advisable, imo. My 32" 4K monitor is ~18" from my peepers (24" when I lean back) and as such it fills ~80% of my view field and is very comfortable for gaming. Moving a 32" monitor > 4 feet away, even a curved monitor, won't get close to filling 80% of your view field--sort of kills the whole curvature argument, imo. 32" is more than manageable from 18"+ away. And of course, when web browsing and running software other than games--well that curve warps everything that wants to display flat. I see nothing there except a sales gimmick--one of those things that sounds much better than it is. It reminds me of the old CRT days, when "flat screen" monitors became all the rage because the "fish-eye" look of the warped CRTs was gone. Why on earth bring it back?....

4) Watching Movies. I cannot in good conscience recommend movie watching on 32" 4k monitors like this, or like mine (a BenQ EW-3270U HDR). Because for less money you can buy a significantly larger 4K HDR TV that is tuned in every respect for movies and streaming presentations via a Roku/BR disk player, etc. Much as I love my present 32" monitor for gaming and browsing and work, I like my much cheaper 55" 4k HDR TV a whole heck of a lot better than the monitor for all things video. Looks great from 8'-10' back, as well. I'm a purist, I guess--TVs for 4k movies and 4k streaming (as well as BluRay 1080P), and my computer monitor for everything else. For just $100 more, the BenQ EW-3270U HDR RGB offers a good deal more monitor than this Phillips.