Philips 40B1U6903CH Ultrawide 5K2K Curved Business Monitor Review

A Closer Look & Performance

The Philips 40B1U6903CH may not have the coolest name, but it’s a business monitor so we can forgive it for being branded like a photocopier, but it’s packing some amazing features. On the back, it has three display inputs, four if you include the Thunderbolt 4 port, as well as a built-in USB hub and LAN port. This means you can hook up your keyboard, mouse, speakers, and LAN all to the monitor. Then when you connect to your PC or plug in your laptop, it acts as a KVM and switches all those inputs to the system. Plus, with the Type-C input, it can charge a laptop of up to 90W too, making it a single cable solution.

Another feature I like is that it doesn’t need an external power brick, and it has a master power switch, which is often missing on many monitors.

There are additional ports on the side, including a 45W Type-C charging port and a Type-A charging port.

The stand is surprisingly compact for a display of this size, but it’s nicely weighted so that the monitor feels very stable even when it’s jacked up to its highest height. The panel is huge too, as I have a 34″ ultrawide right behind it and, well, it’s completely obscured. At 40″ this monitor dominates my desktop space and thanks to the 5K2K resolution, it looks absolutely stunning with lots of detail in the image.

The colour reproduction right out of the box looks fantastic. However, the monitor defaults to the NTSC colour space and that does look great, but depending on what work you’re doing, it also supports an sRGB and DCI-P3 colour space. Most users will want the sRGB mode, as that’s the most colour-accurate for web-based content and SDR media.

Essentially being a 4K monitor but wider, means you can fit a lot of information on the screen with perfect clarity. I was perfectly happy with my 3440×1440 resolution monitor, but bumping up to 5120 x 2160 is noticeable, both on the detail of images and videos, but also the ability to have much smaller text elements on the screen and still have them be perfectly readable.

I love this resolution, as it means I can still have a native size 4K window in a 16:9 aspect ratio, while still having screen space off to the side to monitor content, keep up with my emails, or more realistically procrastinate.

The display is very colour-accurate right out of the box thanks to a factory calibration that ensures the display meets specifications, which means it’s great for colour grading work, and photo and video editors alike.

It’s also fantastic for movies, with 4K movies benefitting from the expanded DCI-P3 colour space coverage, and the resolution and size of the monitor also make for a pretty cinematic desktop experience.

The display is curved, but it’s extremely mild, which just helps the width of the panel feel less intimidating, but it’s not as curved as some gaming monitors, as it’s more about usability than gaming immersion.

Tucked into the top of the monitor is a webcam. You simply push down on it and it pops up ready to use.

It’s a 5MP camera, so nothing crazy high-end, but it does have stereo microphones built-in too and will be more than enough for your work zoom/teams calls. Plus, it has Windows Hello so you can use it to securely log in to your computer or your laptop connected via Thunderbolt 4.