Philips Evnia 27″ 27M2N5901A Dual Frame Fast IPS Monitor Review
Performance
First thing is first, you have to set up this monitor not once, but twice! At first boot, it was detected at a 4K monitor, in Windows (or in my case Linux) you have to set it to the full 160 Hz mode.
When using the OSD, toggle the monitor into the FHD mode.
And then you can see it drops to 1080p, but you can now also select a staggering 320Hz mode. Once these are set for the first time, any time you switch modes, you OS of choice should then remember the full refresh rates each time.
Even at 1920 x 1080, 320 Hz is a LOT, so you have to have a pretty fantastic gaming PC to push some of the latest games at those figures, or anything even close. Your CPU will have to be top tier, as will your graphics card. I’m running a 9800X3D with a 9070 XT, so playing something like Arc, I had to drop the quality slider right down, and use a little bit of scaling to get Arc Raider into the 300 FPS range, but it was doable.
Obviously, some games will benefit more than others, Stardew Valley not so much, but CS:GO, Apex, and other competitive shooters will benefit from the significantly improved reaction times of running a monitor this quickly. One thing is for certainly, the action is incredibly smooth, so even when you get to that final clutch and things get frantic, the Fast IPS panel allows you to keep everything in focus.
Still, I’m happy with a little more quality and a few fewer frames for some games, but it’s nice to have so much range on this panel.
Then again, if you want visual fidelity at the cost of refresh rate, the 4K 160 Hz mode is hardly slumming it in terms of competitive frame times.
You get all the visual quality you desire, with a crisp and detailed image, but still get the silky smooth motion of a 160 Hz refresh rate; of course this will max out at 120Hz if you’re gaming on consoles though.
The 4K mode is great for visually dense games, not just graphically intensive ones. Games like Civilization, Cities Skylines, or Rimworld where it’s just nice to have more pixels on screen will benefit greatly from the high resolution mode.
One thing that really strikes me is just how colourful this monitor is, and with strong contrast too. I’m a total OLED fanboy these days, and honestly, its easy to forget that modern IPS panels can deliver a compelling experience for gaming, media consumption and content creation.
Just look at those colour pop! Of course, I miss the perfect blacks of OLED, but the colour reproduction is absolute on point here.
Unless you’re looking at an all dark image, IPS can certainly still compete in 2025 and beyond.
Calibration
The monitor holds up under scrutiny too, and since it comes factory calibrated, you can plug it in and play or work with confidence. We recorded 300 nits on the brightness on stock settings, but it can be turned up brighter to around 350, so it holds up well in a well lit room. Black levels are also decent, with a recording of just 0.284 cd/m2.
When it comes to colour reproduction, not only is it incredibly accurate, it covers 95% DCI-P3, 130% sRGB, 90% Adobe RGB with a recorded accuracy that’s well within expected targets, getting a double green tick from the DisplayCal benchmark for nominal tolerance and recommended tolerances.
The default settings also put it remarkable close to the ideal 6500K colour target right out of the box, a tiny tweak to Warm colour profile will get this more accurate, but largely, I’d say it looks great out of the box and this is purely for preference at this point.
Gamma tracks dead on the scale for 2.2, so a perfect score here.
And again, the RGB Gray balance is dead on; a poor result would see the filler dots outside of their grey circles, but these are all right on the money.
