Philips Evnia 49″ 5120×1440 240Hz QD-OLED HDR Ultrawide Gaming Monitor Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The rather fantastic, and considerably “smaller” Philips Evnia 34″ 34M2C8600 3440×1440 QD-OLED 175Hz is this monitors little bro, and that comes in at £1149.95 I think it actually is pretty impressive value for money given what it has to offer. However, if you want this massive Philips Evnia 49″ 5120×1440 240Hz QD-OLED HDR Ultrawide Gaming Monitor then it’s going to cost you around £1649.99, which compared to the 34″ actually seems like good value. When TVs scale up this much their prices go up a lot faster.

Overview

This monitor is complete overkill, it is ridiculous and stupidly expensive, and I would likely never buy one if it were my money right now. However, it’s also completely amazing, mind-blowing, a marvel to behold, and a true tour-de-force when it comes to features and performance. Honestly, if I could reasonably afford it, and my gaming desk was perhaps a bit wider, and most certainly a bit deeper to accommodate it, I would absolutely love one, but right now, it’s total overkill for my needs and budget.

That said, going back to my measly 34″ 21:9 monitor is going to feel rather jarring after playing on this monster. But my 34″ is the right size for my needs, usage and gaming space, as 32:9 frankly feels too wide for many things.

For video and image editing, the extra space is fantastic, you can have more assets, more of the timeline and just simply more work on screen, while still retaining half the screen for a full 16:9 preview window should you need it. But when I’m writing reviews or putting websites side by side, I do find it a bit much, as would rather have a portrait monitor off to the side for some extra productivity real estate.

It’s also too wide for movies, and since ultrawide is capable of playing most modern movies in 100% full screen, introducing black borders on the super-ultrawide feels like a step back, but one that you do get used to fairly quickly since with OLED, you don’t get the backlight glow you would on lesser panels.

But gaming, ah, well this is where it really shines. There’s a growing list of games that support this format now, and from Cities Skylines II to Flight Simulator, it just immerses you as few other monitors can! Even my i7-13700KF and RTX 4090 couldn’t make up the 5K2K 240Hz panel, but it didn’t have to! I was getting 160 FPS in Halo, 110 FPS in Forza, and 140 FPS in Flight Sim, and that felt like more than enough for me. Plus with a 0.03 latency, zero motion blur, and no stuttering or tearing, gaming always felt smoother and faster than I’ve ever experienced. I could drop quality settings to get more FPS, but really, I never felt the need.

Should I Buy One

Do you have a massive desk, that’s wide enough and deep enough? Do you have a wallet that is also wide enough and deep enough (and full of cash)? Will you be mostly editing videos and playing games that support Super-Ultrawide? And is your PC hardware the envy of gamers everywhere? If you can answer yes to pretty much all of that, then this is the perfect monitor for you. Any compromise on those questions and you may find this monitor is just a bit too much to live with.