Gadgetory

welcome back to hard brown box today we're looking at a brand new monitor from Philips a bit of a follow-on from my review of their 43 inch beast on the channel a few weeks ago but I don't like that display which is I guess it's impractical for most users the 32 inch model I'm reviewing today makes a bit more sense for the average gamer this model is so new that for now in what is I guess a rare feat it seems to only be selling in Australia though I suspect Philips will push it out to more regions shortly in any case the monitor is the three to eight m6 fjr MB which is an absolutely atrocious name for a product it's especially terrible because there is only a one letter difference between this monitor and another monitor from Philips see that are in the product name the third last letter yeah that's what separates this monitor from an older version released back in 2017 that's pretty crazy right the art basically means this new monitor is HDR capable with display HDR 400 certification I'll talk a little bit about that in a mode because the term HDI appears to have been used loosely but the key problem is the ridiculous product name that makes it nearly impossible for buyers to distinguish the fjr MB model from the older fjm be Souza verbs this is a terrible product name please fix it anyway so this is a 32-inch 1808 curve to 2560 by 1440 monitor with the maximum 144 hertz refresh rate with freesync support for the monitor nerds out there it uses a samsung VA panel with a tpv backlight unit which is the exact same unit used in the AOC a g3 22 qcx I believe this panel is also used in several other popular monitors with similar specs like the vo-tech GM 32 LD are reviewed on the channel previously owned with the new Samsung JG 50 in terms of pricing this Philips model is the most expensive out of that bunch at $600 ozzie which makes it $20 more than the AOC model and $40 more than the new Samsung model the JG 50 is actually a great price in the US right now just 300 two US dollars while the aoc model is almost $100 more and it's pretty interesting to compare the two regions right now in terms of pricing and I suspect this firts unit will slide in around $400 u.s. if it makes it to the states this particular panel has had a long life and has been progressively getting cheaper which is why I suspect we continue to see new product launches including this Phillips unit and the new Samsung JG 50 the AG 322 QC x launched for around four hundred and thirty dollars back in 2017 and before that we had the popular Samsung chg 70 with a display HDR 600 capable backlight at a higher $600 price however as you might notice the AG 322 QC X is not an HDR display yet this Philips monitor is and both use the exact same display unit that's rather suspicious if you ask me there's a bit of a precursor to our HDR performance evaluation anyway first let's look at the designer it's a pretty decent one from films with slim bezels around three sides of the display and a simple black plastic construction on the rear though there are some large glossy sections that might annoy some of you the stand is a reasonably attractive v-shaped metal design which is sturdy and supports both tilt and height adjustment though there's no swiveling and understandably you can't pivot this curved display into a portrait orientation the on-screen display is controlled through a directional toggle and it includes well basically the same features as the momentum 43 like it's larger 43 inch brother you still get amber glow lighting along the bottom edge which is an RGB strip that mimics whatever content is company on the screen for a pleasant ambient lighting effect that's best suited to dark rooms with white walls and furniture it works quite well if you're into that sort of thing though it does come disabled by default for inputs we have two DisplayPort 1.2 ports an HDMI 1.4 and an HDMI 2.0 port along with VGA some people will complain about the 1800 hour curvature to this display it is now possible to get a flat variant with these specs in monitors from LG and picks yota that might be more at the Le of the curve display haters but some people like the curve it's a personal preference thing and for me I could go either way at 32 inches one thing that irritates me about this display is that it's advertised as HDR capable and even comes with display hgr 400 certification I really don't like using this word if I don't have to but in my eyes this certification is a lie from what I observed in testing not only does this display fail to deliver a true HDR experience it also fails some of the key metrics that are required for display HDR 400 certification which leaves me questioning how Philips even managed to get it certified by Visa I have mentioned it in the past how I think display HR 400 is far too loose of respect for HDR content as well as you can see from my HDR monitor checklist in theory this display only passes a handful of items namely sustained brightness and 10-bit processing none of the three key HDR pillars which are color space brightness and contrast are properly addressed in particular the complete lack of local dimming means we aren't getting anywhere near an appropriate contrast ratio for HDR content even though this is a VA display however Philips specs for this monitor are not accurate whatsoever while Philips is claiming a 400 nits peak brightness level I only achieved 214 it's at best whether I was in the SDR or HDR modes so not only is the peak brightness level unsuitable for HDR but so is the sustained brightness level so I'll have to add another cross to my HDR checklist brightness accuracy is also quite poor it seems the panel has been calibrated thinking it can do 400 nits because when you request 320 nits of brightness it doesn't even run at its full 214 it capability with that said I can add a tick to the checklist because the monitor supports 92% ease through our p3 coverage which is a little higher than 120% srgb anything above 90% DCI p3 is suitable for HDR and I suspect Philips was being a bit conservative with their color space figures in their spec sheet so you are at least getting one pillar to HDR and that's wider than SDR color space but it still completely fails on brightness and contrast so this monitor simply is not HDR compliant it cannot properly display HDR content so it shouldn't be advertised as HDR compatible this is especially bad as Ferb's has specifically produced this new model with HDR support in mind to replace an older similar model that does not have the feature I also think Philip should not advertise the monitor as display HDR 400 compliant not just because the monitor can't display HDR and buyers might you know get confused into thinking display HDR 400 means decent HDR I guess that's a completely separate issue with the display HDR tears but it's actually because it fails the display HD have 400 performance metrics see the white luminance performance target that's required for the 400 T well the momentum 32 can't hit any of these brightness targets so it isn't compliant with the spec now maybe I just received a bad monitor and some units actually can produce 116 it's more brightness than my model can to meet the spec let's be honest Philips if only some monitors uShip can hit the specifications listed on your box are those specs really accurate to begin with let's move on from HCI testing for now because there's still hope that the momentum 32 is a decent panel for regular SDR content after all it's mostly competing with SDR panels so it can deliver a good experience here it might still be worthy of a recommendation in terms of response times we're looking at a typical VI panel here Philips lists a 5 millisecond greater grade transition time though in my testing actual figure is more like 8.0 5 milliseconds on average this is using the faster overdrive setting the second-fastest Philips provides with the top setting introducing overshoot a suspect Philips 5 millisecond metric comes from either the minimum transition time which is actually closer to 4 milliseconds or perhaps they used the fastest overdrive mode in any case 8 milliseconds is more around the mark if you look at the charts you'll see the momentum 32 performs almost exactly on par with the vo-tech tree and 32 LD I monitor with similar specs and presumably the same Samsung VI panel while the overdrive algorithms are different for each monitor of course the average overall average rise and average fall times for the Philips and via check models are less than one millisecond apart so it's always nice to see two monitors you expect to perform the same perform roughly the same in practice however while 8 millisecond response times are typical for a VI panel it's on the slower end of the scale and this is an inherent limitation of VA technology while you do get great black levels the penalty is slow to respond unfortunately it means this display is not X 144 Hertz monitor 144 Hertz monitors have a refresh window of 6.9 4 milliseconds but the Philips momentum 32 transitions on average in 8.05 milliseconds so we're effectively being bottlenecked by pixel response to around 120 Hertz in other words smearing ghosting and overall clarity from this 144 Hertz VA will be similar to other 120 Hertz displays the good news is input lag is fantastic the momentum 32 is one of the fastest displays I reviewed with lag in the 3 millisecond range this is in stark contrast to the much slower momentum 43 I guess the momentum 32 being more of a gaming focused product means they've used a gaming grade scale and the results definitely show however it all falls apart a bit for Philips when looking at color performance out of the box this monitor is wildly inaccurate white balance is absolutely crazy at 53 47 K and there is a strong red tint to white which is immediately noticeable and will annoy anyone who purchases this monitor on top of that color gamut is completely uncapped so when viewing standard srgb imagery which forms basically everything on your PC you'll be getting severe over saturation and this explains why Delta II averages across the board are so bad on top of this we're still facing week brightness of around 240 nits and surprisingly low contrast for a VA panel of just 2100 to 1 or there abouts this is similar to the vo-tech G + 32 LD + AO CAG 322 QC X so again we're looking at the same panel that said IOC correctly lists a 2,000 to 1 contrast ratio in their spec sheet while Philips lists 3000 to 1 which is well above what it can actually achieve fixing the color performance issues is difficult Philips does provide an sRGB mode which clamps the display to srgb but it's attempt at fixing the white balance isn't much better than the default mode and in the srgb mode you will locked out of the user white balance controls alternatively you can correct the white balance yourself but then gambit remains unclamped so everything is oversaturate this really isn't a great place to be in unless you have a hardware coloration tool which I guess only a very small minority of buyers will have access to naturally of course it is possible to get niak performance with their software ICC profile generated with spectra Cal's Cal man 5 though there's still a bit of wonkiness I guess to grayscale performance a combination of OSD tweaks and this profile does deliver proper srg back your performance though and I guess the one benefit to a wide gamut monitor like this is if you have a calibration tool you could create a profile for DCI p3 or Adobe RGB though these are software side profiles and won't be supported in every application if your momentum 32 is strongly tinted red like mine was and you want srgb accuracy I recommend trying the display profile we created for this monitor you can get access to that when you sign up to a patreon page links in the description final piece of the performance puzzle is uniformity and here we have typical results for a curve display the center section of the display is reasonably accurate but the outer edges are not great like most panels with an 1800 our curve of this size so it seems pretty clear that philips has attempted to create a more premium 32 inch 1440p 144 Hertz product with the momentum 32 because it's priced higher than similar competing monitors like the AOC AG 322 QC X and the Samsung JG 50 the feature that was supposed to differentiate this monitor and justify the higher price tag is HDR with display hgr 400 compliance but this display actually delivers a poor HDR experience and isn't even display HDR 400 compliance as evidenced by our standard monitor tests when you factor in the issues with default color performance namely the seeming lack of any calibration at the factory and I really don't see any reason to purchase this display over the aoc or Samsung options the Samsung JG 50 is at a particularly awesome price right now at either 360 US dollars or 560 RZ so my recommendation would tentatively go to that monitor though I do hope to review it in the next few months that's not to say every aspect of the monitor is bad input lag is fantastic those with hardware calibration tools have the option of creating a wide gamut profile considering you are getting nearly full Adobe RGB coverage and the design is pretty great plus I still think 1440p 144 Hertz is the optimal setup for monitor spec for gamers but the value proposition just isn't there right now and I really don't like firms lying about hgr support that's it for this review I suspect I might be getting an email from Phillips after this review goes up and I wonder if they'll send out any more monitors to review so in case they blacklist me consider supporting us on patreon so we can just buy their monitors ourselves in the future subscribe for more monitor reviews give this a like if you liked it and I'll catch you in the next one