Philips 40" 4K monitor BDM4065UC - a word of caution

Hardware Hub Other Hardware
1

Hello everyone,

I've recently succumbed to the 40 inch 4K frenzy and I purchased the Philips BDM4065UC (/00) monitor. This is an actual monitor, it's not a TV, it doesn't have a tuner.

The monitor is actually great, apart from a few issues. One of them is the pixel response time which produces a lot of ghosting, but that's something I can live with. The other issue is this strange color bleeding that's very visible on dark gray backgrounds, but also on any darker color.

Here's a picture I took:

BDM4065UC.jpg1200x800 145 KB

This is in my opinion horrible, and it's not something I can actually live with. The panel/monitor has a lot of quirks that I can adapt to or ignore, most of them are a result of the fact that the panel used is VA.

Coming from an S-IPS (Dell 3007WFP-HC) I wasn't really impressed by the color reproduction of the panel, but I was impressed about the dark inky blacks.

They say this is an 8 bit panel, but gradients are terrible on this display, like you find on 6 bit ones. And this is with the screen calibrated (i1 Display Pro). The lighter shades occupy a good part of the spectrum, ~70%, and the dark shades are all squished in the remaining 30%. That being said, even if gradients are not so great, games, movies, 4K images, look, at first, amazing. Some detail is lost in the darker scenes, but the inky blacks create a nice atmosphere. Also the sheer size helps a lot with immersion.

When it comes to entertainment, I think I very much prefer this over and IPS screen. But the moment you fire up Photoshop (or something similar), you get the problem you see in the above image. Even on the desktop, if you have a generally dark gray/color image, and opening a window, you can clearly see the bands that form above, below and even left and right, to a lesser extent.

It makes it really bad for any light design work (IPS is recommended here, I know) and it makes it bad even for coding or general office work.

What makes it worse, it's not a problem just with my sample. I've made a little research on the internet and the problem seems to affect all these BDM4065UC monitors.

I've presented the problem to PhilipsCare on twitter, I'm waiting for a solution. I'm a little surprised they didn't caught up to this by now. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In the mean time, I really feel that we should spread the word, and let people know that this is a serious issue since the Philips monitor is very well regarded, and no review makes note of any serious problems. And people are buying them like crazy. Me included.

Have a nice weekend!

2 Likes
2

Logan got the Phillips before the a399. We tried to warn everyone not to buy the Phillips.

The wasabi Mango uhd420 that I am reviewing soon has an ah ips panel and you should get that with our affiliate link so we earn a commission.

The a399 destroys the Phillips but the wasabi Mango uhd420 is what you are looking for.

3 Likes
3

@wendell

How would you compare the Wasabi Mango to the A399?

4

The wasabi Mango has freesync. It is 2 inches bigger. And heavier. It has a less bad edge shadow and a fist gen ips response time (read: relatively slow) but better response time than the a399 .

Real lg ips panel in bgr pixel config .

5

What is the frequency range on the Freesync of the Wasabi Mango?

6

42to 60 so far at 4k.

I can overclock 1080p to 120hz however. I haven't figured out how to enable freesync when I hack the edid however.

7

ok thanks for the information

8

I need to trade a 980ti for a fury x lol

9

Can't seem to find a seller for it in the UK. :(

10

@wendell Yes, in a few videos Logan warned about the Philips having some real issues, but never went into great detail why. Searching online and reading reviews, you'd think they covered everything, and you'd accept some of the issues of the VA Philips as somewhat acceptable, for the price that is.

This is somewhat of a public service announcement. The reviews don't even begin to cover as to how many problems the monitor has. Or their magnitude. I hope the picture above is worth more then a friendly warning.

11

@wendell Looked at the Wasabi Mango 42" video. Looks really good apart from the high(ish) gloss.

For everyone else, here's a video of the problem above and some other issues with the Philips monitor: http://youtu.be/ZnPrGXG_30o

Hopefully it doesn't violate forum rules too much. If so, you know what to do.

12

you have the PSD of this that you made? I can include it in testing. I can probably throw it together, but the problem may be better/worse depending on colors.
thanks

1 Like
13

Of these?

Download links
Stripes: http://i.imgur.com/rDAp3KV.jpg
Pattern 1: http://i.imgur.com/ZMcOtUY.png
Pattern 2: http://i.imgur.com/VA11rPF.png

1 Like
14

Here's one with many more stripes in PNG format:

stripes.png2560x1600 33.9 KB

15

Hi , through other tests and experiments; and different hardware combinations, I have found a unit, in my fleet that, during the tests (the specific tests you gave) does seem to have a similar affliction. However In previous every day use, that was not at all obvious and / or interfere with any of the applications I used, including gaming. Now I cannot make any deductions because there were at least 3 different rigs that drove the monitor in question.
In my recent discoveries (weird ones); many people had problems with the included cables of at least 3 different models; I never had; the difference : I am using on both a dp to mini pd passive adapter ?????????????
So, are the tests causing a ..possible resonance or cross-talk.............
My question is : in you use of the Philips, did you notice what you have brought-up has problems, in your use of the said monitor for different stuff. Were different cables or connection variables tested and with different rigs.

16

Well I sure hope it wasn't the AMH A409U... mine just arrived in the country. It will take a few days to get to me though.

I tested the Phillips and retested it in tens of combinations. Cables, OSes, graphics cards and so on. Because I wanted it to be a good monitor, I wanted to keep it.

DP is a digital interface. Digital signal corruption is very different from analog signal corruption. While analog signal problems cannot always be detected (only by observing the video or audio), there are checks in place so that a monitor will detect digital signal problems.

The problems exhibited by the Philips "look" more analog in nature. They're not analog, it's some kind of bad image processing going on. Possibly contrast/sharpness problems with something else on top. So whatever happens, it does so inside the monitor and not on it's way there, especially since the other points of possible failure were tested and retested.

17

Ok , just trying to synchronize my experiments with your results. and I am not questioning your results.
But the question remains, besides the testing, did your common use turn out ok ?
edit 1 = total agreement on the digital aspect; that is the reason for all my questions.

18

No, normal use wasn't always OK. It was fine with full screen movies. It was fine will full screen games. It is much harder to see these problems when you have a lot of things moving around at a fast pace on the screen.

But browsing the web, the problems were there, and others too, like text corruption (text was bleeding out to the right of the words in some situations). You must understand that my "common" use is development of apps/games and sometimes web. So I constantly need to use various IDEs (fancy text editors), Photoshop, Illustrator, Unity3D, Android Studio and so on.

And in my "common" use, these problems were very "common".

If I were just gaming and maybe watched movies/youtube all day, then I would've seen these problems very seldom.

19

OK , now we are in sync. the every day use was NOT OK. Browsing the Webb is a severe problem, and so is text corruption.and of course CANNOT go unnoticed.
Logically the rest will almost automatically screw-up !
edit 1 = these 2 items , to me are extremely important to everyday use.

20

So what's the monitor you've seen the issues on?