I’ve long been a big fan of ultrawide displays, and QD-OLED display tech has taken them to new heights and into the ranks of the best gaming monitors. With inky deep black levels, fast refresh rates, and a widened perspective, they’re hard to beat.
Super-ultrawide displays take things up a notch with an expansive 32:9 aspect ratio – and the Philips Evnia QD-OLED 49M2C8900 is one such example. I’ve been using this 5120×1440 OLED for a while, and it provides exceptional image quality across games and movies.
Impressive though it is, however, I’ve now reached a point where I’m casting wistful looks at the standard ultrawide in the corner of my room. Super-ultrawide monitors may be the epitome of immersive PC gaming for some, but I’m done with them for a while.
The light-not-so-fantastic
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One of the most intriguing features of the 49M2C8900 super-ultrawide is its Ambilight RGB feature.
This works in much the same way as Philips’ excellent Ambilight TVs do, casting patterns of light on to the wall behind the screen to match what’s happening on it and further increasing the sense of immersion.
As with other Ambilight Evnia monitors, the 49M2C8900 has several Ambilight modes to choose from, including ‘Follow Audio’ and ‘Follow Video’. The latter does a good job at capturing colors on screen accurately, and playing intense, fast-paced action titles such as Split Fiction while using it was mind-blowing at times.
However, in my experience, and on this model at least, this version of Ambilight can also be very inconsistent, with cases of random colors flashing on the rear even when there was a static image on screen.
I also found the 49-inch screen size to be a drawback for Ambilight. The screen is simply too wide and takes up such a significant amount of space on my desk that it’s hard to even notice the color shifts happening (even without my second monitor mounted on top).
I could also use that as a positive for the actual screen itself, as its brightness (when it’s not dimming every few minutes, which I’ll get into) was enough to make me forget the RGB lights were on – but then I could equally say that the RGB lights need to be brighter, too.
I’ve also found the OLED Auto Brightness Limiter (ABL) to be a problem. There’s a good reason for this feature to exist in OLED displays – namely, to help prevent them from overheating and burn-in, with the latter in particular being a big potential drawback to the display tech.
Unfortunately, the aggressive ABL on the Philips Evnia QD-OLED 49M2C8900 goes a bit too far: it kicks in regularly while gaming, and particularly when a large portion of the display gets bright.
This can easily pull you out of your immersion; Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best games to play when using HDR, thanks to the ray tracing tech available, but while I was able to enjoy the usual great contrast and colors an OLED screen provides, the constant brightness dimming proved distracting.
With my Alienware AW3423DWF, the same ABL disturbances occur, but only when using the HDR 1000 mode. That isn’t the case with this Philips Evnia display, as it dims in both SDR and HDR.
It was also an issue with the Asus 49-inch QD-OLED super ultrawide I tested, albeit it wasn’t this bad or noticeable, so I’m not sure if there’s a pattern with super ultrawides or if I just have the worst luck.
More is less
Don’t get me wrong, this Evnia monitor is fantastic in many ways and can give you the extra edge in both single-player and multiplayer titles, if you’ve got the hardware capable of playing at the 5120×1440 resolution. But whether it’s super-ultrawide fatigue on my part or just issues with the models I’ve tried, these behemoths are just not doing it for me right now.
It’s partly a space issue: they leave so little behind for other devices or components. With my 34-inch Alienware QD-OLED ultrawide I can still fit my laptop, Lian Li desktop PC large case, and speakers on my desk, but the 49-inch Evnia display leaves little to no room at all.
And then there’s the price – the Phillips model launched at $1,500 / £1,650, and though it’s now dropped a fair bit, if you can find it, there are better options in our best monitors guide for less.
Ultimately, I’ll stick with a standard ultrawide display for now – after all, you can have too much of a good thing.
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