The all-silver front, rear, and base with subtle black highlights makes the Philips monitor look quite professional and refined. This monitor has speakers integrated into a grill at the bottom of the bezel and the left hand side of the monitor has a single USB port, a boon for those memory stick addicts out there.
The rear of the unit has VESA mounting points, and the base is removable with four small Philips-head screws neatly concealed behind a plastic cover. There is a Kensington physical lock port, audio in port, and headphone out port, USB input port, an IEC power socket, and both DVD-I and D-SUB video input ports.
The base has an excellent design allowing a relatively wide range of movement in most directions -- forward/backwards tilt, up/down to some degree, and a glide swivel which is a bit like a lazy susan under the round base cover.
Philips definitely has one of the better looking menu systems that is also easy to use. Display Mate showed very good contrast and the colours were also acceptable, however, blue at the higher end did tend to bleed. This is offset by the fact that all the colours appeared so bright and vibrant, almost leaping off the screen. Yellow was also very good.
Due to the excellent colours video playback was great, and the depth of field was very good. Some tearing occurred in the fast scenes and this was also reflected in the fast scenes within 3D Mark. It had one of the best pictures of all 11 monitors in this review, definitely putting it up there with the BenQ and the HP.
At AU$849 this monitor is certainly worth its money. The lack of portrait/landscape swivel is the biggest disappointment, but the performance is very good and the integrated speakers and USB combined with the refined professional look makes it a worthy display. Definitely put this one on the shortlist.
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Great monitor, clear graphics display.
Im running 2 computers in my room one running DVI and the other D-SUB, and i love the feature to be able to switch between the 2 displays!