Philips BDM4065UC 40" 2160p60 VA Monitor Review

[Zerreth]

My review is based on 2 Months heavy use for work and play and covers some things not mentioned in the in-depth TFTCentral review.
( Updated on 05 May 2015 to reflect Philips Software, GPU stability, VESA mounting & SCART to HDMI Retro console Gaming )

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The display has very thin bezels and is very pleasing to the eye. It has no adjustment at all but has a (weird format) 200mm vesa mount if you want more adjustment. If you're close to 190cm tall, then you shouldn't have a problem.

It has 4 real inputs: DisplayPort, Mini-DisplayPort, HDMI & HDMI-MHL. I understand why they went for the Mini-DP (thunderbolt mac connectivity) but I would have liked an included cable to full size DP. The HDMI is limited to 30Hz UHD btw.It also has a VGA port for some reason, and a serial jack port (cord included) that is sadly unused. (infrared control adapter & remote would be nice) If you're technically inclined you could control this display via this serial port. ( Please contact me if you have some sort of infrared/remote solution )

A 4-port USB3 hub is also present but a cable was not included. I never enjoyed this luxury in the past but there is something nice to having just one DisplayPort and USB3 cable going to your desktop.



VESA MOUNTING
 


 
 
The included stand is very basic and doesn't allow for any adjustment whatsoever. Luckily VESA mounting is an option, but for some inexplicably stupid reason they went with a 200x200 VESA format (which is non-existent in Desktop mounts) and decided to use m4 screws (which are used for desktop mounts but not TV mounts)
 
This means you'll actually have to buy an adapter plate to go from 50x50/75x75 to 200x200 and buy some screws and nuts in the hardware store. This will cost you around 10-15 euros. You'll need 4 recessed m4 screws and 4 normal m4 screws with a as large of a head you can find so they will grip to a m6 or m8 sized hole. you can buy metal washers to adapt it to bigger sizes, I bought m4 to m12 washers.
 

 
PANEL

The panel is of the VA type, has very high measured contrast even after calibration. (5000+) The backlight is very even and in a dark room it looks great. Blacks are deep and better than even IPS. Vertical viewing angles are also very good when watching movies from my bed. Although I would recommend rotating your display (yaw) to compensate for the Horizontal angles. This isn't IPS or OLED after all, but is way better than any TN I've seen.
The coating is Semi-Glossy, which allows for sharper details and more light to emit through. In Brightly lit rooms you'll see yourself as a blurred reflection, but for normal / moodly lit environments without a bright light directly behind you you should be fine.



Now the bad stuff: Out of the box the display is not uniform at all, with the center being way more bright than the edges. Luckily these are calibrated by Philips (Report sheet included) and stored in a profile called "SmartUniformity". So I'd suggest you set it to that mode immediately. But on 40" sitting 1m away, the corners are still somewhat darker because of the angle between your eyes and the display. A curved screen would fix this.

I've also found that on some content Artifacts might appear. It shows up as long vertical lines or block shapes when some content like black text on a gray background is present. Its hard to reproduce and only rears its head very rarely when browsing reddit in night mode theme. These lines/shapes have a slightly different tint to them than the content that's under it so it's not that noticeable.

Some slight ghosting may also appear on white/black transitions. (Think black cursor on white background.) Overall the response times are good and very usable for gaming.

There are also 3 negative points you might not even notice:

PWM brightness: on lower brightness settings you might notice that the display flickers. While I leave my brightness at 100%, you can work around this by controlling brightness via your Nvidia or AMD control panel.

Non Square Pixels: Each sub-pixel is actually thinner/taller, then doubled and packed next to eachother. Which causes content be be very slightly stretched width wise. This sounds way worse than it actually appears. I do 3D content and create concept art, and I don't notice it at all.

These subpixels are positioned to reduce Burn-in through Pixel Obiting. (can be disabled) This can lead to something I can only describe as a crosshatching or dithering effect when moving quickly between high contrast content. It only appears a fraction of a second so for the longest time I thought it was some rare ghosting or something. I'd like to see some high speed footage of this display in action.

SOFTWARE / HUD

The OSD is straightforward and is navigated via a 4 way POV stick on the back. Weirdly, the navigation is done by moving to the right, Sony XMB style, while the click function of the POV stick is reserved for turning the display on/off when held for a few seconds. The manual actually contradicts this where clicking should enter/activate menu items. Besides, there is a dedicated on/off switch next to the POV stick, so it seems somewhat redundant. There is also no way to turn of the power LED even tough the manual states that it should be in the OSD.



Philips SmartControl Premium

Philips SmartControl Premium Provided by Portait Displays is a buggy mess.
Sadly, most of the features don't work at all (Volume Control, PIP / BPB) and some settings aren't accessible via the software. Inputs are missing or mislabeled.
The Compatibility List on their website reveals that they are quite behind on the times. The software is also very slow and unresponsive. I've forwarded a bug report to them with all the issues I've found, hopefully they will be fixed via an update.
Use the exact version of the software provided on the supplied disk, Philips doesn't provide it via their website and getting it straight from the developer (Portait Displays) will yield very buggy results.
 
The concept is very cool : provide control over the display via software in Windows, so you wont have to fiddle with the OSD and hardware controls. It's kinda slow but usable, and the presets only saves color settings, not layout. It would have been very cool to save layouts and create desktop shortcuts to them. Similar to AMD's presets where I can simply switch via keyboard shortcuts & desktop shortcuts.


USEFUL 2160p EXPERIENCE
 
To me 2160p on a 28" monitor never made any sense. Windows is generally a bad experience as is, and to burden myself with scaling issues and not having actually more workspace seems like a really bad investment. Spending 750-800 € without having real benefits over "text is sharper" seems dumb. On top of that you would still need multiple if you want to get work done.

This monitor is the first monitor that seems worth it, and it really is like having 4x 20" 1080p screens without bezels. The space available to you is ENORMOUS. And I can honestly say that I never want to go back. Working on a 1080p 15" laptop feels like being thrown back into the stone age. (imagine working on a 17" 1024x768 monitor if you're used to 1080p) It still impresses me to this day how much better this is.

 

To my knowledge, there is only one other 40" UHD screen coming out this year and it's the Seiki Pro line, which uses the same panel but with a matte coating. But with that you'll also lose things like the PIP/PBP stuff. (which is really handy when playing Wii U or checking your serverPC) The Seiki lacks decent warranty support, factory calibration and more inportantly VESA mount. The Philips supports 4-way split by the way, so even if your card doesn't output DisplayPort 1.2 UHD60Hz, you can fill up the display via multiple connections. I really hope this monitor does well and wakes up the competition to release more monitors like this.

The size also makes for a wonderful movie viewing experience and can (over time) be retired to a TV setup. (it has included speakers that are somewhat usable)
 
GAMING PERFORMANCE
 

Quote

Intel i5-4670K @ 4.3 Ghz
Kingston HyperX Black 4x2GB DDR3-1600
AMD R9 290 4GB @ 950Mhz Core, 1200Mhz Memory, +100mV Core Voltage, +20% Power Limit
AMD R9 290 4GB @ 1100Mhz Core, 1100Mhz Memory, +100mV Core Voltage, +20% Power Limit
3x Samsung 840 EVO 240GB @ RAID0

 

Running games @ 2160p is doable if you're willing to do without some ultra settings and coasting between 40-60 FPS on the newest games. While some older ones like Borderlands 2 are perfectly fine running at maximum settings 60 FPS. Small HUD elements are a common problem, luckily having 40 inches of sheer space still makes everything readable. Of the games I play only Shadow of Mordor does it right & detaches world rendering from the UI rendering. So you can render the world @ 2560x1600 max settings and have all UI elements render @ 3840x2160 & properly sized.
 
You might say why don't you just run at max settings 1080p since it will be pixel doubled to 2160p ? My answer to this is the following comparison of Star Citizen 1080p vs 2160p.

The benefit of the clarity far outweighs the small difference in shadowmap resolution and I would gladly turn in some lighting detail / draw distance for sheer resolution. DSR users know what extra benefits higher rendering resolution also gets you. Textures use higher mip levels and you get more detail overall. (I wish games would implement a lod/mip bias setting, this really makes a big difference on vegetation for instance.)

 

GPU Woes

You might have noticed the underclocked GPU. When stressing it above 2560x1600 It would black screen on me or reduce the DisplayLink to 30Hz. So I had to take measures to make it stable again. Even though it has a massive aftermarket cooler on it with 2 Noctuas it still gets very hot. I'm keeping the hottest VRM at 82°C and core @ 70°C with fans on maximum. (Speedfan custom fan curve) Luckily I wear headphones so the full speed Noctuas aren't that audible. (still way quieter than stock cooler at regular speeds)

On my R9 290 I've found that when upping the resolution temperature rises significantly & stability takes a hit. The stability issue seems to be directly linked to the memory clock as lowering it to 1100 seems to keep it perfectly stable. (as opposed to crashing with a black screen) I could overclock my core just as if I'm running 1080p. As the memory clock goes down, so does the VRM temperature, while not significantly affecting performance.

I'm also nearing the 4GB VRAM cap for some games (COD:AW, Shadow of Mordor 3200x1800+, Star CItizen ) So an upgrade to a 390X 8GB might help with that.

Retro Gaming

While testing my RGB Scart to HDMI scaler I also found out that the monitor also cannot display NTSC correctly, this is not anything special since all modern monitors are really bad in supporting old signals but it is something of note to retro gaming aficionados. It seems to discard the Green and Blue channels. For Wii/Gamecube I recommend forcing PAL output.

CONCLUSION

PROS

- No Windows Scaling Needed with a nice 110PPI
- PIP & PBP options are awesome
- Superb Picture quality
- One of the highest contrast displays on the market with deep blacks (without crushing them)

 

MEH

- SmartControl Software allows for control over the display without resorting to the OSD settings (but can be slow & buggy)

- Cannot Display an NTSC signal (shows up as just the Red Channel + audio) ( Relevant for retro gaming consoles )

- Does not overclock beyond 60Hz (will display up to 80Hz, but introduces frame skipping, causing stutter)

CONS

- While the input lag is fine (9ms), certainly for a display at this size, some minor ghosting can be observed white to black.
- Artifacts can rarely appear on some content (this is unique to this display and is not a VA issue)
- PWM Backlight can cause noticable flicker at lower brightness settings for some users
- The size of the display means that the corners will appear darker because of the viewing angles when sitting close
- Semi Glossy finish can be a dealbreaker in very brightly lit environments
- Non square pixels
- Included stand is non-adjustable, 200mm VESA mount is uncommon and even more so with m4 screws at that size
- HDMI = 30Hz @ 3840x2160

- No settings per input separately

- No remote (RS232 input may prove useful for this ?)

- HDMI black level is not configurable on the monitor end, so you're stuck with a limited colour range ( usually 16-235 ) for devices that cannot manage it on their end.

- OSD is slow and cumbersome, the joystick navigation is just weird with right being confirm & pressing in == turning the screen on or off

 

While we wait for a wide refresh range GSync/Freesync 40" IPS 144hz UHD curved monitor this will do. There is currently nothing like it and it is in a league of its own. Even though I overpaid by 100 € because of limited availability and high demand, I would still buy it again within a heartbeat.

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this review then it is that UHD on anything smaller than 40" doesn't make sense. The Philips BDM4065UC is just big enough to allow for a comfortable 110 PPI. If it were any smaller then you'd have to deal with windows scaling. Don't settle for anything smaller, or just wait it out for more displays to come out at this size.
I now also own a 11" windows 10 tablet, scaling is a must on such a device ( 150% ) and I've already bumped against lots of apps that simply break with scaling. This solidifies my position even more that having any 4K monitor for windows smaller than 40" would be a very bad idea. At least for now.

[Tacitus]

Nice review! Very interesting monitor option which I'd get if only it were a little cheaper.

[Ghost]

I'm really considering this but the VA panel seems like a deal breaker for me. I will probably wait for an IPS 40", or just go with the current 32" models.

[csingh]

Thanks for the review

[georgespamme]

snip

What a great review!

 

In looking at UHD monitors on the market, I've gotten confused at why more monitors like this don't exist.  In fact, I started a thread about it here.  This review has helped to solidify my thoughts.

[ShadowCaptain]

What a great review!

 

In looking at UHD monitors on the market, I've gotten confused at why more monitors like this don't exist.  In fact, I started a thread about it here.  This review has helped to solidify my thoughts.

 

I think monitors of that size, at a typical desk distance is just too large.. FAR too large, 30 or 32" maybe, but 40" is just ridiculous, and requires lots of head movement etc

if I am playing a game I want to be able to see every corner without moving my head hence why I love 27" sized displays, if I want to sit further away from a large screen I will use my TV 

[georgespamme]

I think monitors of that size, at a typical desk distance is just too large.. FAR too large, 30 or 32" maybe, but 40" is just ridiculous, and requires lots of head movement etc

if I am playing a game I want to be able to see every corner without moving my head hence why I love 27" sized displays, if I want to sit further away from a large screen I will use my TV 

I agree with you for most games.  Obviously I've never tried one irl so this is all speculation, but certain non-competitive games like Skyrim might be really cool and immersive at this size as they would truly fill the field of view.  Outside of games though, this would be a great productivity monitor for some applications just for the sheer amount of stuff able to be seen at once (and without needing scaling).  It would be great for watching movies and videos for people who like to do that at their desk.  Also, it would feel incredibly cool to sit in front of a 40" monitor... like a command station I realize it may not be practical for a lot of users, but I think it does make sense in some cases.  I was curious as to why more 4k monitors above 28" don't exist.

[ShadowCaptain]

 I was curious as to why more 4k monitors above 28" don't exist.

 

yeah as I say pretty much because not many people want a monitor that size - and people that want a larger screen will get a big TV for couch gaming / movies etc

 

27" or even 30" - especially ultrawide - easily fill most of your vision 

[Tacitus]

I'm really considering this but the VA panel seems like a deal breaker for me. I will probably wait for an IPS 40", or just go with the current 32" models.

If you're using a 9xx series GPU then LG have a 42" 4k IPS TV with HDMI 2.0, it's also cheaper than this Philips monitor

[Zerreth]

I think monitors of that size, at a typical desk distance is just too large.. FAR too large, 30 or 32" maybe, but 40" is just ridiculous, and requires lots of head movement etc

I can comfortably play any game without having to turn my head. There is about 1m distance between my face and the screen. If you're sitting right against the screen with your keyboard touching the base than that's something else. But if you're considering this option, I would assume that you have a reasonably sized desk ? If the wife factor comes into play then I cannot help you

So here are your options:

- 30" UHD but you have to plant your face against the monitor to read anything or deal with shitty windows scaling.

- 40"+ UHD but using it at TV distance, again you'd have to resort to shitty windows scaling and you'd lose any real UHD benefit.

- Or use it as a sane person would and actually use the extra resolution and real estate and use it as a normal monitor, eliminating the need for a multi-monitor setup.

In the end of course it's personal preference, but just as there is a subset of the smartphone market that prefer phablets over smaller sized phones and tablets, there will be users that prefer this over small monitors and TVs.

If you're using a 9xx series GPU then LG have a 42" 4k IPS TV with HDMI 2.0, it's also cheaper than this Philips monitor

Before committing to the TVs I would check input lag, response times, etc, as TVs are usually really bad in this respect.

But yeah I think in a few years we'll have some really compelling options. Especially the curved ones

[ShadowCaptain]

I can comfortably play any game without having to turn my head. There is about 1m distance between my face and the screen

 

1 meter is pretty far away for a typical monitor set up, I can reach at full arms length and touch my 27" monitor - and 1440p is fine for scaling, if windows did hidpi like Apple does with OSX  then 4k would be fine on faller displays - I hope they can do that in the future

[Sihastru]

One "small" issue that affects all BDM4065UC monitors:

 

 

The image above is my own monitor, I've found others on the internet that confirm this is a widespread problem.

[Zerreth]

One "small" issue that affects all BDM4065UC monitors:

 

...

 

The image above is my own monitor, I've found others on the internet that confirm this is a widespread problem.

I've also found that on some content Artifacts might appear. It shows up as long vertical lines or block shapes when some content like black text on a gray background is present. Its hard to reproduce and only rears its head very rarely when browsing reddit in night mode theme. These lines/shapes have a slightly different tint to them than the content that's under it so it's not that noticeable.

Yup. But it only shows up on specific content like the long colored bars on a gray background you have up in Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, this is an issue, but it honestly only shows up once in a blue moon. The first time I saw it I was freaked out too. Considering all pros & cons, I'm still very happy with mine. The only panel that got me a little bit interested is the freesync capable wasabi mango, but I'm gonna stick with mine until freesync is the dominant standard and nvidia supports it too, and a 40" 20-70Hz freesync display is available with the same colors & black levels as the Philips.

[Sihastru]

Hey, I liked the Philips very much, that's why I bought one. My issue is that the panel doesn't have an intrinsic problem because it's a VA. Other VA monitors are fine. It's a firmware issue and I think Philips isn't interested in fixing it. Also I find it a bit concerning that no other review even mentioned any of these issues.

 

For example, messing around with the contrast and sharpness settings will, in some combinations, make the visual artifacting be more or less prominent. I do a lot of coding and Photoshop work, developing Android apps and games, and the problems were too distracting for me. Even in Premiere there were problems. I guess I was spoiled in the past, having a 30" S-IPS Dell 2560x1600.

 

Here's a video I made, where I discovered other issues with the monitor:

 

In the description there are download links to the images used as test patterns, and also links to a few forum posts that replicated these issues.

 

For games, youtube, tv series and movies the monitor is impressive. The blacks are so very deep that sometimes I had a hard time telling that the monitor was still on. And the fact that you can make the "wall of light" very dim means that you can use it for coding and reading text without too much eye strain. Even the PWM backlight wasn't affecting me in any way that I could tell. The glossy-ness was a bit too high for my taste but I was adjusting to it very nicely.

 

But I just couldn't get over those other issues. And I think people should know about them and make their own minds about getting one of these or not.

 

I made the decision to return mine and get my money back. And I have to tell you, after a few days with 40 inches of 4K awesomeness, I feel that my 30" monitor is really small now.

[achohan]

VV

[achohan]

Yup. But it only shows up on specific content like the long colored bars on a gray background you have up in Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, this is an issue, but it honestly only shows up once in a blue moon. The first time I saw it I was freaked out too. Considering all pros & cons, I'm still very happy with mine. The only panel that got me a little bit interested is the freesync capable wasabi mango, but I'm gonna stick with mine until freesync is the dominant standard and nvidia supports it too, and a 40" 20-70Hz freesync display is available with the same colors & black levels as the Philips.

If you connect any source like PS4 or a 1080p source to this monitor, does it upscale it to 4K automatically? 

I have a Sony STR-DN850 receiver that is 4k capable (has hdmi 2.0), Now if I connect PS4 to this monitor via receiver and my receiver upscales the content to 4k, would I be able play games at 60fps on the monitor? I know monitor has hdmi 1.4 which does only 4k 30hz.

 

 

Other option is I can turn off scaling on the receiver but I am not sure how 1080p content is scaled on this 4k screen by the monitor, just want to make sure it fills the screen.

 

I have PC, Xbox One and PS4 but want to make sure I can use with consoles as well without any issues. Thanks in advance!

[Zerreth]

...

oh sure you can configure the scaling to be 1:1 (1920x1080 centered in 3840x2160) or you can put it in any corner via PBP (Picture by Picture), scale it down and float it over another source via PIP (Picture in Picture) or stretch it full screen. The scaler is pretty good, as it can also take the 2 4K inputs and scale them to 1080 in the PBP to have 4 inputs visible on the screen. Note that the scaler does not do any processing of the image fed to it, so 1080p on a 40" will still be blurry just because of how big it is when sitting close.

BUT

The display will not take a 4K 60Hz input over HDMI. It will only do 4K60 via DP. So either hook your PS4 directly to the monitor or find a HDMI2 to DP cable.

[Zerreth]

Holy shit, that pink one is really bad.

I'm trying to replicate the pink example over here, but mine doesn't do it.

/EDIT: ok I've got it to trigger, but the conditions need to be just right, I'll post my findings in a minute...

PS: also doing coding, photoshop, 3d work here for games So our usage is pretty similar.

[Zerreth]

COLOR TEST

PATTERN TEST

So the conditions for the color bleeding are as follows:

- It needs to be a very large surface in 1 solid color, preferably maxed out in channels R, G, B, R&G, R&B or G&B with the remaining channels being 0. The bigger the contrast, the more chance it will bleed.

- When bleeding occurs, it will show up most in areas with neutral luminosity and texture alongside the x or y axis of said large surface.

- When using the pattern from hell, you monitor will cry. (horizontally)

In any sane and normal workloads, you will *almost* never see or encounter this "color bleeding".

[achohan]

oh sure you can configure the scaling to be 1:1 (1920x1080 centered in 3840x2160) or you can put it in any corner via PBP (Picture by Picture), scale it down and float it over another source via PIP (Picture in Picture) or stretch it full screen. The scaler is pretty good, as it can also take the 2 4K inputs and scale them to 1080 in the PBP to have 4 inputs visible on the screen. Note that the scaler does not do any processing of the image fed to it, so 1080p on a 40" will still be blurry just because of how big it is when sitting close.

BUT

The display will not take a 4K 60Hz input over HDMI. It will only do 4K60 via DP. So either hook your PS4 directly to the monitor or find a HDMI2 to DP cable.

Thank you for the reply.  Scaling 1:1 is also a good feature.

 

I think I am going to check both upscaling by my sony receiver(30hz) and upscaling of the monitor (which is next to negligible). If there is no difference then I will keep it else I will end up waiting, I am really pissed to why this monitor does not have HDMI 2.0 since if its important for lot of things. If the scaling of 1080p display to 4k by monitor = 4k scaling by receiver then I will for sure keep it since most of the 4k stuff if I ever stream will be from the pc and not any other source. But damn this is annoying if you want to use your receiver.

 

That actually sounds like a great idea if I can find the cable HDMI2 to DP but I really doubt my receiver will do any better scaling than the monitor.

 

 

http://www.bizlinktech.com/industries/detail.aspx?Type=100&CId=1&Id=158&R=1

Looks like the adapter is already in the works and it will be made eventually so I guess this will be a good option to get 4k 60hz via receiver only if receiver actually does a good job at upscaling.

[Tech_Dreamer]

their monitor design is superb , wasn't expecting such a beautiful monitor, the review was awesome by the way ,

[achohan]

I got the monitor today, paid 1k with taxes. Holy!!! Its super amazing!!!! Blown away. I tried ps4 and xbox one with it and it scales really well (monitor scaling is spot on). Good job there philips. Also I am running GTX 670 SLI and I am able to run mad max at ultra settings (anistropic filtering - off) @4k 60fps, same with GTA 5 (High settings and AF - off) @4k 60fps. Loving it so far, got no complaints. I also calibrated it using ICC profile from TFTCentral. This is so worth upgrading. Multitasking is ease with this monitor. 

Highly Recommend!!!

[TheBestFakeWords]

 

I understand why they went for the Mini-DP (thunderbolt mac connectivity) but I would have liked an included cable to full size DP

I bought this monitor a couple of weeks ago, mine did include a full size DP cable so that might've changed.

I also had to change the DP version to 1.2 since it was set to 1.1 out of the box, I couldn't run it in 60Hz 2160p and it took me WAY to long before I realized that was the problem.

I wish the connections would've been on the right hand side of the monitor though since that is usually where I have the computer, I bought a 1m Usb 3 Male B - Male A cable but that was to short and didn't reach my computer even though its right next to the monitor.

 

Great review overall, nice work!

[Zerreth]

Some extra findings: 3840x2160 will NOT carry over 5m, I couldn't even get 2560x1440. So I'm stuck with my 2m cables then...
Still working on my setup. Trying to find a solution to control it via the Serial RS232 port since I hate the SmartControl Software & the Display OSD.

http://imgur.com/ZEtR3vj

[PuSHiSLaND]

I just clicked buy for this monitor on amazon (w/ linus tech tips affiliate code) and should see it arrive on Tuesday.