Philips BDM4065UC/00 UHD 40-Inch Monitor (16:9, 3840 x 2160)

Firstly, this monitor appears to be almost in a category of its own, inasmuch as it's a 4K monitor that can be run full-resolution without the text being miniscule. I bought this to replace a 27" Dell (2560x1440) LCD panel that, whilst a good screen, was getting on a bit and I felt that the backlight was beginning to dim. I only received the Philips yesterday, so these are first impressions, and as I haven't yet borrowed a calibration spider, I won't comment on the colour profiles as I'm just using the native (SRGB) profile which seems pretty good.The monitor itself is of a really nice design: a very slim bezel and fairly shallow profile, with a large metal stand that's pretty minimalist (and stylish to my eyes). One slight annoyance is the location of the inputs - off to the left hand edge of the screen (as you view it) which means that you may need longer cables than those supplied. Also, the on/off switch is a little awkward to get to - but, if you're anything like me, the screen will be powered all the time and simply set to 'display sleep' when not in use. Accessing the settings of the screen involves a little, fiddly joystick like thing, again located in a slightly awkward spot. Not sure why they couldn't have designed this to have a few regular buttons down by the Philips logo, but I would imagine that once set, you're unlikely to need to mess with the settings much anyway.In terms of experience so far, I've connected this to two machines - a 2012 Apple Mac Mini and a 2015 13" Macbook Pro Retina. Both have Displayport/Thunderbolt outputs (v1.1 in the Mini and v1.2 in the Macbook) plus also HDMI. Let's start with the Macbook. It drives this screen beautifully at full resolution - and simultaneously with the built-in LCD. It also seems reasonably smooth for scrolling & exposé type things, although be sure to set the display to use DP1.2 rather than the default of DP1.1 in order to get 60Hz display mode. With the Mac Mini, I couldn't get it to drive the panel at full resolution, even though it does appear to be capable of it. You basically see a lot of strange distortion on the lower half of the screen, although only after a brief full-image. Odd). It does work beautifully at 2560x1440x60Hz though. I also tried HDMI on the Mini and it works, but to be honest if you have the choice, go with DP.Tip: If you are thinking of running a 4K display with a Mac, seek out SwitchResX, a little add-in utility that enables you to tweak display settings and more (including being able to set up saveable desktop arrangements which will be very useful should you alternative between a connected and an 'on-the-road' laptop arrangement).Note that you will need to buy a mini DP->normal (or mini-)DP cable if you want to connect either Mini or Macbook via Displayport. This isn't included, although a regular DP->DP cable is. You can, of course, connect via HDMI, but that will restrict your max resolution.Compared to the Dell, the display is MUCH brighter and blacks are proper black rather than a dark grey. I do notice a faint electrical buzz from the display as I write this, but it's not a concern really, but I will keep an eye on that. The biggest thing to note is, ahem, the biggest thing: the screen is pretty massive for use on a regular desk - see my pic, which actually doesn't do that great a job of conveying the size. It's huge. In a good way, but you will probably have to reshuffle things around if you previously had a fairly busy desk with a smaller screen.So, whilst it is just a day since I installed it, I am pretty pleased with it, and though I could arguably deduct for the input ergonomics, I won't, as the quality of the display and the sheer scale and extent of the 'real estate' make up for it. Recommended!

UPDATE 2016-04-04: THIS MONITOR SUFFERS FROM A WEIRD BUG WITH SOME LARGE COLOR PATTERNS. See youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPrGXG_30o for details. People are reporting that it affects *ALL* monitors of this model (I can confirm mine is affected), and there is no known fix or workaround. It is not noticeable in most normal usage scenarios, and in fact, I only realized this was happening after being sent a link to the above video, despite using the monitor daily for 8 months. However, if you accidentally come across some of the (rare) graphics that trigger this, the effect is *not* subtle. As a result, THIS MONITOR IS NOT SUITABLE FOR COLOR CRITICAL WORK, OR ANYTHING THAT INVOLVES DISPLAYING GRID PATTERNS OR LARGE PATCHES OF SATURATED COLOR. I have downgraded my rating from 5 stars to 4 stars because of this issue.ORIGINAL REVIEW (2015-07-26):While this monitor is not perfect, at £610 for 40" UHD it is priced so aggressively that it's almost a non-brainer. Hence the 5 stars.I would recommend anyone interested in this monitor to check out the extremely detailed TFT Central review: tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/philips_bdm4065uc.htm I have a color sensor myself (Eye-One Display Pro) and my measurement results are similar to the ones showed in the TFT Central review. Other reviews arrived at similar results as well. This seems to indicate that there is little variance between units, which is good as it reduces uncertainty.Here's my personal impressions after two weeks:- Pro: the size is perfect for a UHD monitor. 40" 2160p means 110 DPI (pixel density), which is quite typical. For example it is equivalent to 1600p on a 27". As a result it is possible to use this monitor at typical desk distance (1 meter) without having to enable text scaling, which is very nice. It certainly makes way more sense than some other monitors such as the ASUS PB279Q (27" UHD), which is way too small for its resolution and therefore requires the user to sit absurdly close to take advantage of it. Furthermore, at the time of this writing, the BDM4065UC sits unchallenged in its category - all other monitors top out at 32", which still requires scaling for comfortable use in UHD. As a result the size really is the "killer feature" of this monitor.- Pro: the contrast ratio is jarring - it can reach 5500:1 (~4300:1 after calibration), which is record-breaking (and that's measured *static* contrast ratio, not dynamic). This is thanks to its in-house VA panel. As a result, blacks *do* appear black, as opposed to e.g. IPS panels limited to ~1000:1 CR. This makes this monitor very good at playing video - which is not surprising since the panel is primarily used in Philips TVs.- Pro: despite the VA panel, the monitor is quite fast and, most importantly, it can achieve these speeds without any overshoot, which is remarkable.- Con: the lack of adjustable stand really is the biggest weakness of this monitor. This is unforgivable for a monitor of this size because it has to be finely adjusted (especially height) to fully cover the user's field of view, otherwise it requires too much neck/eye movement, especially when one has to look at the bottom edge. Fortunately this can be fixed by using a standard VESA stand, but watch out for weight limits - the monitor is 8.5kg which surprisingly few VESA stands are able to withstand.- Con: despite what TFT Central wrote, on my unit the uniformity leaves a little to be desired (even with SmartUniformity enabled) - the biggest problem on my unit is that the bottom half of the screen has slightly more blue than the upper half, which means that white appears colder at the bottom of the screen (~6300K at the bottom versus ~6600 K at the top). Measurements show a dE2000 of about ~1.8 on white on the bottom half relative to the top half (calibrated to 6500K with SmartUniformity enabled), which is not much but in practice can be noticed on large patches on white, such as a white background web page. I think it's the large size of the screen that exacerbates the problem, but I'm not sure. In any case I can only notice it on large blank page - it's invisible in other types of content. That said, because of this issue I would advise caution to anyone planning to use this monitor for color-critical work.- Con: the monitor accurately covers the sRGB/BT.709 gamut, but nothing else. It doesn't even try to cover DCI-P3 or BT.2020. This means that the monitor is not quite future-proof - it likely won't be able to accurately reproduce the colors of native UHD content mastered in one of these extended gamuts (but note that such content doesn't even exist yet). However, the relatively small price of the monitor makes this less of an issue, as it's not that much of an investment.- Con: no 120Hz, no G-Sync/Freesync, no strobing backlight (motion blur reduction). You can't have it all :(- Slight con, bordering on nitpicking: Philips claims that one of the USB hub ports at the back is a "fast charge" port. That's completely false: using a USB power meter one can easily confirm that none of these USB ports are able to output more than the "normal" 0.5A, even when using a "fast charge" (i.e. shorted data pins) cable.Note: the only way to use that monitor at UHD@60Hz is through DisplayPort 1.2 - HDMI 2.0 is not supported as this monitor came out before that was even a thing. That's not a problem if you're planning to use this with a PC as most recent GPUs have a DP1.2 output.Note: the monitor supports native 24p (in UHD), if you happen to be interested in that. I've verified using a light sensor and an oscilloscope that the monitor really *is* displaying 24 frames per second (as opposed to "cheating" through 3:2 pulldown).