So I’ve got a bit of a story about the Philips Evnia 34M2C6500 before I go into my review. I bought one from Amazon and it cost me just under £600. Fantastic price by the way and I’ll say now if you see one as cheap as this again, buy it. It’s a bloody wicked monitor, but we’ll get into that. Anyway… I bought one, it arrived. I set it up, and I played the new Call of Duty on it and everything was absolutely fantastic. I loved it for gaming. However I wasn’t so sure on it for my productivity. I use OBS a lot in my content here on YouTube and having an ultrawide panel and recording at 21:9, trying to make it fit into a 16:9 video for YouTube just looked odd. Anyway, I sent it back. I wasn’t 100% on it and when you’re not 100% on something, then it’s a lot of money to justify. I’m not rich by any stretch and so back to 16:9 I went with the monitor setup you can see behind me.
However, Philips got in touch didn’t they and they wanted to send me one, hence why I’m making this video now, but I also wanted to see one again because my god, gaming on this thing is just breathtaking. I absolutely love OLED, and I absolutely love ultrawide. And if it wasn’t for YouTube and my content creation I would 100% have one on my desk right now. Anyway, that’s the story behind the screen, let’s crack on with the review.
Design
The Philips Evnia 34M2C6500 is a 34-inch ultrawide OLED panel that can produce a resolution of 2560 x 1440p and has a refresh rate of 180Hz. It’s touted as being DisplayHDR True Black 400 certified but HDR isn’t the best here. It’s got an 1,800R curve which is definitely more than enough to hit your peripheral vision and keep you well-immersed in the content you are watching, and for gaming, this is definitely a huge benefit when playing single-player story-driven titles like the new Indiana Jones game, but more on that in a moment.
The bezels are a little wider than I would have liked but still in a darkened room you don’t really notice them too much, and the stand below it is a nice grey material, following suit of other Evnia models we’ve seen with the recycled plastic marble effect type. It’s just darker than the other screens we’ve seen. Likewise with the rear, is a much darker grey than other Evnia panels out there, which okay doesn’t affect the overall usage of the panel, but it’s nice enough. The stand is pretty chunky with a heavy clip that holds it together. It’s overall quite a stylish-looking monitor, though maybe not as suited to a white-themed setup as some of their other Evnia models.
Underneath you can find several inputs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0 ports. You’ve got a headphone out, a USB 3.2 hub with a USB upstream and two USB downstream. One also has fast charge capabilities for phones and laptops and other devices. No video through USB from laptops though.
Datacolor Spyder & Response Time Tests
Before I go into my testing results I just want to say wow. This Philips monitor is probably the best screen we’ve had on the table ever. I mean the results achieved here were nigh-on-perfect. Not quite 100% and you’ll see but my goodness it’s come close. Anyway, enough of me fan girling over the screen, let’s talk about some results. The Colour gamuts came back strong with 100% sRGB, 95% AdobeRGB, 98% P3 and finally 93% NTCS colour gamuts. I mean already just look at those numbers. If we push into colour accuracy then again be shocked because this EVNIA screen hit an average of 0.73 on a Delta-E and a maximum of 1.72. So even that maximum Delta-E is pretty much spot on compared to some screens we’ve seen in the past.
For its brightness and contrast, the EVNIA achieved a contrast ratio of 8,720:1 at 100% brightness. However, knock this brightness down to 75% and we saw a contrast ratio of 13,540:1 which was astounding. The white point sat at 6,400 which again was great to see and colour uniformity was super balanced across the entire panel at 50% brightness, with I suppose its dark spot hitting in the bottom right corner at 0.6 but oh no, what a shame that is. Look, there’s literally nothing wrong with this score at all and even at 100% brightness, there was still nothing really to comment on except maybe an outlier in the bottom middle, but nothing again shocking at all. Luminance uniformity was pretty much dead on again, with I suppose a bit of imbalance on the left-hand side of the panel at a 50% brightness, but again these numbers thrown back are nothing to be concerned about. Did we just win the panel lottery? Of course, this could be just this panel proving great, but it’s what I’ve got to comment on, and saying this, I mean my sentiment still stands. Wow.
For its grey-to-grey response time, I got back a measurement using the OSRTT tool of 1.23 which I must say is pretty astounding if you ask me. This was while having Adaptive Sync and Low Input Lag both switched on. This was also equally as impressive, as the refresh rate being 175Hz during the test, sat comfortably within this window at around 86% of the time on the panel I have here. In terms of RGB Overshoot, the Philips Envia panel here performed brilliantly, with an average error coming in at 1.63, but the wort error coming in at 9. If you look at the chart above it though there is really nothing going wrong here and all is looking almost perfect.
OSD
In terms of the menu settings on offer, everything is pretty simply laid out, with your image presets being on the first tab, and more focussed gaming features on the second tab. These include turning on and off your adaptive sync technology, which on the Philips Evnia 6500 ranges between XX and XXHz. There’s a crosshair you can turn on if that’s your thing and also a setting to turn low input lag mode on too. Apart from those, most of the other settings are pretty normal. You’ve got your settings for Ambiglow, which unfortunately here is a little lacklustre, and you’ve got some audio settings for volume and some system settings. There is also no overdrive mode for this monitor. Because it uses OLED technology, there is really no need for it as the panel performance is ever so impressive anyway without it. And as Philips has stated, this panel is ClearMR 9000 certified which is another testing method used over MRPT to measure blur, running a UFO ghosting test shows that no ghosting is really taking place which is fantastic to see. and great when it comes to gaming performance too.
I do want to quickly mention as well that this screen has some relatively lovely panel care options as it’s an OLED panel, and these are designed to reduce burn-in as much as possible, by shifting the image ever so slightly thanks to its pixel orbiting and pixel refresh settings. I had these both switched on, and also a warning switched on to perform a complete panel refresh from time to time. I know OLED are susceptible to burn in and depending on how long your screen is on for you may notice it quicker than others, and there is warranty protection here, but do keep those settings switched on and pay attention to the warnings and reminders, just to keep your panel as nice as possible.
Gaming & Media
For gaming though, this thing is insane and picture quality in pretty much everything I threw at it was just absolutely awesome. Let me start by talking about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle because I’ve only just downloaded it and from what I’ve seen in the previews, it looks absolutely great and I thought what better game to test the OLED capabilities of this screen? And also because the game has an anamorphic cinematic setting and because this is an ultrawide monitor, there was no black bars on either side of the game which made it feel really immersive. I only played through the first opening Raiders section of the game, and then slightly into mission 2 where you’re in the university with the storm going on outside, but the jungle looked super luscious and the lighting coming through the trees looked really sharp and striking. Colours here absolutely popped and the inky blacks helped with the contrast ratio.
I moved on to test some Path of Exile 2 and this game was so dark in the opening moments that I had to turn the ISO up significantly on my camera to capture it, but that does say something about the quality of this monitor. It was absolutely still playable for me, and it looked fantastic. Everything looked nice and sharp and the colours again popped, especially when there was a red flame on the screen. The text also looks really sharp too, and in a 21:9 aspect ratio, I could see quite a lot of real estate on the map.
And finally, because I play this game a hell of a lot, I jumped into some Overwatch 2 to give that test, and I must say again being the type of game that it is, relying on a more cartoony aesthetic and again having the extra real estate of the 21:9 is great, but being a competitive title it does loose that edge because you’ve got so much more space to watch, but it did still absolutely pop and the colours looked fantastic.
Watching content on YouTube and on Netflix also produces quite a stunning image, especially when it comes to colour reproduction. Take note though that pretty much 99.999% of content is made for 16:9 screens so expect black bars on either side of your content.
Conclusion
Hands down, the PHILIPS Evnia 34M2C6500 Ultrawide Gaming Monitor is my favourite gaming monitor I’ve seen so far, and yes while refresh rates on OLED screens are getting better all the time, price to performance-wise with this panel, there’s really nothing better on the market right now., that I know of. Of course tell me I’m wrong in the comments, and let me know which panels I should be looking at. From the way it looks, to its panel performance, to the fact it’s an immersive ultrawide screen, there’s really nothing I can say to bad mouth this monitor… no, nothing at all really. Find out more on the Philips website.
