Philips 240PW9

Anyone with a serious aversion to TN panels is sure to have their eye on the Philips 240PW9. It features an IPS panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and a response time of 5 ms, which, on paper at least, should make it faster than the Dell U2410.

DVI, VGA and an intelligent stand

There’s no HDMI socket, just VGA and DVI ports, and this is understandable given that the 240PW9 is aimed at professional users rather than consumers. A height-adjustable stand mounted on a rotating base makes this 24-inch Philips monitor comfortable to use. The cherry on the cake is that it even has a portrait mode, which is great for viewing a whole web page or an A4 document without having to scroll down the page.

Responsiveness: reverse ghosting


Philips seems to be somewhat haunted by those pesky reverse ghosts. These are ghost images that appear in the complementary colours of the actual moving objects (hence the term 'reverse'), and which make the screen feel even less responsive than a monitor designed exclusively for office computing. As a result, this display is definitely not suitable for gaming. In fact, even in basic office computing tasks, you’ll still notice some reverse ghosting if you look closely enough.

Coloured   Transparent
Average ghosting over ten frames

It’s a real shame too, as without the ghosting this monitor could be really good for gamers thanks to a low lag time that would be perfect for multiplayer gaming.
 

Colours need recalibrating

Default colours

Ideal colours Compare the GD245HQ to other LCD monitors in our product Face-Off

Given that this monitor is being marketed to image-industry professionals, you’d expect the colour reproduction to be flawless. Unfortunately, our sensor told us otherwise. The colours are inaccurate, and the sensor picked up several small faults including a deltaE of 4.2 that’s impossible to correct via the internal menu. Other problems include a noticeable blue tinge to certain grey shades and a red undertone to some other hues. Trying to correct one problem just seems to make the other worse, so the only way to set things right is with a colour calibration profile.

Some will be bothered by the rather blinding brightness level (see below), but this can thankfully be adjusted via the internal menu without impacting calibration profile. In other words, you can fiddle about with the brightness as much as you like without having to worry about it messing up your nicely corrected colours.

As mentioned above, you might find yourself reaching for your sunglasses with the 240PW9, as tests showed the brightness to be way too high at 320 cd /m². The contrast is a mere 650:1, which is well below the average of 850:1. It will, however, remain constant if you don’t go lower than 100 cd/m². We’d advise anyone who prefers low-lit screens to switch straight to Power Saving mode.


Decent picture quality in films


Thanks to its 1:1 mode, this monitor can display 1080p sources such as Blu-ray discs with no need for upscaling. You’ll see a black strip at the top and bottom of the screen, but the actual picture will be perfectly displayed in its original format. Another nice surprise is the quality of SD (576p) video playback. We’re more than used to being bombarded with digital snow in the low-quality upscaling usually found in monitors, but with the 240PW9 there’s no such granular noise and the upscaling actually works quite well. It’s still not as good as TV upscaling, but it’d be nice to see other monitors upscaling as well as this.