Philips 499P9H 49 Inch UltraWide Monitor Review - How Wide is Too Wide?

I’ve been updating my setup little by little and this time I wanted to share with you a review of a monitor I got a few months ago. This is the Philips 499P9H, a 49 Inch UltraWide Monitor, with 32:9 aspect ratio aimed at productivity instead of gaming. In the video we do the unboxing and I go through it’s features and talk a little about the things I like and don’t like, from the point of view of a developer, to help you make a decision if this is the right monitor for you, in case you are looking for something similar.
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[@basam2018]

Thank you for this review! much appreciated!

[@rroca]

Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it

[@marachini]

Obrigado pelo review! 👏👏👏

[@openbabel]

These are productivity montors.They are recommended for the visually impaired upto 43 inches and business. The sweet spot for technical innovation is still around 34-36 inches.Presumably because of low sales volumes and expensive production costs.Please note that you really only see upto around 35 inchines at a time the outerproportion is really a stretching exercise to get more screen realestate. The high price will make it even more expensive when it dawns on you that you need to match it with a high priced graphics card and possibly a new system to support it....

[@JortLuijtelaar]

About the KZbin videos you can use theater mode to avoid this problem with the black bars. Also (KZbin) video's in 32:9 will show full screen video. I am working in finance and got it for working at home and in my case it is the best. it's really easy to scroll through files, and compare values. Also it let me switch between my desktop/laptop easily using the KVM, so I do not need to switch my keyboard, mouse, internet cable, Audio interface. Some things you might wanna get used to (at least for Windows) to drag your applications to the side to make the 50/50 split, rather than dragging them to the upper side. Also when switching from 2 monitors to one, you might notice your application will open full window mode if you had them full window on the 2 monitor set up. but these two items are really minor things. The SSD issue you might have of the limited power on the USB-dock, I know I had some issues with multiple USB-devices in the dock (like an additional (unpowered) USB-hub), but now with my powered USB-hub it works perfectly. I use the built in camera for zoom calls and have a dedicated microphone for calls, but the built in one does its job. I have only little experience with the split screen (2 devices at the same time) but when I used it, it seems to work fine.

[@rphenixx]

The Panel itself is nice text is crisp no pixel issues, same with stand too bad about the rest. The camera as you mentioned isn't the best. Its more than grainy in a dimly lit room and something I really notice on video calls. I can hear an electronic noise when its quiet while it charges a laptop (any laptop). USB-PD charging is a little flaky, leave a laptop connected after sleep/wake you will find your battery depleted till you unplug/re-plug it in again to get it to charge a bit annoying. Software side is very weak - worst of any expensive panel I've encountered. For a productivity monitor it would have been great to have split screen over single input but nope... Also no firmware updates available makes you feel like Phillips abandoned the monitor. For productivity I personally would replace this with two smaller 27" Dell U2723QE's that support 2x 4K via USB-C as the monitors support MST and daisy chaining support so a single USB-C cable to your workstation/laptop.

[@rroca]

That Dell you mention or the 32 inch variant of that is the exact thing I'm considering to replace this one. My main issue is bad eyesight and the resolution not being as good as a regular 4K-5K monitor

[@dbbits]

got another subscriber! Great honest review! If in need of a DBA, let me know! Cheers!

[@rroca]

Thanks!! Glad you found the review helpful :)

[@michaelparti5244]

Thanks for the comments about using this with poor eysight.

[@rroca]

You're welcome!! My eyes got a bit worse actually since publishing this review a few years ago, If I were to add anything to it would be that I really can't actually use it in it's native resolution anymore without using accessibility zoom features of macOS. I think a sharper monitor with 16:9 aspect ration would probably be better but I'm not in the mood yet to try to sell this and get something else

[@self.medicate]

Will we get full resolution on the M2 MacBook Air? Also, which cable are you using to connect the monitor to your computer?

[@rroca]

Hi! You should get full resolution on the M2 Air considering I was getting it on an M1 Mac mini, I think your Air supports a monitor up to 6K. I'm using the USB-C to USB-C cable that came with the montor

[@lattelover7186]

Thanks for the review. I'm in progress comparing between samsung curve 43 inch and this 49 inch phillips for productivity purpose. Both have the same price range. Just like you i also have problem with my sight, tho i can still read fine if i zoom screen text a bit more. Does 49 is too wide so it can cause neck pain?

[@rroca]

So, I have not experienced any neck pain at all, but I do think that 43 inches might be better for vision, specially if the pixel density is higher and resolution makes things bigger. To be perfectly honest, I'm even considering whether an Apple Studio Display (27 inches, 16:9) will be better than any ultra wide, but I have to spend some time with a friend's one first before dumping so much money on something that might not work also. But considering the 2x rendering and the pixel density, it might be the way to go for me. Anyway, that's a super expensive display that is not in the same range, but all I'm saying is, one or two 27 inch 4k monitor(s) might be better for visibility than an ultra wide

[@lattelover7186]

@@rroca Thank you. I was about to choose 43, the horizontal resolution seems not wide enough. So I decided to buy phillips 49 to get more screen real estate for productivity. I'm quite satisfied, tho i can't go too far from the monitor to get the text readable comfortly. Regarding Apple Studio Display yeah it's superexpensive and unfortunately out of my budget this moment.

[@funkyworm01]

Will your Mac mini fit inside the footprint of the monitors stand ? Also any idea what’s the max height of the screen fully extended ?

[@rroca]

Hey! Unfortunately no, like, it can physically fit without cables but the back of the base gets in the way of the connectors and cables, I've eventually put the Mac Mini to the right side of the base. About max height, the bottom part of the monitor would be 20cm / 7.5in from the desk and the very top of the monitor about 55 cm / 21.5 in.

[@funkyworm01]

That’s amazing information thank-you as I’m trying to plan my new set up … This was amazing helpful.

[@aniruddhavyas2837]

Hi Rodolfo, can you tell the dimensions of your desk and the exact dimensions of monitor in INCHES, I am planning to buy this but my desk width is 48 inches and I am not sure how much it will extend outside my desk. A quick reply will be helpful as there is a sales going on and I don’t want to loose it..:)

[@rroca]

Hey, just saw your comment, my desk is 63 inches (1600 mm) x 31.5 inches (800 mm). The monitor is 47.0 x 22.4 x 11.9 inches / 1193.8 x 569.0 x 302.3 mm (with Stand) and 47.0 x 14.5 x 6.1 inches / 1193.8 x 368.3 x 154.9 mm (without Stand). So if your desk width is 48 inches, the monitor at 47 should just fit but not stick out. Hope that helps :)

[@Nico-ly7lh]

How does text looks like? Is it comparable with Retina MAcBook or is the text less sharp then on a macbook?

[@rroca]

Hey! So, about text being sharp or not, I think it is ok, specially if you can use the default native resolution (which I can't because my vision isn't that great and everything looks super small in 5120x1440) However, if you compare it to a Macbook then It does not come even nearly close. For reference, the 2023 16 inch MacBook Pro screen has 254 pixels per inch, while this monitor is 108.5 so, it's really far from retina quality, but then again, no ultra wide is, you can have high resolution or ultra wide but not both.

[@Leynad778]

The problem is, newer MacOS-versions don't use proper font-smoothing anymore unlike older OS-versions, so text looks not sharp. There is a tool to deactivate font-smoothing and than it looks sharper, but the lower PPI needs font smoothing, so it's a compromise. Text looks much sharper with Windows and it's power Clear Type font smoothing.

[@fotoglopes]

it's a cool monster

[@rroca]

Great for photo editing... :P

[@75keg75]

If you not using the native resolution then the screen will look junk. The 4K if you down scale will look junk too. Sounds more of a limitation with the laptop ie the MacBook isn’t driving the full resolution of the screen. Perhaps try another source before selling. Maybe get a new prescription too 🧐

[@rroca]

So, a few things: - Regarding resolution, if you take my old 28 inch 4K and native resolution (3840x2160), and so the math, it would amount to 157 pixels per inch. Now, if you take this 49 ultrawide at its’ native resolution (5120x1440) and calculate the ppi, you'd get 108 pixels per inch. That's what I mean when I say the screen is a lot less sharp in general, even if you use both at their native resolutions. - There is no issue with the source, the Mac can drive it at 5120x1440 without any issues, the problem is that things look tiny on screen if you leave it at that. I’ve had friends over with 20/20 vision that tried to use it at the full resolution and still found it uncomfortable, they could see everything a lot better than I of course, but even they mentioned that if they were to use it for a few hours straight, they’d scale it a bit so their eyes wouldn’t get too tired. - When it comes to scaling, if you take a 4K (or higher resolution) monitor, the Mac can render things in 2x and make them really sharp as it does with Retina Displays, so with a 4K monitor for example things will look as they do in terms of size as it would in 1920x1080 but rendered at 2x, which makes everything look big and super sharp as opposite to using the monitor at 3840x2160 and have everything rendered at 1x looking small. The same doesn’t happen with this monitor, it doesn’t have the ppi necessary to make this work so if I run it at 2560x720 instead of 5120x1440 it will not give me a 2x render. - Regarding a prescription, I actually had surgery a few months ago and months after recording the video, I still have more procedures to be done before settling with a permanent prescription, but some things can’t be fixed with either surgery or a new prescription. My vision will likely improve after is all said and done but will never be 20/20 and I don’t think it will improve enough for me to use this monitor comfortably, at a decent distance of at least 50cm from my face, at the full resolution. That is what I mean by saying in the video that it’s not a bad monitor, it’s just not the right fit me.

[@75keg75]

@@rroca the pixel pitch will be far higher on a 4K for sure and anything will look junk compared. You’ve been spoilt by it and probably nothing will look as good until you see an 8k. Similar situations happen in resin printers where they jack up the resolution but increase screen size so effective pixel size is worse than the smaller screen. Thought you’d down scaled hence my comment. I’ve seen guys with 1440p running and 1080 and wonder why things look junk.thoughts that what happened here. As for eye script hopefully you get something that works. I assume you mean lasik. I thought they did it once?

[@rroca]

No, not lasik, I wish, lol... I was born with cataract and had surgeries as a baby that left me without the lens that you have inside the eyes, can't put in the artificial lens now because TL:DR incompatibilities between what was done with the tech back then and how it's done now. Then, on top of that, I've had retinal detachments this year and had surgery to fix that, need to have some follow up procedures on the operated eye and then surgery + follow ups for the other eye.

[@75keg75]

@@rroca Hopefully someone come’s up with something different to help in (near) future. so you can get back to near normal. I assume they can’t use cadaver lens rather than artificial? Retinal detachment. That isn’t good. I know head injuries can cause them, so hopefully whatever caused yours is behind you and you have success in the follow up treatments.

[@dkb2080]

This is 4K or no just say in the video please

[@rroca]

I do say it in the video, it has a resolution of 5120 x 1440 so, not 4K