I have just returned a Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor [1] and gone back to my Samsung 28″ 4K monitor model LU28E590DS/XY AKA UE590.
The main listed differences are the size and the fact that the Samsung is TN but the Philips is IPS. Here’s a comparison of TN and IPS technologies [2]. Generally I think that TN is probably best for a monitor but in theory IPS shouldn’t be far behind.
The Philips monitor has a screen with a shiny surface which may be good for a TV but isn’t good for a monitor. Also it seemed to blur the pixels a bit which again is probably OK for a TV that is trying to emulate curved images but not good for a monitor where it’s all artificial straight lines. The most important thing for me in a monitor is how well it displays text in small fonts, for that I don’t really want the round parts of the letters to look genuinely round as a clear octagon or rectangle is better than a fuzzy circle.
There is some controversy about the ideal size for monitors. Some people think that nothing larger than 28″ is needed and some people think that a 43″ is totally usable. After testing I determined that 43″ is really too big, I had to move to see it all. Also for my use it’s convenient to be able to turn a monitor slightly to allow someone else to get a good view and a 43″ monitor is too large to move much (maybe future technology for lighter monitors will change this).
Previously I had been unable to get my Samsung monitor to work at 4K resolution with 60Hz and had believed it was due to cheap video cards. I got the Philips monitor to work with HDMI so it’s apparent that the Samsung monitor doesn’t do 4K@60Hz on HDMI. This isn’t a real problem as the Samsung monitor doesn’t have built in speakers. The Philips monitor has built in speakers for HDMI sound which means one less cable to my PC and no desk space taken by speakers.
I bought the Philips monitor on eBay in “opened unused” condition. Inside the box was a sheet with a printout stating that the monitor blanks the screen periodically, so the seller knew that it wasn’t in unused condition, it was tested and failed the test. If the Philips monitor had been as minimally broken as described then I might have kept it. However it seems that certain patterns of input caused it to reboot. For example I could be watching Netflix and have it drop out, I would press the left arrow to watch that bit again and have it drop out again. On one occasion I did a test and found that a 5 second section of Netflix content caused the monitor to reboot on 6/8 times I viewed it. The workaround I discovered was to switch between maximised window and full-screen mode when it had a dropout. So I just press left-arrow and then ‘F’ and I can keep watching. That’s not what I expect from a $700 monitor!
I considered checking for Philips firmware updates but decided against it because I didn’t want to risk voiding the warranty if it didn’t work correctly and I decided I just didn’t like the monitor that much.
Ideally for my next monitor I’ll get a 4K screen of about 35″, TN, and a screen that’s not shiny. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be many monitors between 32″ and 43″ in size, so 32″ may do. I am quite happy with the Samsung monitor so getting the same but slightly larger is fine. It’s a pity they stopped making 5K displays.