Philips 221P3LPYE - Brilliance is Just the Name

When one hears the name Philips it is usually associated with audio-visual products like televisions and stereo systems. Their reach also extends to household products, lighting products, etc. The brand is not as well known for their computer components and peripherals, but they do manufacturer mice, keyboards, storage devices and monitors.

The easily enabled rotation feature

Computer displays are usually associated with brands such as BenQ, ViewSonic and Samsung. Philips also have released a few monitors of their own with their focus on three segments with LCD monitors for home, office and TV monitors.

From their office segment of LCD monitors they have announced the Philips 221P3LPYE display from the Brilliance series. Today we take a look at this 22-inch TN panel monitor that was designed primarily for office use.

Sturdy and stylish stand

Features

The Philips 221P3LPYE is a feature rich monitor. It is a 21.5-inch LED-backlit, LCD panel display with a native display resolution of 1920x1080. Philips like other manufacturers claims that this sort of backlighting uses less power and produces a brighter image and that the response time of the 221P3LPYE is 5 ms. Connectivity options on this display are DVI, D-Sub and surprisingly, a DisplayPort. A 3.5mm audio and a USB port are also available. However, even though there are more than a sufficient amount of connectivity options, Philips have not added an HDMI port on this monitor - they've added a DisplayPort instead which we feel is good but HDMI is a more common connectivity solution these days. There are front facing speakers on this monitor and it has a 90 degree rotation feature which can be useful for presentations etc.

Stylish

The Philips P3 LPYE has a touch sensitive panel at the bottom of the screen for controlling the menu and the various other settings of this monitor like brightness, contrast, etc. The interface of this display is very simple to use and navigating through it is a lot easier because the touch sensitive keys light up. There are various display presets for content viewing on this monitor. The display has a feature called PowerSensor, which is basically a power saving mode. It adjusts the brightness of the screen based on various factors. While testing this monitor, we turned the feature off due to fluctuations in brightness levels. Overall, the touch sensitive keys are the best feature we found on this monitor.

Design and Build Quality

The Philips 221P3LPYE monitor on the whole is sturdy and stylish in design. The monitor looks decent with its black screen and silver stand. The base of the stand is not that large which is a very good thing and it supports the monitor well. The touch panel control keys are very sensitive and there is a white light where the menu controls are which helps in locating where the menu keys are in a dimly lit room. There are built-in speakers located at the bottom of the monitor, two USB ports located at the bottom left side of the monitor and two USB ports on the rear end. The 3.5 mm port is located near the power connector at the rear as are all other connectivity options like DVI, D-Sub and DisplayPort.

USB connectors at the side

The stand is made of hard plastic with a rotation of 90 degrees. Moving the monitor into either a portrait or landscape view is simple and does not offer much resistance. The base of the stand has a swivel feature. This design of the swivel is interesting however it is quite sensitive and moves too easily. Hence even a slight touch will turn the monitor. Philips says the monitor can swivel minus or plus 60 degrees. It's not common to see such a setup on monitors in this price bracket. The Philips 221P3LPYE is a nice looking monitor and quite sturdy and we had absolutely no qualms with the design and build quality of it.

Performance The Philips 221P3LPYE uses a TN panel, which is common for most 22-inch displays these days, though we did notice some backlighting issues. To test the actual performance of this monitor we ran DisplayMate and calibrated the screen for optimum results. Touch sensitive controls While running DisplayMate, we noticed that in the colour gradient test, blacks on either ends of the spectrum appeared slightly green and red. However, all blocks were distinguishable. While running through some other tests, we noticed that with complex patterns, there was no flickering whatsoever. Patterns can be seen clearly and crisply and all colours are natural with the exception of red, green and yellow. Reds and greens looked brighter than natural and yellow seemed a bit pale. In the colour scales test, we noticed colour bleeding in blue. All other colours are easily visible and no bleeding was noticed. In the background interference tests, one could see the lines clearly which is a good thing. No glare or reflection was noticed in the dark screen check. A problem which we noticed from the time of turning on this monitor was the viewing angles. They are really bad and some waves were noticed which originated at the top of the screen to the centre. The speaker volume on the monitor was really low even with the volume set to maximum. Having front facing speakers, we expected a bit more output from them. The unique addition of a DisplayPort Out of the box colours are bright while watching movies. Testing video playback with settings calibrated after DisplayMate, we noticed video quality to be slightly faded and  images looked dull. Oddly enough, we did notice that while using the video presets, the video playback was rendered a lot better in office mode than in movie mode. TN panel on this 21.5-inch monitor Verdict The Philips 221P3LPYE is priced at a maximum retail price of Rs. 12,999, which is expensive for a 22-inch monitor. It has a TN panel, DisplayPort connectivity and  somewhat unique touch sensitive controls, which are usually found on high end televisions. We feel that one would do better with a 24-inch display. The Philips 221P3LPYE is not a bad monitor and fared rather well when it came to performance, features and design. Alternatives in this price range might have limited features in comparison to this.