Philips’ next display is very wide, but keeps vertical resolution down

By Jon Martindale September 11, 2017

Philips 492P8 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Philips isn’t looking to drive its audience toward 4K resolution with its next display, but it is offering a lot of screen real estate. At 49 inches diagonally, the Philips 492P8 is extremely wide, employing an aspect ratio of 32:9. While many of its details remain unknown for now, we do know it will come with a $1,080 price tag — apt really, considering that’s also its vertical resolution.

The price of this new Philips display is important too, because the competition in this very specific sizing market tend to be a lot more expensive, as Anandtech points out. Although it may turn out that Philips has compromised in a few areas to nail that big price drop, it’s not like the 492P8 is a slouch.

The 49-inch VA panel sports a native resolution of 3840 x 1080 pixels, and a 1,800R curvature. That ultrawide display has a brightness of 600 cd/m2 and a contrast ratio up to 5,000:1. Key details we still don’t know about yet include what percentage of the sRGB color gamut it can handle, or what its response time or maximum refresh rate is.

We do know, however, that it has inputs for DisplayPort, VGA, and a pair of HDMI connectors, alongside two USB 3.0 Type-A ports and a gigabit Ethernet port. The real surprise there is the VGA connector, which hasn’t been relevant in any computing space in quite some time. As Anand suggests though, it could potentially be used to connect up a secondary system for PIP purposes.

We may have some time to wait for the full picture of this display, as it’s not slated for release until sometime in Q2 2018. In that time we can further speculate at the audience that Philips is targeting with it. Considering its placement in Philips “P” range and its unveiling at IFA 2017, the best guess would be that it’s aimed at businesses, but it’s possible that Philips is keeping the door open to gamers with a restriction on vertical resolution.

Wherever it’s pushed though, this kind of display is usually offered with the idea of replacing multiple smaller monitors for one larger option. With its near 50-inch diagonal sizing, this monitor should certainly be capable of fulfilling that role.

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