Philips 241P3

Today we're looking at the Philips 241P3 monitor, a 24'' screen that's packed full of features and accessories borrowed from its range of professional displays.

More than average features

The vast majority of monitors fall back on their inputs and outputs to score a few points in this section, the 241P3 can count on its height-adjustable stand and portrait mode as well as its VGA, DVI and DisplayPort interfaces.

There's also a pair of speakers, and a headphone jack is on the left-hand side in case they're not powerful enough for you.  There's a single USB port, which you then link up to your computer via a USB link at the bottom of the stand.  Given that the extra USB port you gain on the monitor itself is taken up when you plug it into the computer, it's not really a hub as such but more an extension of your existing USB ports.

Responsiveness: not fast enough for gamers

Our ghosting time tests confirmed what we suspected when we first read the specs: the 241P3 really isn't cut out for gaming.  With a ghosting time of over 23 ms, fast-moving objects are rarely sharp.  You're better off sticking to basic office work or anything else where things don't change rapidly.  FPS games, or indeed anything that changes quickly, is best avoided.

Responsiveness
Light Background	Dark Background	Average

The input lag is so low as to be invisible to the naked eye, so if you do end up using it for multiplayer gaming, it won't hold you back.

Colours: almost there

When we first switched it on, the colours seemed pretty accurate to us, but our lab equipment is a little more discerning and picked out a slight blue tinge and colour space problems.


The 241P3's gamut, which describes the range of colours it is capable of showing—the black triangle above—doesn't quite match the usual sRGB colour space shown by the orange triangle.  That means it has a higher deltaE score for reds and greens, pulling the average discrepancy up to 3.3.  There's nothing you can do to improve that without relying on a calibration profile.

In practice, only the most demanding users will notice these problems, but we're not entirely sure that professional graphic designers or photographers would go for a monitor with a TN display because of how uneven the colour reproduction can be.  That shouldn't stop anybody else using it though.

We measured a contrast ratio of 750:1, which falls below our average value of 850:1.