More than just a pretty screen?
Static image quality
Fire her up, calibrate to what suits your eye and the 24in Blade 2, benefitting from an anti-glare coating, produces a pleasing picture, free of noisome reflections. On first glance the LED-backlit display is even across all parts of the 16:9-ratio screen and viewing angles are excellent. Colours are solid, blacks are inky, and the panel is able to pick out subtle light changes in many of our test pictures. Being critical, it does suffer a touch when moving from dark colours to pure blacks and, to my eyes at least, the default background colour to Adobe's Dreamweaver 6 - which I've stared at for many, many hours - isn't as colour-correct as, say, an IPS-based ASUS PA236Q, no matter how much tweaking is done. Professional users may need to look elsewhere, then.
Dynamic SmartContrast takes about one second to evaluate the image and adjust the backlight and associated settings accordingly, which can be bothersome when switching windows or moving from dark to light images. But it's a price worth paying as oftentimes the resulting image is better than a non-SmartContrast one, though, of course, I'd rather have a panel with a top-notch native contrast implementation.
Film and gaming image quality
Black bars surrounding a 2.35:1-ratio movie are inky and consistent on top and bottom. SmartContrast feels like a requisite for movies as the shipping contrast ratio produces a picture that looks a shade dull when compared to the very best IPS panels, with whites not having the eye-popping impact as on top-notch high-contrast screens. Slip on the SmartContrast feature and matters look up, considerably so, turning an average picture into a decent one.
Our cohort of games also runs nicely on the 24in Blade 2. Colours pop out and there's little evidence of ghosting or visual imperfections caused by slow response times. The rich colours are an improvement over those produced by TN-type displays, and I have little hesitation in gaming on it for long periods of time. And you won't mind running it for mammoth sessions; the screen pulls just 24W when displaying a movie.
Final thoughts
Philips advances the 24in Blade 2 monitor, imbued with A-MVA panel technology, as a serious contender in the premium full-HD market. Looking very swish and incorporating the inputs into a click-in-place base, it's one to lookout for if style means as much as substance. There's no height adjustment, mind, and there are cheaper screens with similar innate image quality. But you'll probably be considering this one based on its combination of looks and performance, and it does well on both counts.
The Good
Super-stylish looks
Good colour reproduction
Even lighting across screen
The Bad
No height adjustment
Not cheap
HEXUS Rating
Philips 24in Blade 2 monitor
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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