Philips 27B1U7903 4K Thunderbolt 4 Mini-LED Monitor Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The Philips 27B1U7903-27 Inch 4K UHD Monitor is available now from quite a few retailers, but it’s on Amazon with an MSRP of £1199.99, which is obviously a lot. At the time of writing, it’s actually 15% off, making it just £1019.99. The price is obviously a lot, but keep in mind, that this monitor comes with basically the most advanced non-OLED backlight of any monitor we’ve ever tested. It also comes with the most colour-accurate and most expansive colour coverage of any monitor we’ve ever tested… you’re getting what you pay for.

Overview

Sticking with the price thing for a moment. You’re not just getting a high-resolution high-end panel with this monitor, as it comes with plenty of input and output options that will make it highly appealing to the creative market. You can plug all your peripherals, audio devices, and even your Ethernet cable all into this monitor. Then you can simply hook up your laptop or PC via a single Thunderbolt 4 cable, which will act as a KVM switch, display input, and an upstream/downstream for the USB hub and networking, and it’ll also charge a laptop over Type-C up to 90W, making it extremely versatile in the office.

Out of the box, the monitor is impressive, but it’s important to set it up for how you’re going to use it. It has a plethora of colour spaces in both SDR and HDR modes, with hardware calibration options to set up your own profiles to suit your requirements, as well as plenty of preset ones. This isn’t a standard consumer monitor, so you need to tell the monitor what you want it to be to get the best results out of it. If you do get one for just playing games and regular PC usage, whatever that may be, sRGB mode and Uniformity mode should be enabled for solid all-around performance.

The HDR modes are staggering, but I can’t say I like the HDR1400 mode, as it really pushes the backlight hard to get the peak brightness, which is actually great for vibrant games like Borderlands. But if you want to retain OLED-like black levels, the “lesser” HDR modes are still actually significantly higher than what we see on other high-end monitors.

The only downside with this monitor is the input method, having buttons on the back that you can’t see feels clunky when those little analogue inputs are much better for controlling the UI.

Should I Buy One?

The price is obviously high, but it’s certainly not the most expensive monitor on the market, and when it comes to peak brightness, inky blacks, powerful contrast ratios, and wide and accurate colour gamut coverage, then it is by far the best monitor we’ve seen to date. If you need something that accurate, likely for photo and video editing in both SDR and HDR colour spaces, you’re going to love what’s on offer here.