Philips 27M1N5200PA 240Hz Gaming Monitor Review

Performance

One thing I love about Philips monitors is they come built to a really high standard. This monitor was tested at the factory to check its colour accuracy, and as you can see, there’s not much over 1 Delta E. Anything under 5 is good, anything under 3 is near impossible for the human eye to detect and is extremely good, but 1 and below? That’s bloody awesome! The colours are very accurate right out of the box.

The colours are gorgeous right out of the box at default settings. For most monitors I find myself reaching for their warm profile, but the softer matte colours on this monitor are very pleasing to the eye and require little to no adjustment. You can adjust the white balance if you desire, and I found the 5000K white was nice for movies, but for everything else, the default 6500K is superb.

Uniformity, black levels and motion are on point. Very natural skin tones and the matte panel diffuses sun hitting the screen well enough. Look at the monitor behind, you can see the sun hitting that too and it’s reflecting a lot more.

The overall HDR performance is OK, nothing to shout about but nothing wrong with it either. Of course, you can’t see that in an SDR picture. However, I hate Windows integration of HDR, and honestly, I felt the monitor holds up better in SDR anyway and the brightness and contrast are fantastic even with it off.

Kicking back and watching a movie? Not a problem. At 1080p and 27″ you may be wanting a bit more, but the motion handling and good black levels hold up great. 240 Hz is 10x 24 FPS used in most movies, so the frame pacing is always in sync.

For daily use, the panel size is decent enough, I do prefer a 32″ myself, but for Full HD, 27″ offers a good pixel density so images and test come across nice and clear.

Gaming

What really sets this monitor apart, of course, is the gaming performance. a 240Hz panel is a beastly thing, so don’t expect the latest graphically intensive games to max that out. You’ll want fast RAM, a very fast modern CPU and the latest graphics cards for sure. However, even with decent graphics settings, an RTX 2080-3080 will hit North of 100-150 FPS in most big titles.

Being able to run with FreeSync Premium, with the 0.5ms response time, and high refresh rates are amazing though, and the overall clarity this provides is surreal. Even at 1080p, you would swear there’s more detail than a 4K monitor, at least while you’re in motion.

I’m not much of a competitive gamer, by which I mean, I’m not one in the slightest. However, playing stuff less demanding like Fortnite, World of Tanks, PUBG, Minecraft, CS:GO, etc, hitting big FPS is a hell of a lot easier. Either way, there’s no doubt that whatever the frame rate you output, this monitor will keep up with it!