Philips 345E2AE 34″ WQHD Ultrawide Monitor Review

Performance

The Philips 345E2AE monitor has a nice range of colours, offering up NTSC 106.8%, sRGB 120.3%. That’s not particularly unexpected from a modern monitor though, as panel technology has generally updated across to the whole market. However, it’s got some good colour depth that makes it enjoyable to use.

When it comes to daily work though the monitor looks superb while I’m working, and I’ve been happily using it as my daily work monitor for a few days now. I can comfortably fit three windows side by side, which is very beneficial when I’m writing or editing reviews here at eTeknix.

Media looks good on this monitor, a nice depth to the deeper reds and blues really makes games and movies look great.

I think the biggest advantage is wider media. So many films are shot in wider formats and while we’ve gotten used to black bars on our 16:9 monitors, watching a movie that fills the full 21:9 aspect ratio is a treat. Leon: The Professional was already one of my favourite Luc Besson movies, but this makes it even better.

The ultrawide aspect ratio is now widely supported in hundreds of games, and considering I love single-player RGB games, racing, and strategy/building games, which are largely the most widely supported, it’s a real boon for me. Here’s my latest starter city in Cities Skylines, I can see all of it!

At 75Hz, it’s a nice step up from a standard 60Hz monitor. Albeit, it’s a big step down from the 165Hz 2K panel I usually play Apex on, but still, it’s nice that it’s faster than the market standard.

Just look at that FOV, truly stunning peripheral vision. However, I would have liked a curved monitor for such a FOV and these faster-paced shooters. But the Philips 345E2AE was marketed as “good for gaming” but not as a gaming monitor, so I can’t be too harsh in that regard.

Skyrim looks great though, I set the FOV to 90 and it populated the width surprisingly naturally.

The panel can output up to about 300cdm brightness, which is alright, and having the Philips 345E2AE on around 30% was ideal for my dimly lit gaming and workspace. It doesn’t cope as well in extremely sunny rooms though and turning the brightness up will be needed. It doesn’t fair too well in darker rooms either though…

As you can see, the colours look great, there are no issues there. However, in the bottom left corner, there’s a warm yellowish glow from the backlight, giving blacks a weird shine. Interestingly, if I sit a foot over to my left, I can’t see the issue, but dead centre I can; I plan on sitting in the middle a lot, as would you.

This is NOT a realistic representation of the issue. I adjusted my camera to show the backlight hotspots, and the bottom left corner is the worst culprit, and the top right corner has two small spots too. Of course, this sort of thing isn’t uncommon on more affordable models, and relative to its panel size, the Philips 345E2AE is pretty freaking cheap, so I was expecting some issues like this.

It’s largely not noticeable with day-to-day usage. The Simpsons looks great, but you can see in the black vertical bar, there’s some glow in that corner. May have watched the whole episode or… three more after this.