Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 monitor review: Finally a 34-inch, 21:9-ultrawide OLED for gamers

The 34-inch screen of the Philips Evnia 8000 series has an ultrawide aspect ratio of 21:9, which is significantly wider than a normal 16:9 monitor. This gives you an additional lateral field of view in games or you can comfortably place several windows next to each other when working, thus saving a multi-monitor setup.

The maximum resolution is 3,440 x 1,440, which is the standard for 21:9 monitors. What is new, however, is that OLED technology has finally found its way into affordable gaming monitors. Thus, gamers also get great colors and contrasts, a deep black in dark scenes, and fast response times.

In addition, the monitor is curved, respectively (1,800R). The manufacturer's technical features are listed in the table below.

First, the monitor has to be freed from its packaging and fitted with a stand. The former is the more difficult task, since the protective Styrofoam packaging sits super-tight in the box.

The stand, on the other hand, is quickly attached without any extra screws: It consists of two parts, the elongated part is simply clicked into the monitor, the leg is then screwed on with an integrated thumbscrew, and that's it.

The flexibility of the monitor is revealed when setting it up: The stand not only allows tilting, but height adjustment is also super easy; you simply pull the monitor up or down along of the length of the stand tube - very convenient. Only a horizontal correction option is missing.

The casing is mainly made of white and silver plastic. The curved back is white, while the stand and the lower display edge are silver.

At the front, the very thin plastic border suggests extremely thin edges, but in fact a part of the monitor glass always remains black at the front. At the top the bezel is just under 1 cm (~0.39 in) wide, at the sides already 1.2 cm (~0.47 in), at the bottom the silver bezel with the EVNIA (left) and Philips (right) logo and lettering respectively is just under 2.2 cm (~0.87 in) wide.

In my opinion, this plastic bezel doesn't look particularly good and could have been gladly exchanged for a narrower edge, especially since the plastic rail was simply pasted over the white side edges, which reveals unsightly gaps and doesn't make a good impression. A white LED on the lower right corner lights up when the monitor is turned on.

An LED strip runs vertically in the center of the bulky curved back and a network of additional LEDs covers the back edges. The bottom edge has a whole row of LEDs while a ring of LEDs provide ambient light when needed, which is called AmbiGlow at Philips.

Together with the base, the monitor weighs about 8.7 kg (~19.2lb).

Subjectively, the picture quality is beyond reproach. The OLED's vivid colors and deep blacks are impressive, especially if you have previously looked at a cheaper IPS display. The curved display only takes a short time to get used to. Getting used to it, on the other hand, was interesting: When returning to my straight 21:9 display, my brain perceived the uncurved edges as bent backwards. The unpleasant effect lasted for some time.

Philips advertises 100% DCI-P3 coverage and our measurements can confirm that. AdobeRGB is still covered by 94%, sRGB completely anyway.

The screen is calibrated ex-factory. The DeltaE values for the grayscale and colors are just over 2, but cannot be reduced further at maximum brightness even by recalibrating. In the standard mode, the brightness is 90 percent, gamma and color temperature are not quite optimal. Lowering the brightness should be mandatory for content creators to achieve an even better color accuracy.

The response times are very fast; we measured only 1.4 ms in both black-to-white and gray-to-gray. Gamers will also be happy about the maximum refresh rate of 175 Hz.

PWM is used for brightness control, as in all OLEDs. The frequency in this model is 175 Hz across all brightness levels. This should not normally cause any problems, but for those who are particularly sensitive in this respect, the flickering could have adverse effects since the frequency is not excessively high.

And gaming? Gaming clearly benefits from the wider field of view. Not only does the experience feel more immersive than on a 16:9 screen, but the strengths of the OLED, its colors and contrasts, come across very well - a clear improvement over my "old, uncurved" IPS ultrawide screen.

Even in action games and shooters, the gameplay remains fluid thanks to a fast response time of 0.1 s and 175 Hz; I did not notice any trailing motion streaks.

And the Ambiglow emphasizes the game scenes with the appropriate ambient colors - great.

The fact that the OLED monitor needs an active fan shows that it heats up more than many IPS models. The hot spots are around the central upper edge, which is also where the air outlets are located that extend across the entire width of the monitor. Centrally, at the top and front, we measured a temperature of over 38 °C (104 °F) during longer use! The OLED manufacturers (or Philips) seem to have some optimization work ahead of them, because I cannot really forgive the Evnia's fan noise.