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The technical testing of Philips' 273E3QH AMVA Monitor was completed by my colleague, Zardon.
To test today, we are using a LaCie calibration gun along with specific software to accurately measure the readings.
We measured the Gamut out of the box and the Philips 273E3QH returned a reading of 2.11 which is an excellent result. When manually tweaking to 1.8, the panel returned a 1.78 result which is also very good.
Colour response is excellent although at the default settings, the saturation was slightly washed out and a little worse than we would have expected. Text focus was sharp however and backlighting was quite consistent across the full width, with only minor fluctuations evident. We noticed a few minor patches of bleeding at the edges, although again these are to be expected in this sector.
Panel linearity is strong and significantly better than the Blade 2 Full 24″ AMVA LED panel.
Black Definition is well above average although it never produces a pure black, even in the center of the screen. Philips claim a 20,000,000:1 high dynamic contrast ratio but this does vary according to what is being displayed on screen. Blacks could definitely be richer however most people would be happy with the result. The edges of the panel vary up to 15%, which is above average in this sector.
In real world terms, high definition media looks impressive and we enjoyed the overall images produced.
White purity is very good, measuring around 13 percent at the edges, and between 3-6 percent in the middle. This is not noticeable to the naked eye, even when viewing bright outdoor scenes. ‘Pooling' was not visible in the central area of the screen, only at the edges … primarily top right.
Panel uniformity rates as excellent with minimal distortion, only closer to the sides, a common issue for most consumer panels. Some people may find the default colour vibrancy a little lacking, but a tweak in the panel can enhance this.
SmartContrast is a feature that dramatically boosts the 273E3QH's contrast ratio to 20,000,000:1, providing the best possible quality for a displayed image.
We were very impressed by the SmartContrast feature. It has the ability to convert a basic image into a rich and vibrant one. No trickery is involved; just a few intelligent tweaks to the picture settings and the viewing experience became more sumptuous and enjoyable.
SmartImage Lite builds upon the ease-of-use trademark associated with SmartContrast, taking it a step further. It loads an array of pre-determined settings which are, according to Philips, perfect for use with their related scenario.
Three pre-defined SmartImage Lite modes are available; Standard, Internet and Game. It eliminates the adjustment process that is required to enjoy a specific task to the fullest of image quality.
Standard mode is the choice that should be used to incorporate user-defined settings. It was perfectly functional for daily procedures. Bright and vibrant images were produced with absolute consistency and we didn't encounter any annoying tint or pixelation issues that were applied to the mode by default.
Internet mode is very similar to its ‘Standard' counterpart. It retains an appropriate level of brightness which is well-suited to internet-style web pages. SmartContrast was disabled by default, but this proved as a non-existent issue for our general browsing habits.
A distinguishable burst of brightness and contrast is unleashed when SmartImage Lite's ‘Game' selection is applied. The extravagant environments of Battlefield 3 managed to create some lip-smacking images when used in conjunction with the Game mode. SmartResponse was automatically set to its ‘fast' setting which is actually the third fastest of all 4 possibilities.
We didn't notice any motion-blur issues, so it'd be a little picky to criticise Philips for not utilizing the fastest setting in the default Game mode configuration. Avid gamers will undoubtedly intensify the 273E3QH's motion-handling abilities by increasing SmartResponse to its highest possible setting.
Power consumption is excellent, demanding only 24 watts when calibrated. This drops to a single watt when in power saving mode.
