If it’s 4K, it’s all about gaming and image refresh rates of 120 fps or higher today, but Philips is dedicated to working and learning with the features of its latest giant monitor. The premium exterior and extras are all geared for this use, but the display is no doubt when you start a game or watch a movie on it. Perhaps the strangest feature of the 329P1 is that it is recommended by the manufacturer for laptops, and this is no accident.
Monitor as a control panel
A 350 cd / m2 IPS panel with outstanding brightness in its category is fitted to the 32-inch monitor, which has a thin, hidden coffee on three sides that makes it look elegant. The 350 cd / m2 is good, which is why the 329P1 model can be classified in the upper region, but of course there is a panel with a better brightness. The hidden, average-thickness, roughly 7mm coffees are nice, but the bottom cobble remains the old, thicker piece. Here, right in the middle, Philips hid its small sensors, but a little later about them.
The base is almost embarrassingly large, in return you can move, rotate, lift and tilt the display anywhere without losing its stability. By moving a tricky mechanism at the top (meaning pressing down on the top, thicker part of the hood), you can conjure up a webcam that is capable of Windows Hello face recognition thanks to IR sensors. During our test, this part worked very well, in the dark, in backlight, no matter how the camera recognized it (we didn’t try it in a mask alone). It hurts, however, that the camera can only be tilted to the plane of the top of the monitor, not lower, although sometimes it wouldn’t hurt to see it a little in front of the monitor or rotate it sideways without turning the display, for example. However, for the protection of privacy, it is advantageous to be able to push it back into place with a single movement (in which case it takes the ceiling).
However, not all Type-Cn plug-in monitors offer a complete USB 3.2 USB hub and gigabit LAN controller, there is no lack of a stereo speaker and meanwhile it also charges the compatible notebook. This Type-C dock is a powerful weapon in addition to the 329P1, for devices with similar capabilities, they are usually asked for up to 30-50 thousand forints. Of course, the volume will not wake up the neighbors and you will not try to conduct a house party with this, but it is enough for average background music, maybe for a meeting. You also get microphones that will come in handy when chatting.
Unfortunately, you still can’t scroll through the menu with the joystick, but you get a simple, slightly ugly Windows app, and you can also use the front panel buttons. You can find exciting extras between the menu items. Such is the PowerSensor, which uses an infrared sensor to monitor whether someone is sitting in front of the monitor. If you leave the machine, the brightness will decrease to a fraction after a time depending on the setting, and then when you sit back, it will automatically reset without touching the mouse, for example. The other useful extra is the LightSensor, which is a light sensor and can adjust the backlight intensity to the ambient light effects. Both sensors are hidden in the bottom of the monitor, they work reliably without installing any software.
Eye-catching
The IPS panel provides really good image quality, in addition, the monitor is factory-calibrated, from which you can find the measurement paper in the box, as well as all the necessary cables. Flicker-free and low blue light output are the default, but it doesn’t support HDR and wouldn’t recommend it to hard-line gamers either – although it supports adaptive image refresh up to 60 Hz even with GeForce VGA, which is a pleasant surprise. It’s less that in our test it wasn’t always perfect (this could be due to a driver problem), but since it doesn’t make much sense at 60 Hz, we’ve rather turned off this extra.
Combines excellent image quality and extremely useful features compared to its IPS competitors the Philips 329P1 monitor itself, but it comes at a price. That’s why we can recommend it to those who would dock a laptop with a calm heart – in this case, it’s a real salvation that instead of half a dozen cables, everything happens through a single, thin string, and you also get a lot of useful extras and ports. If you don’t use the laptop dock, you can find a similar picture quality on the market at a lower price.
