Philips 349X7FJEW - Ultra wide screen, ultra good picture
The Philips 349X7FJEW is not a cheap monitor, but as we all know it is relative, and this display is only expensive compared to the average, not compared to its knowledge. In order for the manufacturer to combine this knowledge with this price, he had to choose well between the available technologies. Because of this, the 34-inch panel does not work with IPS but with VA technology, which, as I have already seen live, is a good alternative to multiple displays. It does not achieve the color fidelity of IPS displays and is not as fast as a TN panel, located somewhere between the two, but with a lag to both sides.
The viewing angle with this display, similar to IPS solutions, is 178 degrees, and practical experience shows that this value can be justified in reality. However, since we are talking about a curved display, this viewing angle value is much less important than a flat display. Wide and curved displays are much more suitable for single-person workstations than for those where multiple people work in groups.
Philips also promises that we will not be disappointed with the 349X7FJEW in terms of color fidelity. Coverage is 99,5 percent in the sRGB band, according to factory data, which is not a remarkably good value, but is higher than average. Players can also rejoice, as the response time of the VA panel is better than that of an IPS panel. In this case, we are talking about 4 milliseconds. In addition, it can be a special pleasure for them that the monitor also supports AMD FreeSync technology, so they can get a much smoother picture due to the synchronization of the GPU and the display.
Based on what has been said so far, we can say that this is a good display, but the real subtlety for the average user is still the resolution. This represents 3440 x 1440 pixels for this display. In practice, this means that horizontally we get less than two FHD resolutions, and vertically we get more than one FHD resolution. The number of pixels is 4, while for a dual FHD display, this value is 953, meaning virtually the entire image size is larger than using two FHD displays side by side.
This image size provides plenty of options for multi-tasking, whether it’s traditional office work, graphics programs, or even video editing programs. It is important to note that while having AMD FreeSync is a very useful thing, unfortunately, it also means that using the NVIDIA G-Sync solution is excluded. Of course, this also means that in order to make the most of this monitor, we need to buy an AMD video card. This is only a problem if we are entrenched NVIDIA fans.
I have already mentioned the inputs in connection with the external. It is important and good to know that the use of AMD FreeSync is only supported for HDMI 2.0 or Displayport 1.2, as this is the only way to get the required 100 Hz image update.
In terms of operation, it is also extremely important that the monitor supports PiP, i.e. picture-in-picture mode. This allows you to display images from multiple devices on the screen at the same time. This is not an idea to be discarded with this monitor at all, as due to its spaciousness we can make full use of our notebook and desktop computer, for example, so that we only work with one monitor in the meantime.
