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Philips Brilliance 272P reviewed: A monitor for all seasons

Photographers please pay attention, because this 27inch beast features has a pixel resolution of 2560×1440 and it is a great LCD display.

The Philips Brilliance 272P isn’t the most elegant accessory you could add to your desktop. In fact, it’s pretty ugly by the standards of – say – Apple’s Cinema Displays or any of the wafer thin LED panels doing the rounds at the moment. The dull grey plastic makes it look a little cheap and when you are dealing with visual people such as photographers it is sometimes wise to appeal to their sense of “pretty”.

Just because Philips is targeting this display at professional users doesn’t mean that it has to be drab.

But appearances in this case really are skin deep – and that’s a good thing. While the 272p might be chunky, it comes with a fully height-adjustable stand that pivots 90 degrees so you can bend, tilt, swing and work portrait mode if you wish. It has more connections than a cheap trans-Atlantic flight, including a pair of HDMI connectors, a three-port USB 3.0 hub, DVI Dual-Link and DisplayPort with the ability to “daisy-chain” to a second display without the need for a second cable trailing to your PC.

272P4APJKHB_00-APP-global-001When it comes to picture calibration, Philips’s SmartControl Premium software enables you to configure and adjust the display and its colour settings directly from your Windows desktop without having to use the fiddle on-screen menus comes with the monitor and was really easy to use, I had it sorted to my particular taste within minutes. Again this is a relief, because the invisible touch sensitive controls that are physically on the monitor itself are way too sensitive, and it’s easy to touch the wrong button. This almost led to me ejecting said monitor from my office with no flight clearance.

Other features include an integrated 2MP webcam with an integral microphone and cool little feature called the “people sensor”, this detects when you are in fact in front of your monitor and it dims the screen when you are away to save power. Also included are a set of hidden pair of stereo speakers for multimedia use, which were not bad, but if you are serious about sound then get some decent ones.

Overall, we’re impressed with the Philips 272P. It really is not the greatest looking display, but it does its job really well. At R11 999 it’s far from the cheapest of its ilk – Dell’s 29inch U291 screen is less than seven grand at the moment, although it has a less impressive stand. Plus it’s not the newest screen available either – for a similar price it’s possible to get a 4K screen these days, albeit one made from inferior TN technology rather than than the glorious PLS of the Philips.

What you are getting, though, is a pro screen with pro build quality. And that counts for a lot, in the end.

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