Philips Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 review

The Philips Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 is a 24in gaming monitor with a huge 144Hz refresh rate. As the Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 outputs more frames per second, the possibility of tearing (where two frames are shown onscreen at the same time) is reduced, which and leads to much smoother visuals for those with powerful graphics cards.

The Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 is therefore a good fit for gamers, but the monitor’s huge range of inputs means you can connect it to several other devices as well. You’ll need to use its bundled dual-link DVI-D cable to take advantage of the monitor’s high refresh rates, but you’re limited to a DVI-D connection. The Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 also has VGA and DisplayPort outputs and two HDMI outputs.

One of the HDMI ports supports MHL, too, which means you can connect an MHL-compatible phone or tablet to the monitor and view your mobile content on a big screen. Conveniently, the monitor will charge the phone or tablet at the same time. The connection ports are easily accessible, too, thanks to the monitor’s height-adjustable and rotatable stand. There’s also a four-port USB3 port on the side of the monitor and a headphone jack.

The monitor uses a TN panel, and as a general rule TN panels have super-fast response times but aren’t highly regarded for their colour accuracy. This was certainly the case with the 242G5DJEB/00; our colour calibrator showed it was displaying just 84.6 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut on its default settings. This is below average even for a TN panel, as we normally expect to see at least 90 per cent for these types of panels.

On the whole, its spread of colours was very even across the gamut, but the Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00’s weakest areas were its red and green coverage. By contrast, blues and yellows were very strong, and this meant colours looked cooler than our reference monitor.

Fortunately, colour accuracy increased to a more respectable 92.1 per cent once we’d calibrated the monitor using its customisable User colour temperature profile. Reds and greens were both improved, bringing a little warmth back to the screen, but the coverage still isn’t as good as some other TN gaming monitors, such as the cheaper Iiyama Prolite GB2773HS was able to reach a huge 97.6 per cent.

Our subjective image tests still looked good, though, as our solid reds, greens and blues were all bright and vibrant and not noticeably dissimilar in depth to our reference monitor. Blacks were pleasingly deep as well, measuring 0.29cd/m2 on our colour calibrator.

Colours were a few shades lighter than our reference monitor in our high contrast test images, but the screen’s excellent contrast levels illuminated all of our test images perfectly. We measured a pleasing contrast ratio of 1084:1, and areas of deep shadow were bursting with detail, making it easy to see everything on the screen.

The Philips Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 has clearly been built with gaming in mind. It has several special gaming picture modes, including First-Person Shooter, Racing, Real-Time Strategy and two Gamer profiles.

We preferred not to use these modes as all of their default settings made the screen look blue and harsh, but we were pleased that all of them can be customised to your liking using the brightness, contrast, sharpness and colour temperature settings. This isn’t always the case with pre-defined picture modes, so we were happy that the Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 let us do it.

The monitor also comes with the Smart Keypad, a small mouse-shaped menu controller that connects via mini USB. The Smart Keypad lets you change image settings without having to reach for the bezel-mounted menu buttons. We weren’t too enamoured by the feel of the Smart Keypad’s buttons, but it is nonetheless a handy device to have.

The Philips Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00 is an excellent gaming monitor, but our main concern is the price. At just under £290, it’s more expensive than the AOC myUltraSpeed G2460Pqu and the larger Iiyama Prolite GB2773HS, both of which have 144Hz refresh rates. The Philips has a lot going for it, though, as it has more connection ports than the Iiyama and has better image quality than the AOC. The Brilliance 242G5DJEB/00’s mediocre colour accuracy just holds it back from receiving five stars, but it’s well worth the extra expense if you value connectivity.