Philips 245B1 review: A fantastic office monitor

The Philips 245B1 is possibly the most straightforward office monitor I’ve ever come across. There’s no pretension here, just a series of ticked boxes, impressive picture quality and a thoroughly reasonable price.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the monitor market, and you want to know that you’re getting the best possible product for your money, the Philips 245B1 is a sure bet.

Philips 245B1 review: What do you get for the money?

The Philips 245B1 cost £277 at the time of writing. For the money, you’re getting a 24in IPS panel with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, a refresh rate of 75Hz, a quoted response time of 4ms G2G and generic adaptive sync support. The stand provides 150mm of height adjustment, 35 degrees of backwards tilt, 90 degrees of pivot (into portrait mode) and 180 degrees of swivel left and right.

Ports-wise, the 245B1 includes DP 1.2, HDMI 2.0 and DVI-D (one of each) for video transmission plus a four-port USB-A 3.2 hub (two on the rear and two on the side), a USB-B 3.2 port to power it and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

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Philips 245B1 review: What do we like?

The Philips 245B1 offers almost everything the average home-office worker might need. It isn’t the most stylish thing in the world but it’s certainly smart, with slim bezels and a matte gunmetal grey finish. It’s also not a big monitor, nor is it a particularly heavy one, so it can be lugged around from desk to desk with ease.

Once settled, moreover, the 245B1 can be adjusted to your heart’s content. With ample height adjustment, backwards tilt and left/right swivel, plus the option to rotate the panel into portrait mode, you can rest assured that you won’t be straining your back or neck.

This monitor also has a very good selection of ports. Alongside the industry-standard HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 ports sits a DVI-D port for older laptops or PCs, which is a thoughtful touch. There’s also a four-port USB hub, which is remarkably generous for the price – you’ll need to sacrifice one USB port on your PC/laptop in order to use it, but in doing so you’ll gain three more USB ports for your mice, keyboards or other peripherals.

The panel is equally impressive. The combination of a 1440p resolution and 24in screen size produces a pin-sharp pixel density of 122ppi, which means content won’t be noticeably rough-edged at all. The IPS panel technology, meanwhile, results in strong viewing angles.

In order to test the other aspects of this panel’s performance, I took a dive into the intuitive onscreen display and found only one colour preset, titled “sRGB”. In this mode, the Philips 245B1 produced 114% of the sRGB colour gamut with an average colour variance score (Delta E) of just 0.58. These are very impressive results, and they indicate that the monitor produces colours faithfully with no excessive vibrance.

I measured a contrast ratio of 1,000:1 and a peak luminance of 299cd/m², which is pretty much spot on what Philips quotes for this monitor and more than sufficient for any conceivable office-related scenario. The 75Hz refresh rate, 1440p resolution and 4ms response time mean that a bit of out-of-hours gaming isn’t off the cards, either.

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Philips 245B1 review: What could be better?

While exploring the onscreen display, I was a little surprised to see such a dearth of colour presets: ordinarily, manufacturers at the very least provide additional modes tailored to gaming, working in low-light conditions or perhaps reading large amounts of text.

Admittedly, the 245B1 does have a blue light filter setting, but the fact remains that this monitor doesn’t cater well to anyone with a desire to tinker with the way content is displayed.

It’s also a bit of a shame that the 245B1 lacks a USB-C port. This is far from a deal-breaker but does stick out as a small black mark on this monitor’s otherwise stellar report card.

Philips 245B1 review: Should you buy it?

If the lack of negatives didn’t already make it quite clear how I feel about this monitor, let me conclude by wholeheartedly recommending it.

The 245B1 is yet another example of Philips’ aggressive commitment to producing fully featured monitors at fair prices. It isn’t the cheapest 1440p monitor you can buy, but it’s far from the most expensive and given both its stellar specifications and impressive performance, I can confidently say that it’s worth every penny.