The Philips Momentum 436M6 is a 4K beauty and the beast. Beauty in that the 4K, HDR 1000 screen is excellent and beast in that it is a tad too big to use as a desktop monitor. Oh, and it has Ambiglow lighting and a remote control as well!
Don’t let my introduction put you off. If you have a huge desk and poor eyesight, the Philips Momentum 436M6 is the one for you. But for the rest, we need to see where this gargantuan desktop monitor fits in. As the review proceeds, I think you will find that
Philip’swebsite gives us our first clue. “Experience a new level of entertainment with the Momentum 4K HDRdisplay with Ambiglow lighting. An expansive 4K UHD display with HDR 1000delivers ultra-crisp and vibrant image quality that will get you in the moment.”
Review: Philips Momentum 436M6 Model 436M6VBPA
There are so many features lets start with the basic ones
| Screen | 42.51”, 3840 x 2160@60Hz, 103ppi, 16:9, MVA panel, 10-bit colour (dithering) |
| Backlight | Quantum Dot, Blue-LED backlight, 4ms Grey-to-Grey, 178° viewing angle – good in the lounge |
| Gamut | 100% BT-709, 97.6% DCI-P3, 145% sRGB – perfect for photo editors and designers |
| HDR | HDR 1000 and UHDA certified. Increases nits to 1000+ and contrast to 18,000:1. Almost as good as a Quantum Dot TV |
| Brightness | 720 nits (typical) and 1000 nits peak. Contrast 7000:1 – good under office lighting |
| Ports |
USB-C (DP alt mode), DisplayPort 1.4, mini-DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 2 x USB-A 3.0 with charging, PC Audio-in, Headphone. Apple and Intel 8th Gen users will love USB-C connectivity |
| Size (inc stand) | 976 x 661 x 264mm x 14.71kg Black and 2% mild haze screen |
| Features | PIP, PBP, dual PC support, 2 x 7W DTS speakers, Ambiglow lighting, AMD Freesync 48-60Hz, 4ms G-to-G. Multi-play gamers will want this expansive screen. |
| Manual | Here |
| Price | Approx $1,400 |
Looks
It looks more like a TV than a desktop monitor. The black metal stand requires at least a 30cm desk depth so don’t even think of placing it on a 60cm wide desk – it is in your face. In fact, we put it on a 90cm desk, and it was still a little too imposing. You need to have at least 80cm and preferably 90cm or more eye-to-screen distance. Couch-bound gamers will love it.
There are 17mm bezels and a 25mm bottom bezel with a white power LED. Yes, it is a big black glass slab.
It would not look out of place on a TV stand or perhaps a big, deep desk. It has a 200 x 200 VESA wall mount, and the remote control gives us more hints about its use.
Amibglow uses 10 LEDs mounted at the back of the bottom bezel to protect multi-coloured light on the desktop. It has several modes to try. You can show it off or turn it off – me; I prefer the latter.
The stand tilts -5/+10° and the TV sits 89mm off the desk so you could fit a small soundbar there.
Connections
USB-C (5Gbps) is plenty to drive a 4K@60Hz screen, and the two USB-A 3.0 ports can sleep charge. We could not measure the amperage – Philips call it fast charge – so it is safe to assume 5V/2A. The only issue is that the USB-C to USB-C cable needs to be good quality or the speed drops off. You can also use it on a PC/Mac Thunderbolt 3 port. If you need to place it further away, DisplayPort or HDMI cables can run 3m or more.
4K@60Hz rated DisplayPort (mini and full both with Freesync support), and 4K@30Hz HDMI (including CEC functionality for remote turn off) complete the video inputs.
Controls
You can access the comprehensive menu system via the rear joystick or the remote control. Do not lose the remote as it the convenient way to change settings.
Gamers will appreciate SmartImage that has FPS, Racing, FTS, Gamer l, Gamer 2, Low Blue Mode, SmartUniformity, and Off. These pre-sets change colours, gamma and uniformity. It has a dedicated remote-control button.
SmartContrast analyses content and presents the best image. I found that this and SmartUniformity gave the best-looking office productivity image where HRD is not a requirement.
HDR can be VESA certified HDR1000 providing three times the luminance of a typical desktop monitor. The other option is UHDA which brings colours up even more at a slight expense of HDR 1000 brightness.
Multiview PIP/PBP
Picture in Picture (PIP) is just what it says – an image from one video source inside another image from a different source.
Picture by Picture (PBP) allows you to use the screen with two sources displaying images side by side. The only issue that this is a 16:9 format screen, so each image is in letterbox style.
How does it look?
GadgetGuy reviews a lot of TVs. We can say for a monitor it is a pretty good TV.
Colours are accurate (and you can adjust them for gamma and colour temperature), you will see more shades (over 1 billion instead of 16.7 million), there is negligible light bleed, and HDR 1000 brightness is excellent (reaches 1,126 nits). It is everything we have come to expect from Quantum Dot colours.
I was particularly impressed with the inky black text and overall blacks which were almost at OLED levels.
It has 32 dimming zones (16 columns x two rows) – not as many as premium TVs but well above what we expect of a monitor.
And as it does not use PWM to control backlight brightness, it is flicker free.
HDR and gamers or movie buffs
You can plug a 4K HDR Blu-ray player like the SonyUBP-X700 or the top-drawer LGUBK90 into the HDMI port (or an Xbox One X) and test the impressive HDR-1000.I have seen better but only on top-drawer TVs costing several thousand dollars more.This provides the best monitor based HDRI have seen. Light areas have details as do dark areas. Even smartphone photos shot in HDR looked great – colour andclarity you can’t see on a standard 8-bit monitor.
Office users
The best format for office users is a curved ultra-wide 21:9,3440 x 1440 screen like the new SamsungC34J79 34” with Thunderbolt 3 (will work off USB-C 3.1 Gen 1). We have several of
The 43” Philips is 16:9 meaning the viewing area is 941 x 529mm, so it’s wide and tall – very tall. You can fit 4.4 A4 sheets across and still have 232mm strip clear across the screen.
However graphic artists and designers don’t mind this. They can work on a full-size image and surround it with their various tools like Creative Suite. The PIP function supports dual inputs, so they can also hook up a digital camera and see the original shot. Here raw real estate rules.
Motion and tearing
For games, your PC GPU handles this. However, for movies, the screen does, and it did not exhibit smearing or tearing – pixels are clear, responsive and handled Forza racing extremely well.
Upscaling
Considering the monitor does not have the processing power of a high-end GPU it does a creditable job upscaling FHD to 4K. There was no softening or over-sharpening as we see all too often with upscaling. Don’t try to upscale HD or SD content though.
How does it sound?
The two x 7W speakers reach 75dB – not room filling loud but very good for personal viewing. Bass kicks in at 100Hz and then frequency response is flat (good) to about 10kHz – warm and sweet best for most sounds. If I were using this as a TV, I would get a HauppaugeWinTV-HVR-955Q HDMI dongle (under $200 on eBay) and a nice 2.1JBL Link Bar (with Google Assistant) to round out the offering. It also supports HDMI CEC for one remote control use and power off.
GadgetGuy’s take. Philips Momentum 436M6 Model 436M6VBPA
Curved monitors provide a greater level of immersion in close-up use. This damned big flat panel monitor provides better definition, better colours and its HDR 1000 is superb. That is if you sit 80cm or further away from the screen.
The 2% Haze surface (anti-glare) is about as low as you can get, and it shows in better, saturated colour that the 3% Haze units we have. Just don’t have a bright light source behind you or you will have unwanted reflections.
Philips can really punch out good 10-bit (dithered), accurate colours. And the difference between 10-bit and 8-bit and 100% DCI-PC and 100% sRGB is astounding. I will find it hard to go back to the lower sRGB standard.
We love the Philips Momentum 436M6 – it puts everything else we have reviewed to shame!
The catch 22 is the huge screen and where to place it. Gamers, small apartment dwellers (add a TV tuner and sound bar), artists, designers and photo editors will love it. Excel spreadsheet users will understand that it can display to column BG and 93 lines!
Now the best thing about this monitor. It costs under $1,400.
There is a lower-cost version (about $1,000) 436M6VBRAB that does not use Quantum Dot and is HDR 400 certified. For office use, this would be all you need.
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