Philips 234EL2 Monitor - Affordable Entry Level Solution
Looking for a 23-inch monitor that would not cause significant damage to your wallet? The Philips 234EL2 looks ready to impress with its high 20,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio; otherwise, it comes with the standard specs that you would find on most monitors these days. How would it fare in a closely competitive segment? Let's find out.
LED-Backlit Solution to Your Entry Level Needs
As LED-backlit monitors become more mainstream, competitive prices have made them increasingly more attractive to customers over their conventional, cold cathode fluorescent lamp-backlit counterparts. Add in the fact that they have a smaller carbon footprint, slimmer bodies, and richer colors, customers definitely have more reasons to invest in the former. In comes the Philips 234EL2, an affordable 23-inch white LED-backlit monitor with some pretty good specs to boot. With a 20,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, a widescreen 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution, and a low price point, the 234EL2 looks set to be a worthy choice in its category.
Design
The Philips 234EL2 distinguishes itself from the rest by having a rounded set that looks less commonplace.
The design of the monitor is relatively charming, coming in with a rounded and friendlier looking set. Like most monitors, the 234EL2 is covered with a glossy bezel at the front that's prone to fingerprints. Surprisingly, it sports a smooth, matte black surface at the back. On retrieving the monitor out of the box, we realized that there were a few unsightly scratches on the glossy base stand - so do practice some caution.
The monitor is considerably slimmer compared to its conventional counterparts, but loses out to the likes of the HP 2310e due to an extra bulge at the back.
The setup was stable with only slight wobbling observed during tilting - which to us, is not a major concern. Overall stability was good due in most part to the display's short neck and large circular base. Like many entry-level monitors, you can only tilt, but not swivel or make adjustments to its height. The two latter features would allow users to personalize their viewing experience further.
The assembling process is extremely simple: a mere matter of snapping it on.
Connectivity-wise, ports are lined up neatly behind, just above the spine of the standee. The usual suspects include: the AC power, headphone jack, HDMI, DVI-D (with HDCP) and VGA.
Like most newer monitors these days, the Philips 234EL2 showcases a set of touch sensitive controls instead of physical ones. The power button, as seen from below, is the only one demarcated with a symbol; the rest are visible only upon start-up, or when you tap near the power button to activate them while they're in sleeping mode. As superficial as it might sound, this adds a futuristic and modern feel to the monitor. The "buttons" are very responsive without being overly sensitive, making it easy for one to navigate from one section to another.
The buttons are easy to discern, making navigation and toggling controls rather straightforward.
Features
The GUI is simple and extremely straightforward, and doesn't deviate much from the usual GUI that's present on most monitors. On the extreme left, you've the SmartImage control where you get a total of three presets: Standard, Internet and Gaming. Each of them uses a its own combination of brightness, contrast, color saturation, and sharpness levels. That being said, the preset selection here is considered bare compared to other monitors out there which come with more variations like Text and Movie. It's entirely up to you to decide which better complements your experience, but for most tasks, Standard is a safe choice. On the other hand, choosing the Gaming preset would turn on the overdrive circuit to achieve a fast response time (rated at 5 ms) to minimize jaggies on fast-moving objects. In other words, if the display were to be used primarily as a gaming monitor, this preset might be a better choice.
The second and third controls lead to standard options, such as input selection (VGA, HDMI, DVI) and volume control (the monitor comes with built-in stereo speakers).
Lastly, the fourth control paves the way to the Monitor Setup, where the usual settings like Brightness, OSD, Contrast, Smart Contrast, Audio and Color Temperature are. The Philips 234EL2 is a fuss-free monitor with no frills, and for a basic monitor, a basic GUI and a basic set of controls work pretty fine in its stead.
The GUI is rather self-explanatory and takes little time to get used to.
Calibration
Per our normal tests, we first calibrated the monitor with Datacolor's Spyder3Elite before conducting our visual tests and video benchmark. Do note that we kick-started the series of test with these settings: changing color settings to the sRGB preset, with a contrast setting of 90 and brightness at 60. Also, do note that the sRGB scheme cannot be activated when SmartImage is in use. Needless to say, we disabled SmartImage via the control on the front of the monitor in this instance.
We noticed that a light pinkish hue was present before calibration.
Colors were distinctively cooler after calibration.
DisplayMate
DisplayMate is an application which generates a sequence of test patterns to determine the capabilities of imaging devices like color and gray-scale accuracies. Here's what we gathered:
Compression artifacts started appearing briefly in the middle, but otherwise, smooth graduation throughout the colors in general.
Text could be clearly read on both white and black background, even at the smallest font size.
Screen Uniformity test:- Screen Uniformity was tested across all primary and secondary colors with no irregularities in tint or hue observed. While backlight bleeds weren't overtly prominent on the monitor, they were visible around the perimeter of the screen.
Stuck Pixel test:- No dead pixels were visible on the screen across all the colors.
Dark Gray Scale test:- Blacks were accurate, with little to no irregularities across the blocks. Grey blocks were noticeable from level 4 onwards.
Color Tracking test:- No abnormal variations apparent.
256 Intensity Color Ramp test:- Compression artifacts appeared briefly in the middle, only showing up prominently at the end. Otherwise, gradation was smooth, with all colors reflected accurately. We noticed that the white was too cool for our liking (it had a slight tinge of blue), but that didn't deter much from its overall performance.
Color Scales test:- Smooth gradation was spotted across the color scales. All primary colors were accurate.
Scaled Font:- Fonts were very discernible even up to the smallest size on both black and white backgrounds.
Movie Viewing in the Dark
As per normal, part of our video playback tests involves us playing two 1080p trailers - namely, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Star Trek - to get a good gauge of the monitor's ability to render colors, dynamic contrast ratio performance and so forth. Both of the clips also offer a mixture of dark brooding and fast-moving action scenes that are great for testing out a monitor's video playback performance and responsiveness.
A minor inconvenience that we have encountered sometimes with touch-sensitive controls is that they do not light up when the lights are out, making them hard to discern in the dark. Thankfully, on the Philips 234EL2, control buttons will light up once you tap near the power button, making it easy for users to discern where and what to press in the dark. The visual performance on the 23EL2 was definitely one of the better ones so far - viewing the clips was a pleasant experience, especially so with the 23EL2's accurate color reproduction (including skin tones, and blacks) and crisp details. We also observed pretty good viewing angles (Philips rated them at 176° and 170° for horizontal and vertical respectively).
Watching clips on different monitors with dynamic contrast ratio on has always been one with patchy results. The Philips 23EL2 has an above average contrast ratio of 20,000,000:1. Most other monitors average somewhere from 5,000,000 to 8,000,000:1. With Smart Contrast turned on, videos appeared dimmer on the whole, but with smooth contrast transitions that were not overbearing. Visual details still remained crisp and clear with accurate skin tones and colors. Overall, the Smart Contrast experience on the 23EL2 was commendable. Thankfully, switching it on in this case actually enhanced video playback, with fluid transitions that did not compromise visual details in dark scenes.
In Closing
The Philips 234EL2 earns points for having a pleasant exterior and a sensible (by that we mean, within reach and easy to ultilize) control panel placement. The user experience is high here, with the monitor sporting both a simple and an easy to use GUI in addition to a set of responsive touch controls. Performance-wise, we were impressed with the 234EL2 as it showcased very good and pleasing color reproduction, as well as crisp and fine details. Text readability was also excellent on this machine, with even the smallest of fonts being highly legible against both white and black backgrounds.
The only issue we think the Philips 234EL2 suffers from is a backlight bleeding issue, which crops in around the perimeter of the monitor. It isn't a serious problem, but nonetheless, one we would rather do without. Also notable is its Smart Contrast option, which is one of the better ones out there as it actually enhances video playback with fluid dims and transitions without compromising visual details. For $325, you might not get a better deal elsewhere -solid performance and looks - for a basic frills-free 23-inch LED-backlit monitor for your entertainment, gaming and Internet browsing needs.
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