The business-oriented Philips Brilliance 279P1 monitor ($349.99) resembles the Editors’ Choice-award-winning Brilliance 272P7VUBNB we tested in 2020, but with a few distinctions. The 279P1 is not quite as, well, brilliant (in terms of sheer brightness) as that model was in our testing, but it is still brighter than the vast majority of productivity monitors we have reviewed. On the plus side, the 279P1 has much better sRGB color coverage than the 272P7VUBNB, adds a second HDMI port, doubles the number of USB 3.2 ports (to four), and incorporates a pair of built-in speakers. All these marks on the positive side of the ledger make the 279P1 an easy pick as our latest Editors’ Choice winner for productivity monitors.
A Massively Full-Featured Monitor
The heart of the Brilliance 279P1 is its 27-inch in-plane switching (IPS) panel, which sports UHD a.k.a. 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) resolution at a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Other monitors with 27-inch screens generally have a lower native resolution—either QHD (2,560 by 1,440 pixels) or even full HD, a.k.a. 1080p (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), as in the Philips 272E1CA Curved Frameless Monitor. The 279P1’s UHD panel yields a very high pixel density—compared with either lower-resolution 27-inch screens or larger 4K displays—of 163 pixels per inch (ppi). All else being equal, the higher the pixel density (how closely the pixels are packed together), the sharper the image.
As is typical of IPS panels, the 279P1’s screen has wide viewing angles, rated at up to 178 degrees for both vertical and horizontal, meaning that colors should remain reasonably true—free of shifting or posterization—even if you view the screen at extreme angles from the side or above.
The 279P1 measures 21.1 by 24.1 by 8.1 inches (HWD) with the stand extended to its full height and weighs 16.2 pounds. The screen has narrow bezels on each side and on top, making it a good choice for a multi-monitor array. The black cabinet that houses the panel connects to a shaft with a hole near the bottom through which you can snake cables. The shaft ends in a circular turntable, set in the rectangular base, which allows you to swivel the panel.
Philips calls the 279P1’s stand the SmartErgoBase, and indeed it boasts a full set of ergonomic features, even taking them a bit further than comparable monitors. You can adjust the stand’s height up to 5.9 inches, an unusually wide range—4 inches is more typical. You can tilt the top of the monitor up to 5 degrees toward and up to 35 degrees away from you. (Few monitors support a tilt adjustment of more than 25 degrees away.) You can swivel the panel 180 degrees in either direction (so it is facing away from you), and pivot it from landscape to portrait mode in either direction, as well.
If you would prefer to mount the 279P1 on a wall or a movable arm, the monitor has four holes spaced 100mm apart for a VESA mounting bracket.
You navigate the 279P1’s onscreen display (OSD) menu system via a row of control buttons on the right side of the bottom bezel. As buttons go, they’re not particularly hard to manipulate, but they are not as convenient as the small joystick controller of the Dell UltraSharp 24 USB-C Hub Monitor (U2421E).
A USB Hub and Ethernet Too
The 279P1 has a rich selection of ports, including a DisplayPort 1.4 connector and a USB Type-C port that supports up to 65 watts of USB power delivery—letting you power or charge a laptop with a compatible USB-C port—as well as video transmission, provided your notebook supports DisplayPort over USB-C alternate mode. (Most recent laptops with USB-C ports do, but you’ll want to verify that.)
There are also four downstream USB 3.2 ports for connecting to peripherals; one supports rapid charging of a phone or tablet. Two of the USB ports are on the side for easy access; all the other ports face downward in back. Downward-facing rear ports are generally hard to access, but thanks to the stand’s pivot capability, you can grasp the side of the monitor and pivot the cabinet upward into portrait mode, revealing the otherwise hidden ports.
The 279P1 also has an RJ-45 jack that supports Gigabit Ethernet. The Ethernet jack is primarily there to provide internet connectivity to a laptop plugged into one of the monitor’s USB-C ports, especially in environments where there is poor or no Wi-Fi, since many of today’s laptops lack Ethernet ports of their own. The 279P1 supports Wake on LAN (WoL), which enables the attached PC to be woken up remotely from a low-power state. WoL can empower remote IT staff to perform software upgrades and other management tasks over the network after the workday is over.
There is also an audio-out jack for headphones or powered external speakers. The 279P1 does have a pair of built-in 3-watt speakers. Although they are reasonably loud, their audio quality is mediocre, so you probably wouldn’t want to crank them up. Still, most business monitors don’t include speakers at all.
Philips backs the 279P1 with its usual generous four-year warranty.
Testing the 279P1: Stellar sRGB Coverage
I tested the 279P1’s brightness, contrast ratio, and color accuracy using our standard test equipment: a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ CalMAN 5 calibration software.
Philips rates the 279P1 at 350 nits (candelas per square meter) of luminance, and it came reasonably close to that—311 nits—in my testing. The Brilliance did slightly better than its rated 1,000:1 contrast ratio, tallying a 1,029:1 score. (See how we test monitors.)
The monitor did great in our sRGB color-gamut testing, covering 99.6% of sRGB. (See the chromaticity or color coverage chart below.) sRGB is the color space used for online art and numerous other applications. The 279P1 also covered 88.9% of DCI-P3, a color space for digital video, and 85% of Adobe RGB, used by professional photographers when editing photos for printing.
In my ad-hoc testing, I viewed a selection of video clips, as well as photos from our standard test suite. Colors were well saturated in the movie scenes, and the monitor retained detail in both bright and dark areas. Colors in photos seemed vivid and reasonably true.
A Top-Shelf Docking-Station Monitor
Displays such as the 279P1—which feature a USB hub and an Ethernet jack along with a generous selection of other ports—are variously called docking-station or USB-hub monitors, because they have all the ports you might look for in a docking station, and you can access them from your computer over a USB-C connection. Other monitors of this kind that we have reviewed include the aforementioned Philips 272P7VUBNB, the HP E24d G4 FHD Advanced Docking Monitor—also an Editors’ Choice pick—and the Dell U2421E.
The HP and Dell are both 24-inch displays with considerably lower resolution than the 279P1 (1080p and WUXGA or 1,920 by 1,200 respectively). Their measured brightness—248 nits for the Dell and 209 for the HP—was well under that of the Brilliance as well. Each of the two monitors did have a few nifty features not found in the 279P1. The U2421E has two DisplayPort connectors that let you daisy-chain up to three monitors together, as well as a pair of USB-C ports—one able to charge handheld devices—and a mini-joystick OSD controller that is considerably easier to use than the Philips model’s buttons. The HP E24d also has a pair of DisplayPort connectors that let you daisy-chain another monitor, plus a “virtual KVM switch” mode that lets you switch between two PCs connected to the display. But in screen size, brightness, and resolution, they both fall well short of the 279P1.
Despite its name, the Philips Brilliance 279P1 is not quite as bright as the Philips 272P7VUBNB. However, in sRGB color coverage and port selection, as well as in its addition of a pair of built-in speakers, the 279P1 has the edge—and it sells for essentially the same price as its sibling. It’s an easy pick for an Editors’ Choice award among productivity or docking-station monitors.
