Philips EVNIA 8900 49” 240Hz Super Ultrawide QD-OLED Gaming Monitor Review (49M2C8900)

THIS absolute monster is the Philips EVNIA 8900, specifically this is the 49M2C8900, not to be confused with the other EVNIA 8900 that’s a 42” 4K OLED, this is a 49” super-ultrawide, a 32:9 aspect ratio, with 5120 pixels across, and 1440 vertically. It, much like the smaller 8600 I’ve been using full time, is a QD or Quantum Dot OLED panel, which in my experience is the best type of OLED panel available right now. Being a QD-OLED panel, it has a pretty conventional pixel layout, which means you completely avoid all the fringing issues with text that RWGB OLEDs often have. The big difference, besides the size, between this and the 8600 is this has a higher 240Hz refresh rate – an impressive feat considering this has considerably more pixels to push per frame too. 

Physically, you can think of this like two 27” 1440p monitors glued together. That’s pretty much what you get here. Despite this being the same height as a 27” monitor, and the EVNIA 8600 I’m so used to, when you’re sat in front of it, it looks so short. It’s a bit of an optical illusion, despite that shortcoming, the width wholly makes up for it by completely filling your peripheral vision. Like, if you are using this as a monitor with, like, word processing or web browsing, you will be fully turning your head to see from side to side. For gaming though, that becomes one hell of an advantage because it is so immersive. The gentle 1800R curve helps with that too, truly sucking you into the game world. When it works, this is by far the most engaging gaming experience you can have with a monitor. It’s sharp, crisp, vibrant and super responsive. For competitive games, being able to see such a wide field of view could legitimately be a competitive advantage, and for more story-driven games, the ability for the monitor to literally surround you makes it a genuinely phenomenal experience. 

Not to burst the bubble already, but the key thing I said there was “when it works”, because 32:9 is just not supported well. Games like Rainbow Six Siege straight up won’t run at 5120×1440 – it’ll do 21:9 for regular ultrawides, but for this it’s black bars or nothing – and games like Starfield seem to do a horrible dynamic stretching effect reminiscent of the old eyefinity days where anything on the “periphery” gets stretched. Weirdly, the HUD elements seem to get squeezed, like the status display on the lower left is noticeably ovular. Even games like CS2, which do support running at the full resolution, don’t list 32:9 as one of the supported aspect ratios, and you just have to know that you can leave it on “Widescreen 16:9” and just select the full 5120×1440 resolution in the dropdown list. Equally, functionally no content is made for 32:9 displays, so you will either have half the display filled with a video, or black bars at the sides when you fullscreen it. 

If you can find some supported games though, it’s easily one of the best gaming experiences you can have. Being an OLED, response times are functionally instant, making for incredibly crisp motion, and coupled with the 240Hz refresh rate, it’s an excellent experience. Input latency is spot on too, with OSRTT reporting around half the refresh rate worth of latency which is exactly what you want to see. As is typical for OLEDs, the brightness isn’t amazing, with the SpyderX2 reporting just 250 nits of peak brightness. Now this is exactly what Philips claims, and is completely standard for an OLED like this, but subjectively, I find that OLEDs, especially QD-OLEDs like this – appear a lot brighter than they measure. It’s quite a subjective experience, of course, but I test an awful lot of monitors up here with my bright studio lights on, and plenty of 300 and 400 nit displays end up looking dimmer than this to me. Now that might be the glossy coating, versus the matte coating almost all other displays come with these days, but I thought it was worth mentioning that the figures aren’t everything.

With that said, here’s some more figures. The contrast ratio is infinite, as expected, but what surprised me is just how vibrant this thing looks. Content you can find to fit it looks so rich and really pops. It’s beautiful, and it turns out that’s because this has possibly the widest colour gamut coverage I’ve ever tested, with over 100% of the DCI P3 spectrum, AND over 100% of the AdobeRGB colour space too. It even manages 86% of the new Rec2020 colour space, which is an astonishing feat especially for a display that isn’t labelled as a “Reference Monitor”. Accuracy is great too, with an average DeltaE of 1.66 – which is in line with the calibration report that comes in the box. While that accuracy figure isn’t perfect and you’d want to colour calibrate it to make sure it’s spot on if you were doing colour sensitive work, the fact that it’s so damn vibrant and just stunning to look at is a serious advantage.

On the physical side of things, I really like the styling here too. It follows the same style as the other EVNIA models, with either matte white, or marbled white on the legs, plastic. You still get Philips AmbiGlow across the back and sides, and if you do happen to have this up against a wall, that makes for one hell of an experience with the “follow video” mode. You can turn it off completely if you’d rather though, or stick on a bunch of modes including a rainbow wave like this. As you might expect, the stand offers a decent amount of adjustability in tilt, height, and even swivel, and I’ve got to add that the stand itself is absolutely solid. This isn’t cheap plastic, it’s a solid chunk of metal, and it is ridiculously sturdy. If you’d rather VESA mount it, they do include an adapter in the box, although you might struggle finding one that is rated for the weight of this thing! 

The on screen menu is the same as the 8600, although this model offers you a remote to control it. Annoyingly, the remote is pretty sluggish to respond, so you’re likely better off using the joystick style switch on the back instead. In the menu you can adjust all the features you’d expect, including the OLED specific ones like the screensaver and pixel orbiting features, and initiate a minor refresh. Personally I have the screensaver on fast and pixel orbiting on normal, and the auto-warning banner disabled. 

Inputs wise, you’ve got two HDMI 2.1 ports – both of which support the full res and refresh rate – plus DisplayPort 1.4, and a USB C port for both DisplayPort ALT mode and Power Delivery. You’ve also got a four port USB 3 port, with the two yellow ports being for charging devices. I should also add that the built in speakers are actually really pretty good. You get two 7.5W tweeters, and two 7.5W woofers, and it really does sound decent. Of course, if you’re spending this much on a monitor, I really hope you aren’t using the monitor’s speakers, but still. 

Speaking of the price, right now the 49M2C8900 is around £1250. That’s around £250 more than the 8600 I use, although I’ve seen the 8600 listed for as low as £750 on sale which would be more like half the price. Despite being one of the cheaper 32:9 QD-OLEDs, and it being one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had, I still wouldn’t buy one. I’d buy the 8600 instead. As I said, on sale, it’s almost half the price, and more importantly it is almost as immersive, but is considerably more practical. Games support 21:9 – generally – and for watching films it’s perfect. The 49” just isn’t as practical or usable, and for considerably more money. You can also fit other monitors around the 8600 which I find works better for productivity anyway, although of course those are my thoughts, but I’d love to hear yours in the comments down below!