The Philips Momentum 5000 27M1F5500P is ideal for competitive gamers
- Manufacturer: Philips
- Model: Momentum 5000
- SKU: Momentum 27M1F5500P
- Display Type: Nano-IPS Gaming Monitor
- Resolution: 1440p (QHD)
- Refresh rate: 240 Hz
- Price when reviewed: £589.99
- Supplied by: Philips
Philips Momentum 5000 27M1N5500P Review
Overview
Philips has been going from strength to strength, and its newest monitors are very impressive. The Momentum 5000 27M1F5500P we have here is a stunning 27” 1440p monitor, geared towards competitive and esports gamers. The highlights here are the rapid response times, colour vibrancy and its super-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.
The Nano-IPS panel produces amazing colour, with an outstanding 98% DCI-P3 coverage. Additional features worthy of mention are the four-port USB hub, and both G-Sync compatibility and Freesync Premium certification keeping the action smooth. This is also a DisplayHDR 600 display, but it lacks local dimming.
At £589.99, the 27M1F5500P is priced towards the higher end of the mid-range, but it’s certainly attainable, and it has an excellent blend of performance, build and features. Although this is an easy monitor to recommend if you’re into high-refresh competitive games, it fares equally well as a mixed-use display. Cinematic games, movies and TV shows look stunning thanks to the excellent colour reproduction.
Design and build
The Philips Momentum 5000 27M1F5500P retains the sleek, grown-up styling of other displays in the Momentum 5000 range. Although there is no RGB or extraneous styling, I like this monitor a lot. If you prefer a more restrained aesthetic for your setup, the premium finish of the 27M1F5500P should fit right in.
The top and side bezels surrounding the display are very small, but Philips has gone one further, shrinking down the lower bezel, too. With no logos adorning the bezels, this monitor is all-screen with no distracting elements in your line of sight. At the back of the monitor, most of the surfaces are covered with textured black plastic, with a contrasting grey panel surrounding the mount for the stand.
The only design element suggesting this is a gaming display is the robotic-claw-shaped base of the stand, but even this is tastefully done, laying flush with the desk and tapering towards the front. The all-metal stand is very robust, and it holds the monitor firmly in place without being awkward to reposition.
I love how Philips has bucked the trend of bigger and wider tripod stands – the Momentum 5000 has kept its stand appreciably compact, measuring 210mm (8 ¼”) front to back and 330mm (13”) at its widest point. You also get a full range of ergonomic adjustments: Height can be adjusted by 130mm, the display can be tilted -5°/+20°, swivelled -45°/+45°, and pivoted either way into portrait orientation.
There is an integrated cable management clip at the rear of the stand, however, it’s not very big. It will comfortably take the power cable, a couple of display cables and maybe a couple of USBs, but if you’ve got something plugged into every available port I can’t see them all fitting very well. It’s well made and sensibly located, though, and adding or removing cables isn’t the faff it can be on some of the more awkward solutions I’ve seen.
The menu system on the 27M1F5500P is typical of Philips gaming monitors. It looks a little plain, but it’s very sensibly arranged, making it easy to find the setting you need, and it’s fast and responsive. The control joystick used to operate the menus and power on the display works effectively, but it’s located very badly. It’s positioned at the back of the display on the right-hand side, which is common, but it’s set so far away from the edge of the display that you have to stretch most of your palm behind the display to reach it. Certainly not the end of the world, but definitely an oversight in the design phase.
Connectivity and Supported Resolutions
The Philips Momentum 5000 27M1F5500P has a good selection of connectivity options: 2x HDMI 2.0 and 2x DisplayPort 1.4 inputs are available for display connections, along with a 3.5mm audio out and a USB-B upstream port to connect your PC to the USB hub, which has 4 downstream USB-A ports (including a fast-charge port). Sadly there is no USB-C DP-alt mode connection, which would have been useful when using the USB hub.
The 27M1F5500P supports the following optimum resolutions:
HDMI 2.0: 2560*1440 @ 144 Hz
DisplayPort: 2560*1440 @ 240 Hz
Freesync Premium and G-Sync are both supported, making this ideal whether you are Team Green or Red. The adaptive sync window stretches from 48-240 Hz using DisplayPort and 48-144 Hz with HDMI. If you want to hook up a gaming console as well, 1440p@120Hz is available on the Xbox Series consoles, and Sony is rolling out an update to properly support 1440p displays on the PS5.
The integrated four-port USB hub is appreciated, but there’s only one upstream port, so you can only use it with one device at a time. Even so, it’s still a welcome addition, and two of the ports support BC 1.2 fast-charging which is handy for keeping peripherals connected and charged up.
DisplayPort, HDMI and USB-B to A cables are included. The power supply isn’t integrated so the Momentum 5000 comes with a compact external power brick, which has sufficient length to reach from your desk to the floor if needed.
Display quality
If you’ve never seen a Nano-IPS display before, you’ll be in for a treat, as the colours this monitor produces are magnificent. Out of the box, the image quality is excellent and colour temperatures using the default 6500K preset were bang-on.
As always, there are numerous gaming presets available. In comparison with some other displays I’ve tested, these were only minor departures from what I’d deem a perfect setup without washing out colours, grossly over/under saturating colours or hindering the contrast making them very usable, so it’s worth flicking through them to see if one takes your fancy.
sRGB mode is locked to 100% brightness, which will disappoint some users, but the white point sits at 6500K with sRGB enabled, so it’s still suited to colour-critical work, even without calibration.
Panel response
Viewing the UFO ghost test at 240Hz, some subtle motion blur is apparent. However, this is with Smart Response (overdrive) switched off. Set Smart Response to Faster and blur is almost non-existent. At 60Hz there is some haloing, but switching Smart Response to fast cleans up the image whilst still keeping blur in check. This is a very impressive display when it comes to fast-moving images and ideal for the target competitive gamer audience.
Grey-to-grey response is outstanding, with <10ms transitions that make this a great monitor for competitive gaming, and input lag is negligible, especially with the low input lag feature enabled. In-game responsiveness is faultless, and if you’re playing at the full 240 Hz it can give you a tangible advantage in fast-paced gaming.
If your GPU supports it, you can use adaptive sync – The Momentum 5000 is a Freesync Premium display with an activation window of 48Hz – 240Hz (144Hz via HDMI), and it also supports Nvidia G-Sync with the same activation window.
Brightness, contrast and colour
The 6500K temperature preset sat dead on the optimal 6500K value, needing no adjustment, which points to excellent factory calibration. Using the Native colour temperature preset, the display hit over 496 cd/m² peak brightness, but with a cooler temperature of 7100K. Using the more accurate 6500K preset, the 27M1F5500P reached a peak brightness of 454 cd/m², which is clearly visible in a very brightly lit room.
Black levels were the same across the presets with the display set to max brightness. With a reading of 0.53 cd/m², this is slightly above average for a regular IPS display but more common for those with such a high peak brightness. This does, however, affect the contrast ratio, which maxed out at 850:1.
Even at lower brightness levels, the light bleed is visible, which can wash out dark scenes in games and films. There’s also a slight loss of definition in extremely dark shades, but this is not likely to be noticeable in regular use. Despite the lower contrast ratio, though, there are clearly visible steps between each colour band in our tests, and the level of colour the Momentum 5000 produces is superb
I’d have liked smoother, more granular control of the brightness at higher levels – 0-75% brightness goes from 33-240 cd/m², with 75-100% brightness going from 240-455 cd/m² in visible steps. This is just nitpicking, though.
If you’re a fan of bold and bright colours, you’re going to love this display. The 27M1F5500P can accurately recreate subtle shades, but it can also create sumptuously rich colours. The brightest shades are very well balanced, and it’s a joy to watch movies or play games with vivid colour palettes.
The out-of-the-box colour calibration is very good, with a highly accurate white point which needed no adjustment. The average DeltaE of 1.46 (colour accuracy) is good and below the perceptible limit of 2.0, but the Momentum responded extremely well to calibration, with a DeltaE of 0.16, a perfect 2.2 gamma curve and an increase in contrast ratio to 950:1.
The default gamma setting of 2.2 actually came in closer to 2.3, with a subtle departure from the curve at medium brightnesses, resulting in a slight darkening of the image. Switching to the 2.0 preset moved it a similar amount the other way with a recorded 2.1 curve. Either of these results is perfectly acceptable, and you can choose which looks best based on your personal preference.
Gamut coverage and HDR
Colour saturation and gamut coverage are excellent. The Nano-IPS display in the 27M1F5500P has wide gamut coverage that gives exceptional colour vibrancy without oversaturating colours. The higher black levels can wash out darker scenes if you’re watching at high brightness at night, but the colours remain impressive whatever the viewing conditions are like.
The panel in the 27M1F5500P has 10bit (8bit+FRC) colour depth, allowing it to display up to 1.07 billion colours. Gamut coverage* is excellent: sRGB has 100% coverage and 143.9% volume. AdobeRGB has 88% coverage with a volume of 99.2%, and DCI-P3 has 98% coverage with a volume of 101.9%
*Coverage is how much of the gamut is covered, whilst volume includes any colour that extends beyond the defined gamut.
HDR is better than I expected it to be without local dimming. This is already a bright display, but HDR allows for peaks of over 600 cd/m², and the vividness of colour is brought to the fore thanks to the high DCI-P3 coverage. There are only a few presets, but the HDR Game mode was the best in our testing, giving the highest peak brightness and best colour.
We still have the downside of the light bleed slightly washing out dark scenes and the lack of dimming, but there’s a visible improvement when viewing HDR content. I wouldn’t necessarily pick this out if I was looking for a premium HDR display, but it’s a welcome and usable feature that’s more an “added bonus” than a stand-out feature.
Viewing angles and uniformity
Brightness and contrast uniformity is very good, and above average for a mid-range display; Contrast deviation peaks at a maximum of 4.17% in the upper left corner; brightness fluctuates up to a maximum of 5.02 cd/m² (4.52%) in the lower corners. This is essentially imperceptible and you’re unlikely to notice these deviations without measuring equipment.
There is no backlight bleed encroaching from the bezels on the monitor we received, and only slight IPS glow at the corners.
As this is a Nano-IPS display the off-angle viewing is excellent, with colours retaining accuracy and vibrancy and only limited changes in brightness and contrast.
Sound quality
There aren’t any integrated speakers in 27M1F5500P. There is a 3.5mm headphone socket, so you can connect desktop speakers, and although the omission of speakers is slightly unusual, the quality of monitor speakers usually leaves a lot to be desired anyway.
Summary
The Philips Momentum 27M1F5500P is an outstanding monitor for competitive gaming. The responsiveness and motion handling is exceptionally good, and the 27” 1440p 240Hz panel represents a perfect balance for those wanting sharp image clarity and high frame rates as well as vivid colour. Impressively, the Nano-IPS display is just as good for media consumption, too, with superb colour accuracy and vibrancy.
There aren’t any integrated speakers, but considering most monitor speakers are lacklustre anyway, this isn’t likely to bother most people. The contrast ratio could be better, but this is offset by great brightness levels. HDR performance is surprisingly good, though, and even though there is no local dimming, the enhanced brightness and sumptuous colour make it a welcome addition.
Snappy performance and high frame rates used to come at the cost of image quality, but now we can have both. This monitor is perfect for fast-paced games, but it has appeal across the board. You get amazing colour, an excellent feature set, tasteful styling and superb Philips reliability and build quality. Chalk this up as a win for the Momentum 27M1F5500P.
