Philips’ Ultra-wide 34-inch ‘Brilliance’ Display Brings Sleek Curves, Lots Of Pixels

A CES just wouldn’t be a CES without a ton of display announcements, and while 4K is still dominating much of the showfloor, “ultra-wide” has moseyed right on in, demanding some immediate attention. Its name doesn’t keep much a secret, but ultra-wide displays aim to blend the benefits of having just one monitor and then having multiple – you’ll gain more desktop real-estate, but without needing a new desk.

Philips’ “Brilliance Curved UltraWide LCD Display” is a great example of what an ultra-wide should be. For starters, it looks great (though its base might strike some as a little unusual), and with a 3440×1440 resolution, it offers its users nearly 5 million pixels. As someone who’s used 2560×1440 for quite a while, I admit that I’m seriously intrigued.

Whereas 2560×1440 (or 1080p, for that matter) has a ratio of 16:9, this ultra-wide has one of 21:9. What that means is, there will be a lot more room to take advantage of on the desktop, and a bit more of your game world will be exposed. That latter benefit won’t be quite as stark as going with a multi-monitor setup, but as I said above, this is a solution to basically meet you in the middle.

Key specifications include a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, a 300cd/m2 brightness, 5ms gray-to-gray response time, a 60Hz refresh rate (oh, how epic this would have been with a 120Hz refresh…) and 7W built-in speakers. For connectors, there’s a DisplayPort, an HDMI 2.0, and dual HDMI 1.4 ports – one with MHL, for connecting mobile devices at up to 1080p.

Like most things at CES, we’re unsure of the launch date of this Brilliance display, or its tentative pricing. Once we have that information, we’ll update this post.