A videoconferencing docking-station monitor with great color accuracy

The Philips 329P1H productivity monitor combines a 32-inch IPS screen with the connectivity of a docking-station monitor and the speakers, mic, and webcam of a videoconferencing display.

Philips has a record of producing high-quality, full-featured monitors, and the 329P1H is no exception. This 32-inch panel shone brightly in our testing, with better contrast than its rated specs would suggest as well as excellent color accuracy. It has all the connectors you'd expect from a display marketed as a USB-C docking-station monitor, plus a webcam with microphone and a powerful speaker set to raise your videoconferencing game. It doesn't come cheap—online prices range from just under $600 to $675, with Amazon listing it for $604.28 at presstime—but it follows neatly in the footsteps of its smaller siblings the Philips 279P1 and 272P7VUBNB, both among our top picks. The Philips 329P1H earns an Editors' Choice award among 30-inch-plus productivity monitors.

Outfitted with a 4K or UHD (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) IPS panel measuring 31.5 inches diagonally, the 329P1H has a pixel density of 140 pixels per inch (ppi), which is more than enough for photo editing. The monitor measures 25.6 by 28 by 11 inches (HWD) with its stand fully extended and weighs 28.6 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.

The stand boasts a full set of ergonomic features. You can adjust the monitor's height by 7.1 inches, an unusually large range. You can tilt the top of the monitor up to 5 degrees toward and 25 degrees away from you; swivel the panel 180 degrees in either direction (so it's facing away from you); and pivot it between landscape and portrait modes in either direction as well.

Four holes in the back of the cabinet, placed 100mm apart, will fit a VESA bracket (not included) if you prefer to mount the panel on a wall or arm instead.

Peeping over the top of the cabinet is a 2-megapixel webcam with built-in microphone. The 329P1H also has a pair of built-in 5-watt speakers. In this it resembles several other recent displays such as the Asus BE279QSK, the HP E27m G4 QHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor, and the HP E24m G4 FHD USB-C Conferencing Monitor. All are designed to support home and office workers who rely on Zoom, Google Meet, and other teleconferencing clients.

Billed as featuring a built-in USB-C docking station with power delivery, the 329P1H also resembles many recent premium office-oriented monitors that can connect to a laptop via a USB Type-C connection (and power it, delivering up to 90 watts in this case); offer USB Type-A ports for keyboards, mice, and other peripherals (a total of four); and provide LAN connectivity through an RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet jack. It also has one DisplayPort connector and two HDMI ports, as well as a Kensington lock slot and an audio-out jack.

You navigate the monitor's onscreen display (OSD) menu system via a row of four function buttons on the right side of the bottom bezel, next to the power button. As buttons go, they're not particularly hard to manipulate, but they're not as convenient as the mini-joystick controllers of the Dell UltraSharp 27 USB-C Hub Monitor and several other so-called docking-station monitors. At least they are not hidden on the back of the panel, making you grope for them blindly.

Philips backs the 329P1H with a four-year warranty, one of the best in the business. Most monitor manufacturers cover their products for three years.

I tested the Philips 329P1H's brightness, contrast ratio, and color coverage and accuracy using our standard test gear: a Klein K-10A(Opens in a new window)  colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G(Opens in a new window)  signal generator, and the Portrait Displays CalMAN 5(Opens in a new window)  calibration software.

Philips rates the display's luminance at 350 nits (candelas per square meter), but it tallied 376 nits in my testing. That's bright enough for any business purpose apart from an office that's flooded with ambient light, and it should suffice for photo and video work, too. The display also exceeded its rated 1,000:1 contrast ratio, posting a score of 1,260:1. (See how we test monitors.)

Philips promises the 329P1H should cover the full sRGB color space with room to spare, and it achieved that in our testing. (See the sRGB color coverage or chromaticity chart above.) It also covered all of the DCI-P3 gamut commonly used in digital video and 85.8% of the Adobe RGB color space frequently used by professional photographers.

Delta E, meanwhile, is a measurement of a monitor's color accuracy—how closely the color in the displayed image matches the input signal. We look for a Delta E of less than 2.0 for professional monitors suitable for photo editing, and Philips rates the 329P1H's Delta E as less than 2 for the sRGB space. Our Delta E score averages 45 measurements for individual colors; not only did the display deliver an average Delta E of just 0.99, but only one of the 45 values exceeded 2. (See the ColorChecker chart below.)

In short: The monitor's color accuracy is excellent, and its brightness and contrast ratio exceeded our expectations.

About the only quibbles we can raise about the Philips 329P1H are that it isn't cheap, it uses navigation buttons instead of a mini-joystick controller, and its webcam is relatively low-res (2 megapixels versus 5 for the abovementioned HP conferencing monitors' webcams). But these are all relative.

Sure, there are 32-inch productivity monitors available for half the 329P1H's price, but not with anything near its feature set. One of the latest fully loaded business monitors we've seen, the Dell UltraSharp 30 USB-C Hub Monitor, costs considerably more with a smaller 30-inch screen. While the Philips uses old-school buttons instead of a four-way controller, at least they're easily visible and labeled on the bezel. And as for the webcam, most monitors don't offer one at all.

For its combination of great image quality, videoconferencing support, and all the ports that make it a true docking-station display, the Philips 329P1H is an easy Editors' Choice pick among large-screen productivity monitors.

The Philips 329P1H productivity monitor combines a 32-inch IPS screen with the connectivity of a docking-station monitor and the speakers, mic, and webcam of a videoconferencing display.

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Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.

Over the years, I have reviewed iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the PCMag Digital Edition.

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I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T490 laptop that's my work daily driver, and an HP Pavilion Aero 13 as my primary personal laptop. (I also have an older Dell XPS 13, which now stays at home full-time.) I pair these variously with a Lenovo ThinkVision portable monitor that I rely on as a handy second screen. For storage testing, I rely on our two custom-built Windows testbeds in PC Labs, as well as a 2016 MacBook Pro.

My primary home monitor is a BenQ EX2780Q, a gaming monitor with a great sound system and excellent image quality. I use that panel for writing, watching videos, and working with photos. I also have an HP 27 Curved Display—one of the first general-purpose curved monitors—which I have paired with an Acer Aspire desktop computer. My multifunction printer is an Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One. I also own a Canon CanoScan LiDE 220 scanner, a classic flatbed I use for photos and short documents, and a Canon Selphy CP1300 small-format photo printer for turning out snapshots.

My first cell phone, in 2006, was a Motorola RAZR; since then, it’s been all iPhones—I currently have an iPhone 11 Pro. I use my iPhone a lot for casual photography, though I also use a Canon G5 X Mark II for everyday shooting. For much of my travel photography and astrophotography, I use a Sony A7r, often with a Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS zoom lens. I also pair the A7r with a RedCat 51 for deep-sky star shooting.

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