Why Philips launched Evnia, and what's coming first
Note: This article was first published on 25 October 2022.
Gaming products needed to reflect current appetites and reinvent how gamers are represented.
That representation, from Philips' perspective, comes with Mini-LED, OLED, Quantum-Dot OLED monitors, Cherry MX mechanical keyboards, and 20,000 DPI gaming mice, all designed to include every type of gamer on our globe.
While the brand is well-established in home appliances, Philips has decided that gamers could use better-looking, better-specced, and better-designed video gaming tools. To that end, Philips (with its monitor manufacturing arm TPV Technology Limited) launched Evnia – a new gaming brand that primarily offers gaming monitors and accessories – on 20 October 2022 in Stade de France, Paris.
Why Evnia?
According to Philips, video gamingtoday is very different from how it was first introduced in the 70s to 80s.
Gaming – casual, hardcore, or competitive – is no longer limited to teenagers. At Evnia’s global press launch, Philips said that the average gamer in Asia is 30 years old, and 46% of the gamers on our side of the pond being female (with a 14.8% year-on-year increase, too).
But stereotypes are hard to break, which is why Evnia exists to satisfy a more diverse bunch of video gamers around the globe. It’s for users who can appreciate gaming-quality specifications, regardless of taste (in monitor design or games played) or identities (casual gamers with a corporate day job or full-time game streamers and e-sports athletes).
To drive this point home, Philips chose Sylvia Gathoni, a.k.a. QueenArrow – Kenya’s first female pro esports athlete – to be an ambassador, face, and butt-kicker of Evnia.
The brand’s new name also represents a different perspective on gaming as a mainstream lifestyle choice. “Evnia” comes from the Greek word Εύνοια, which translates to “well-minded” or “smart thinking”.
The term itself is typically used in the context of luck and a show of interest in supporting and protecting someone or something. By adopting Evnia as Philips’s new gaming brand, the company hopes that it can inspire others to create a welcoming community of gamers that looks past stereotypes while retaining the competitive spirit of gaming at its core.
Evnia product lineup
That sense of community and diversity in gaming is a significant role to live up to, especially when Philips has to ensure that Evnia can satisfy nearly every type of pro-level need. At its launch, Evnia showcased 240Hz refresh rate monitors for players of first-person shooters, and Quantum-Dot OLED monitors for RPG and MMORPG gamers, and a host of Cherry MX mechanical keyboards, high DPI gaming mice, and everything else in between.
Evnia comes in three tiers, with a 3000-series range acting as its entry-level lineup, a midrange 5000-series that combines affordability with crucial specs and features, all topped off with a flagship 7000 and 8000-series for gamers who want the best of nearly everything.
Each series will come with monitors and gaming accessories like headsets, gaming mice, and keyboards – a few of which were displayed at Evnia’s launch.
Besides having a unique design to appeal to gamers from all walks of life, Evnia monitors also come with command-and-control software, letting users intuitively adjust their monitor’s settings.
The first volley: Philips Evnia 34M2C7600MV
While manyEvnia products and accessories already have a roadmap and plan to hit retail, Philips is selectively launching one monitor to lead the charge.
The Philips Evnia 34M2C7600MV is a curved 34-inch mini-LED monitor with QHD (3,440 x 1,440 pixels) resolution, VESA's DisplayHDR 1400 certification, 165Hz refresh rate, “ultra-low input lag”, and Adaptive-Sync compatibility.
The monitor itself comes with USB-C ports, as well as KVMsupport(which is a boon to use multiple systems with a single set of input/output devices) and height-adjustable stand for better flexibility and gaming comfort. Other features include Ambiglow, the Evnia’s aesthetic RGB lighting that emits from the back of the monitor to bounce off walls and create additional gaming ambience. Ambiglow is basically Ambilighttech that you would be familiar with on Philips TVs, but it's now scaled down in complexity foruse with their monitors.
It starts retail in December 2022 at €2,069 (~S$2,907.93), with local availability and price to be advised.
If a 165Hz mini-LED monitor for gaming isn’t for you, head on to the next page to see its OLED, QD OLED, and VA panels. There’s also new gaming keyboards, mice, and an Ambiglow mouse mat.
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