Samsung SyncMaster 243T-Black 24" LCD Monitor

Rating:
Summary: Let me say one thing before I start… WOW!!
Review: First Impressions of New Samsung 243t 24 Inch Widescreen Monitor

Let me say one thing before I start… WOW!!

Every LCD monitor that I had looked at before turned me off because none were as bright as my beloved Sony 19 inch CRT monitor.

The Samsung 243t, First Impressions …

 Screen brightness… WOW… very bright, more so then my Sony 19 inch CRT.
 Fonts… very bright and VERY sharp; crystal clear to be exact. No compromise here.
 Viewing angle… much better then I imagined for an LCD, can view it from all normal angles. Yes, there is some fall-off at very wide angles but even here it is much less then I thought there would be.
 Swiveling the monitor on the base stand… Forward, Back, Tilt way back, Raise the whole monitor up and down, Rotate 90 degrees for portrait mode; it does it all thanks to the new detachable VESA compliant universal base. What a wonderful design.
 Bad pixels… At first I could find none, but after a couple of days of looking at different colored screens I finally found one… a red one that was turned on, directly under the Win XP Start button so it is not an issue at all as it is completely invisible with Windows running.
 Does it handle TV correctly? You bet! Using MC’s Aspect Ratio called “Crop” (not “Crop Edges”) all TV is viewed full screen and full width without any stretching or distortion at all. Crop automatically blows up standard 4:3 aspect ratio so there are no black borders on the sides and it removes the top and bottom black borders on letterbox or HDTV images.
 Response time… this is where most LCD monitors fall down with fast moving objects such as games. The Samsung does pretty well here. In fact, PC Game web site tested it and declared this monitor to be the perfect game monitor. They said you have not really played a game until you do it on a large, widescreen monitor. One of the fastest LCD monitors available is the NEC 2180UX 21 inch (4:3 aspect ratio), it has a response time of just 20 milliseconds. The Samsung 24 inch widescreen is only 25 milliseconds, pretty impressive for a 24 inch widescreen with 1200 x 1920 pixels.

In addition to the widescreen, what really impressed me right out of the box is the brightness and crystal clear, tack sharp image. I did not know that LCD’s have gotten this good. I have heard that in the last year or so there have been big improvements in LCD monitors.

I am getting fantastic image quality using only analog (ATI A-I-W 9600 Pro video card). I have heard that it is even better when connected digital (video card has to have digital output, not all do).

I was looking at three different big-screen monitors… NEC 2180UX 21.3 inch, standard aspect ratio, Sony PremierPro 23 inch windscreen, and the Samsung 243t 24 inch widescreen. All are great monitors.

 Although the NEC is a wonderful monitor, it is not wide screen and I really wanted that.
 The Sony has been out for over a year and is starting to show its age a little (only 40 milliseconds response time and only 350:1 contrast ratio). Also, the Sony seems to be having a quality control problem with a lot of bad pixels. Some users have reported as many as 15 bad pixels on the Sony.
 The Samsung is brand new with the latest technology (25 milliseconds response time, 500:1 contrast ratio) and that fantastic universal base).

I read a report where a guy found the Sony and the Samsung in a store, side-by-side. He played with the controls for over an hour on both monitors. He bought the Samsung as no matter how hard he tried he could not make the Sony look as bright as the Samsung.

As I write this (in Word) I am using the monitor swiveled 90 degrees for portrait mode. I can see 1 and ½ full pages; how simply wonderful.

The Samsung 243t Widescreen, after a week or two of getting some real world use...

Now that I’ve had a couple of weeks to get used to the Samsung Widescreen, I have noticed some real world differences between LCD’s and CRT’s. Some things that I used to take for granted are no longer an issue or are vastly improved over CRT monitors; such as…

• My fears about switching to a widescreen for my computer monitor were totally unfounded…

o MC and all other software expands nicely to fit the new format with a LOT more room for everything.
o My concerns about TV on a widescreen monitor was a non-issue; the black borders I was concerned about on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image are very clean with no artifacts.
o The black borders on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image can be totally removed with MC TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command (not the Crop edges option). It does not stretch the image as ATI’s Aspect controls do (causing distortion of the image), but rather it ‘zooms’ the image so the side borders go off the screen. This does make some of the top and bottom of the image go off the screen but is a very good compromise until real widescreen comes to all households in a year or two.
o One thing that did came as a surprise to me was that letterbox images do not automatically fill the screen but have black borders all around… top, bottom, left and right. I had just assumed that letterbox TV images would automatically fill the screen; but after seeing a letterbox image on my widescreen monitor I saw what was happening. The TV station was sending out a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV signal which included a letterbox movie within it so it was on the screen as a 4:3 image. MC’s TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command did the trick and expanded it to full screen thereby filling the whole screen with a non-distorted widescreen image.
o Even with MC’s TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command, some real widescreen images that TV stations transmit will still leave a very thin black border along the top and bottom of the screen; that is because most letterbox images are 16:9 aspect but for some reason all widescreen computer monitors are 16:10 aspect ratio hence the thin black borders left over. This is something that MC needs to address.
• Much faster turn on after a Win XP standby start up.
• The screen does not come on faint at boot up (like CRT’s) but seems to come on at normal color; in other words there is no ‘warm up’ time required.
• The image does not shift in size as the screen warms up like a CRT does.
• There is no need for ‘tweaking’ the screen size and position settings as it is done automatically by use of the ‘Auto’ button which works extremely well indeed.
• A full screen image with a thin line running all the way around it (a border) will be precisely positioned and well centered on the screen with the thin border just inside the screen bezel; it will be straight and precise. No matter how hard I tried, I could never achieve that for very long on any CRT monitor. On a CRT, even when I could precisely position such an image on the screen some of the thin border would always bow out of the image and hide behind the bezel as the line was not really true and straight due to the CRT gun scanning in an arc and the different thickness of the glass tube surface.
• As there is no more screen behind the bezel (like CRT’s) the screen size is precise and very well known so the video card only has to provide the exact number of pixels that the screen needs. So, when you set up the screen size in Windows to 1200x1920 the video card produces that exact amount of pixels and the LCD reads that exact size (1200x1920). This is why the ’Auto’ feature works so well.
• There is absolutely no pincushion, barrel, trapezoid, non-linearity, or any other kind of distortion that needs to be adjusted. This is because there is no ‘gun’ (as in a CRT) scanning in an arc that needs to be controlled and adjusted. Furthermore, these controls are not needed and are not present which greatly simplifies the setting up of a LCD monitor.
• Brightness… I was very pleasantly surprised in this area as I had always thought that LCD’s were dimmer then a bright CRT. A lot of things have been improved in LCD design in the last year or so. This LCD is actually much brighter, and with better contrast then any CRT that I have used.
• The screen does not ‘wash out’ as brightness and/or contrast are turned up as most CRT’s do. There seems to be much better control over the contrast then on a CRT.
• Contrast ration is very good (500:1).
• Due to the high contrast ratio, blacks are really black; in fact when the screen is turned off it appears to be almost totally black and not the dark grey of most CRT’s. I think this may be because there is no shadow mask screen or thick glass for the light to travel through and become weakened. There is only a thin black plastic screen between the LCD’s and you.
• Much thinner bezel surrounding the screen as there is no screen area behind the bezel that has to be covered as there is in all CRT’s monitors.
• The only negative side to LCD’s has to do with the backlighting…
o CRT’s are notorious for having ’spotty’ brightness especially on a full screen of a bright color such as white; this is due to many reasons including the gun scanning in an arc, the electron beam striking the shadow mask at more of an angle near the edges, and the different thickness of the surface of the glass CRT tube all leading to light fall off near the corners and edges.
o I thought that would be a thing of the past with a LCD as there is no electron gun, no shadow mask, and no scanning in an arc; but there are back lights and no matter how hard the manufacturers have tried there will always be some slightly lighter and darker areas of the screen as current back light technology simply is not as uniform as one would hope for. What you see on an LCD monitor is a slight ‘shimmering’ of light as you move your heard at different angles to the screen. Some of this is due to backlighting fall off over the screen surface.
o There is hope for the future in a new type of backlighting using not fluorescent as the light source, but an array of LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes). LED backlighting on an LCD monitor may be about a year away but the test that I have seen looks very promising so far. Such a monitor is brighter, has better contrast, and much more saturated colors, the overall effect is very positive. The nice thing about LED backlighting is that current assemble lines can use it on new LCD monitors at very little additional manufacturing assembly cost (the actual LED backlighting may be more expensive).
• All in all, most of my fears about LCD’s have been put to rest; needless to say, I’m one happy camper.


Rating:
Summary: Samsung SyncMaster 243T 24" LCD Monitor
Review: I recently purchased this 24" widescreen LCD monitor for my Dell Dimension 8250 desktop computer. I use an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 256 for a graphic card. I've had this Samsung monitor for 2 weeks now ... WOW is the first description I give it! I compared it to the Sony PremierPro SDM-P232W/B 23" LCD monitor. They both are excellent LCD monitors, but I preferred the Samsung simply because it has a much brighter display and higher contrast ratio. The clarity is incredible too! I believe it would be a challenge to find a better widescreen LCD monitor for the same investment! This is a great monitor for professional graphics, CAD, and other demanding applications which is how I use it. If you are a gamer you will absolutely love it too!. You cannot go wrong with this purchase especially since I believe you get more for you money with Samsung products. I have a Samsung 32" Widescreen HDTV that I've had for more than 2 years which I absolutely love as well! This LCD offers a 1,920 x 1,200 maximum resolution in both DVI and analog, 16.7 million colors, and 0.27 x 0.27 mm dot pitch, onscreen images are crisp and accurate, while 270 cd/m2 of brightness and a 500:1 contrast ratio, this is a brighter monitor than the Sony I compared it to. The onscreen menus allow you to adjust a number of monitor settings, including brightness, contrast, H/V position, color temperature, and much more. I rate this Samsung widescreen LCD monitor highly to anyone wanting an excellent display! If I could I'd give it a higher star rating!

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre performer and way over-priced
Review: Not only is this an average performer but it's way over-priced. Monitors from HP and Sceptre have better image quality as well as cost a lot less.