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Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21" LCD Monitor (Silver)

Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21" LCD Monitor (Silver)

List Price: $2,339.00
Your Price: $921.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful Monitor, I love the ability to rotate the Screen
Review: I saw this monitor set up in a "Big Box" store when I was on vacation and after using it in the store for a while, ordered one sent to my local "Big box" after checking prices online. The small footprint, lack of heat thrown off by a CRT, crisp display (I use the DVI so I can't speak to analog issues, but it looked fine in the store) and ease of setup is all I could want. I went to PivotPro's website and D/L'ed a free upgrade and haven't had any problems with switching between landscape and portrait modes.

I find myself using the monitor in it's vertical portrait mode, except for gaming, as both web pages and documents usually view better this way.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Professional Quality
Review: A great monitor for the photo or video professional!

Samsung has stuck to a more sophisticated and costsly LCD matrix (PVA) in it's large monitors even while other manufacturers are chasing "fast response time" specs at all costs and going back to older, more primitive LCD matrices in order to keep costs down.

I had the chance to compare at lenght the Sony Xbright 19" and the Samsung. With the Xbright 19" Sony has given in to the mass market pressure and gone back to the older TN+Film matrix in the 19" realm. At first you are captivated by the Sony's brightness. But go off to the side of the Sony even a hair and the colors start dimming and degrading. The Samsung looks unchanged and the colors remain true. Even viewed from an extreme angle the Samsung's colors don't shift, and the image is clearly visible. That's one huge advantage of the newer, more elaborate LCD matrices such as S-IPS (found in some NEC's) and PVA (found in the 213t).

The Samsung's contrast is excellent, and I haven't noticed any problems with "speed" running video or intence graphical programs such as iTune's "Visualizer." And, you get 21.3 inches of this quality!

With included Pivot Pro software (PC only) or the Radeon 9800 Pro for Mac you can pivot the monitor in real time to portrail mode. Great for proofing portraits or displaying an entire score of music.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice, but not quite there for my needs
Review: As a graphic designer, I'd been considering this monitor but just couldn't justify the price....but finally broke down and decided to give it a shot. Setup is easy, and I was up and running in no time. I was impressed with the image quality and text sharpness, but as I spent more time with it, I discovered reds were displayed with a magenta cast, and it lacks some very important controls I need for my everyday graphic design work. I lay out several full color magazines, and the on-screen images need to be pretty close to what will be seen in print with regard to brightness, contrast, color, etc. In comparing this monitor's on-screen images with the press-printed magazine pages, no matter what settings I tried, I couldn't get it close. When I got the brightness about where it shoud be (images in magazine print are ususally darker than what you normally see on a monitor screen), contrast was too low and couldn't be adjusted any higher. Images looked muddy as compared to what they should look like. And there's no brightness adjust button to quickly go back and forth between user and programmed settings. I'd have to completely redo the settings each time I go between magazine work and everyday viewing for web, e-mail, basic design, etc. I'd expect more user-specific controls with a monitor of this price.

So for my personal use, this monitor is lacking in necessities for the price. Overall, colors are pretty good, and for those who aren't demanding with regard to very precise color reproduction and don't need the ability to control the image brightness with the press of a button, this is a fine monitor. I'm normally too busy for gaming, so it's not a concern to me.

Although smaller, I now have a Sony SDM-HS73B, which is sharper, truer color reproduction, and offers 4 brightness settings, which coupled with selected gamma settings, provides me with exactly what I need in a monitor. With the press of a button, I can instantly go from everyday viewing to magazine work. Image quality and color reproduction is superb.

The 213T was returned.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Awsome display; Awful documentation
Review: Based on the reviews that I read here and at several computer hardware review websites I, too, finally made the switch from a 21" CRT to this Samsung 213T LCD DVI TFT monitor. (To give you an idea of my level of expertise, I knew that LCD stood for Liquid Crystal Display, but I had to look up the other two acronyms to find that they stand for Digital Video Imaging and Thin-Film Transistor.)

I began to question my decision when I opened the box to find that the only written documentation was a four-page "Quick Setup Guide" written in, would you believe, 14 different languages, the first instruction in the "Read Me Before Installation" section of which said, "1. Due to the technological limitation (sic) in the manufacturing process, the pixel (sic) in the LCD panel of this product may look brighter or darker than normal by 1PPM." Nowhere in the very brief English instructions did it say that it would be wise to study the User's Guide included in HTML and PDF formats on the driver CD before disconnecting your old monitor.

My computer has a Radeon 9800 video card which has both an old-style VGA connector, to which my old CRT was attached, and a DVI connector. The 213T monitor comes with both DVI and "D-sub analogue" (ne VGA) cables attached. Naturally, I connected the DVI cable. When I fired up the system the 213T display was blank except for a message that said "No Connection, Check Signal Cable" (I'm surprised that it wasn't in 14 languages too). So I detached and reattached both ends of the cable. Same, unhelpful, message. I then used its D-sub cable to connect it to the VGA socket on my graphics card, and I can confirm what other reviewers have said about quality of the 213T's picture when used in analogue mode: substantially inferior to my old CRT.

Wondering whether the DVI connector on my graphics card might be faulty, I then connected the 213T's analogue cable to the DVI connector using a VGA-to-DVI adapter. I was rewarded with a picture, but it was, of course, the same analogue picture I had gotten using the D-sub cable connection. After going off on several other wild goose chases I finally remembered the old adage, "When all else fails, read the instruction manual," which was on that driver CD.

Sure enough, there was a troubleshooting section there, which said that when connected using the DVI cable, "If you still see an (error) message on the screen when the monitor is connected properly, check to see if the monitor status is set to analog. Press Source button to have the monitor double-check the input signal source." Sure enough, when I hooked it up to the DVI port again and did that, it worked. I wasted about an hour and a half before making that discovery. My error must be a rather common one, which could have been prevented by one sentence in the Samsung Quick Setup Guide saying the same thing!

So much for the bad news. The good news is, as most of the other reviewers have said, when you get it hooked up to DVI and tweaked properly, this monitor provides an excellent display. Don't under any circumstances waste your money on it if you don't have a DVI-capable graphics card to hook it to, however. And tweak the 213T carefully. You'll find that the native 1600x1200 resolution looks substantially better than lower resolutions, even when you turn on Windows' ClearType and tweak its settings as one reviewer has recommended. If you are migrating up from a lower resolution big screen monitor as I have done, you'll find that Windows' type and icons look pretty small that way, but their clarity is excellent and if you find that you need to you can increase their size in WindowsXP ([Control Panel][Display Properties][Advanced][Item: Icon]).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wish I researched Samsung's replacement policy before buying
Review: Bought two of these monitors about two weeks ago. Both came with several dead pixels right next to each other forming an annoying blimp on the screen. Samsung agreed to replace both units. However, when the replacements arrived today, they turned out to be refurbished and with MUCH greater problems. One had a horrible color problem where one edge of the screen has one shade and the other another. Much worse when looked at from an angle. Another replacement was too dim even with brightness set to 100. Both refurbished monitors had many dead pixels. Apparently, this is acceptable to Samsung.
Beware! Samsung will only replace with refurbished monitors, so if yours comes defective, you are out of luck trying to replace for a new unit.
Needless to say, I will never buy Samsung again.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Buy Samsung at your own RISK
Review: I bought a Samsung flat-panel LCD television in March, and it the panel went dead in April. I brought it to a one of Samsung's certified dealers for repair, and waited and waited. Finally in May, I was told that the the television panel was indeed defective and couldn't be fixed, so the manufacturer was obligated to replace it under the warranty. It's now September, and guess what, I'm still waiting for the replacement. Buy from Samsung at your own risk. From my own experience, Samsung does stand by their products. For a few dollars more, buy one of the better, more reliable brands.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Samsung 213T
Review: I bought this monitor about 5 months ago now and love it. I have it coupled with a new Nvidia GeForce 6800 256 MB graphics card. For those of you who worry about "Ghosting" when game playing I have not seen it. Half life 2 and Doom 3 look truely amazing. With full resolution 1600x1200, colors are vibrant and blow away the normal "glass" monitor I had before. The monitor also pivots any way you can think of and comes with cool software that will keep everything legible no matter how the monitor is turned. The size is great and it's footprint is small.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is the best monitor I've ever had.
Review: I have had a 20G 20" Viewsonic CRT monitor since 94 or 95, and although it's been good to me, it was starting to show some signs of aging, like not being able to handle strange resolutions ( like 848x480 ), and different refresh rate combinations. At times it would get stuck between switching resolutions and never recover until hours later.

After much on-line research, I decided to spend about the same about ($1200) I did 8 years ago, and get the best monitor for coding, e-mail and gaming I could find.

After having dual 18" LCDs at work, I decided that I needed at least a 20" LCD at home.

I bought the Samsung 213t...and got it plugged into my Quadro4 ( similar to GeForce4 ti 4400 ) through the DVI. The display model at Fry's was using Analog and looked awful due to ghosting. When I tried the DVI, it looked great. Based on that, I can't recommend this monitor unless you have a DVI connector on your video card or are willing to upgrade to such a video card.

I run it at native 1600x1200x60hz and it looks stunning. After getting ClearType set up properly through the Microsoft web interface, it looks even better. Text is so crisp I could cry, and gaming didn't exhibit noticeable ghosting to my eye so far.

No dead or stuck pixels on this monitor either. This is the best computer upgrade I've ever done. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Absolutely AWESOME!
Review: I just got this LCD from CompUSA because of an awesome price.

Installed it and it works absolutely great! The stand is adjustable. NO one talked about that in any reviews I've read--and I've read plenty--but it's indeed adjustable. From pictures, it looks like it's stuck at one position, but don't let that fool you. You can actually adjust the height. I can't say enough good things about this monitor. It's a dream come true.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Expecations not met
Review: I purchased the Samsung 213T as an attempt to upgrade my current NEC model LCD1912 - mostly wanted the 1600x1200 resolution and larger desktop work space. Initially, I used the analog inputs - truly a disappointment! Could not optimize for clear sharp lines and text no matter how I played with the settings, even when making sure to use native 1600x1200 resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. "AUTO" optimization button did little to improve anything. Switched to DVI and sharpness was much much better, but still not as good as the NEC (which only has an anlog input!). Once I was willing to accept the reasonable (but not perfect) sharpness of the Samsung, I then tried to optimize the colors for my digital photo editing. Here's where the disappointment really hit hard - The Samsung has no direct settings for color temperature like the NEC has. I had to play with red, blue, and green settings and could not come close to achieving the warm color temperature that is a simple button setting on the NEC. I was stuck with the bluish "cool" color temperature that most LCD displays seem to have. And overall, the colors on the Samsung just seem too washed out for my tastes - the NEC on the other hand can produce vibrant rich colors.

On the positive side, the Samsung 213T seems to be the first to come down in price to a reasonable level at this time for such a large monitor. You do get a lot of monitor for the money. The NEC LCD2180, also a 21.3" unit, is still much more expensive.


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