Samsung 19 inch TFT
For months I have yearned after one of those stylish LCD monitors, but wanting a nice big 19 inch model which tended to be more expensive, I have been procrastinating – waiting for the price to come down.
Looking around the computer stores, it soon became obvious to me that the ones with the best quality seemed to be the Samsung and after visiting a relative and seeing that he had a Samsung, I was sold on this particular make.
It wasn’t long before I was unpacking the box of my new Samsung SyncMaster and what a joy it was to lift it onto my desk without straining a muscle and now I had more room to put my clutter! Actually that’s not quite true because with the stylish product on my desk and the extra room in front of it, I felt strongly inspired to clean up my space.
When I did my research into TFT monitors, I discovered that it was quite possible that even a new flat screen may contain what is known as “dead” pixels and apparently it is acceptable to have up to three! All I can say, is that I didn’t want a single one on a brand new item, so I set about checking very carefully and would be returning the item if one showed up. A dead pixel can be located on a screen because it shows a constant colour regardless of what you are displaying on the screen, so I loaded a variety of plain coloured documents and displayed them as full screen. I could not find one dead pixel anywhere.
The other thing I was concerned about was the viewing angle, because I had noticed that when I stood to the side of a TFT screen, the content would be near impossible to view, but when I tested the viewing angle on my Samsung, I could still read the text in a word document at around a 170° angle – exactly what the manufacturers claim - not that I would want to be working in that position as it would no doubt cause a bit of neck-ache!
The brightness of the monitor was quite outstanding – a lot better than my old CRT and I was amazed at the quality of my photos and videos when I viewed them.
Controls on the monitor:
Menu:
When this is pressed a small screen appears with…
Brightness and contrast which can be accessed by pressing another button labelled “Enter” which also acts as the “Auto” set up button when pressed on its own.
By pressing another button labelled with an down-arrow you can scroll down to “color tone” and “color control” and another press will take you to the coarse,fine, sharpness, height and vertical position of your screen content. Pressing the button labelled with an up arrow, takes you back up the menu selections.
Pressing the down-arrow button again in the menu screen will take you to language, display and a variety of other functions that I have not used myself. Press the menu button again and it turns off the menu window.
Pressing the auto button without first pressing the menu button, starts that “auto adjust” process that automatically adjusts the screen to an appropriate brightness, contrast and colour – this is something I use quite often.
Pressing the down-arrow button on its own opens a process called MagicBright that automatically adjust the screen for Custom, Text, Internet or Entertain (which is a nice crisp and bright screen for viewing photographs or videos.
Pressing the up-arrow button on its own, produces the Brightness adjustment window that enables manual adjustment of the brightness using the up-arrow and down-arrow buttons whilst the window is open. After a few seconds of not being used, all the windows automatically close.
Even after using this monitor all day, doing a variety of tasks such as writing, photo-editing and video, I found that it’s anti-glare screen was very kind on my eyes and I didn’t feel tired at all.
Software:
A CD is included with the monitor, but it worked straight
away on my computer that runs Window XP home edition. Eventually I did install the driver and the software that
contained a program called Natural Color which took me through some processes
to adjust for the best colour, and then
there was another program called LCD Gamma that loads at startup and runs in
the background – this I believe is some sort of correction buffer, but I’m not
that tech-minded.
In summary, I am very pleased with my Samsung at the price of £199 I paid for it and can only reiterate that the quality of photos, movies and graphics are truly outstanding.
Purchase Details
Purchase from Amazon UK
Purchase from Amazon USA
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