Samsung SyncMaster 940BW 19 inch LCD Monitor
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- Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (16:9)
- Response Time: Super Fast (Less than 4.9 ms)
- Contrast Ratio: 500:1
- Screen Size: 19 inch
- Monitor Type: Flat Panel LCD TFT (Active Matrix)
- Family Line: Samsung SyncMaster
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232
Very good monitor, but not sure about the size
Pros
Inexpensive, sharp, clear, GREAT FOR MOVIES!
Cons
Not quite wide enough for two documents side-by-side.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
A terrific bargain on a high-quality widescreen LCD monitor. Perfect for home use.
I bought this monitor a few months ago for my daughter, who told me that she wanted a wide-screen like the one on the iMac we had at the office. The iMac has a 20" widescreen that is so massive that it gives up nothing in height to a conventional 19" monitor, and adds all of that width for widescreen movies, games, and more mundane things like viewing two documents side-by-side. I bought her the widescreen.
With the monitor on the desk, the 19" widescreen actually looks a bit smaller than I thought it would. I was expecting only a minor reduction from the 20" of the iMac, and have a bunch of conventional aspect-ratio 19" LCDs around, and the 19" widescreen somehow looks a lot smaller than all of them. I measured it, and of course it came out the same as the other 19 inchers, so I'll just call it an optical illusion.
In use this monitor is exactly what I thought it would be. It has bright and vivid color, exceptional contrast and a very fast 4ms refresh rate, but then, I own many Samsung LCDs and generally find all of them to be excellent, so the performance of the 940BW was no surprise. What was a surprise is that I just didn't care for the format.
I've used the iMac and its widescreen display, and generally find it very good for most tasks. The Samsung, with only 1440 horizontal pixels compared to the 1680 pixels on the 20" iMac is the difference between one document and a bunch of empty space and two full documents. The Samsung is just a bit too small to pull off side-by-side viewing, which is the only business value of a widescreen.
For movies and games, however, the Samsung is a delight. I just watched Blade Runner on the Samsung attached to a Mac Mini and I must say, it was VERY impressive. Games also really come alive on the wide Samsung, and the color, contrast and response mean that there are no artifacts or distortion to get in the way.
My office went from Mac to Windows this month, and so the iMac came home for my daughter and the 19" Samsung went to work for my office manager. Immediately she complained about the reduction in real estate compared to the iMac, but that was the only complaint. No mention of color or contrast, which were very impressive on the iMac and equally so on the Samsung. In fact, since my manager doesn't really work on multiple documents, but rather multiple tasks, the loss of real estate isn't much of a problem. She can still have a Word document open with the Outlook calendar visible to the side, which means there is no real loss in productivity.
At home on the Mac Mini, the Samsung 940BW was connected via digital DVI. At work on a Pentium 4 PC, it is connected via analog VGA, and surprisingly, the picture and text quality remain very high. I've had no complaints from my manager, and she stares at the screen for hours every day, so she would notice a loss in quality from the iMac. Good quality cables help a lot, and fortunately Samsung includes good cables in the box.
I've actually thought about swapping my conventional 19" Samsung for the widescreen, for those long days looking at movies, I mean spreadsheets. Other than the shape and pixel count, this is just another 19" Samsung LCD, which to me is a very good thing.
What this shares with all of the mid-range Samsungs I own are a 160 degree viewing angle and 700:1 contrast ratio. I have one higher-end Samsung with a much higher contrast and brightness rating, but this still looks good next to it.
In conclusion, if you think a widescreen is right for you, by all means go buy this one. If, however, you mostly write and care more about how much of your single page you see than about how much stuff you can put next to it, then a conventional monitor is probably a better fit for you.
With the monitor on the desk, the 19" widescreen actually looks a bit smaller than I thought it would. I was expecting only a minor reduction from the 20" of the iMac, and have a bunch of conventional aspect-ratio 19" LCDs around, and the 19" widescreen somehow looks a lot smaller than all of them. I measured it, and of course it came out the same as the other 19 inchers, so I'll just call it an optical illusion.
In use this monitor is exactly what I thought it would be. It has bright and vivid color, exceptional contrast and a very fast 4ms refresh rate, but then, I own many Samsung LCDs and generally find all of them to be excellent, so the performance of the 940BW was no surprise. What was a surprise is that I just didn't care for the format.
I've used the iMac and its widescreen display, and generally find it very good for most tasks. The Samsung, with only 1440 horizontal pixels compared to the 1680 pixels on the 20" iMac is the difference between one document and a bunch of empty space and two full documents. The Samsung is just a bit too small to pull off side-by-side viewing, which is the only business value of a widescreen.
For movies and games, however, the Samsung is a delight. I just watched Blade Runner on the Samsung attached to a Mac Mini and I must say, it was VERY impressive. Games also really come alive on the wide Samsung, and the color, contrast and response mean that there are no artifacts or distortion to get in the way.
My office went from Mac to Windows this month, and so the iMac came home for my daughter and the 19" Samsung went to work for my office manager. Immediately she complained about the reduction in real estate compared to the iMac, but that was the only complaint. No mention of color or contrast, which were very impressive on the iMac and equally so on the Samsung. In fact, since my manager doesn't really work on multiple documents, but rather multiple tasks, the loss of real estate isn't much of a problem. She can still have a Word document open with the Outlook calendar visible to the side, which means there is no real loss in productivity.
At home on the Mac Mini, the Samsung 940BW was connected via digital DVI. At work on a Pentium 4 PC, it is connected via analog VGA, and surprisingly, the picture and text quality remain very high. I've had no complaints from my manager, and she stares at the screen for hours every day, so she would notice a loss in quality from the iMac. Good quality cables help a lot, and fortunately Samsung includes good cables in the box.
I've actually thought about swapping my conventional 19" Samsung for the widescreen, for those long days looking at movies, I mean spreadsheets. Other than the shape and pixel count, this is just another 19" Samsung LCD, which to me is a very good thing.
What this shares with all of the mid-range Samsungs I own are a 160 degree viewing angle and 700:1 contrast ratio. I have one higher-end Samsung with a much higher contrast and brightness rating, but this still looks good next to it.
In conclusion, if you think a widescreen is right for you, by all means go buy this one. If, however, you mostly write and care more about how much of your single page you see than about how much stuff you can put next to it, then a conventional monitor is probably a better fit for you.
