Samsung T240 LCD Monitor Review

Well it's getting into the slow season for PC game releases, so I'm going to continue with the hardware reviews, until something worthwhile shows up in the gaming field. For right now I'm going to review the Samsung T240 LCD display. It is my most recent purchase, and will fill the gap nicely in the hardware review section until I finally get the 3 part article concerning the Home Theater PC I've been working on for some time now. Let's get right to it.

Firstly before moving ahead I would like to talk a little bit about the different types of LCD panels out there. There are three main types to be found with different sub types contained in them. The three types are: IPS, VA, and TN.

IPS, or In Plane Switching displays consist of S-IPS, and H-IPS. Either of these two IPS displays are generally considered to have better picture quality than anything a VA, or TN panel can produce. Viewing angle and colour reproduction are also top notch on IPS panels. Unfortunately there are a few draw backs making IPS panels less common. The most obvious is price. IPS panels are more expensive than either VA, or TN panels. A less notable draw back of IPS panels are response times. Generally a bit higher than what is found in a TN panel, sometimes slower responding IPS panels can exhibit ghosting, and blurring when used as a gaming monitor. IPS panels are well suited for graphic design purposes.

VA, or Vertical Alignment displays are a sort of middle ground for LCD panels. A couple examples of VA panels are the S-PVA, and MVA panels, either laying claim to wide viewing angles, and good ( though not as good as IPS ) colour reproduction. Unfortunately VA panels still do not match the response times of the TN panels, and some have been known to suffer from input lag. VA panels also have trouble with colour shifting. What this amounts to is uneven brightness when viewing VA panels at an angle. VA panels are a little bit more common, and less expensive than IPS panels, but still more expensive than TN panels.

The final and most common type of LCD panel is TN or Twisted Nematic. TN panels are cheap and typically offer the best response times of LCD panels. Because of this TN panels are good a choice for gaming machines. However, TN have the least capable colour reproduction of all LCD panels. Because TN panels are only 6-bit rather than 8-bit like S-IPS/S-PVA/MVA panels, they are unable to truly produce the 16.7million colours of 24-bit true colour. Dithering is used to mimic 16.7million colours, but isn't entirely effective. Because of the lower price TN panels have flourished as the choice of casual users, and many gamers.

Now that we have a marginal understanding of the different panels used it's time to discuss the Samsung T240. The Samsung T240 uses a TN panel. Since I'm not good with colour perception in the first place, and will be using this as a gaming monitor, hopefully the TN panel is good enough for my purposes. The T240 comes in 2 versions. There is a regular monitor display and a T240 HD with a tv tuner included, basically making it a 24 inch HD tv.

Included with the monitor is a rotating base, driver/software CD, a power cable, a USB cable, a VGA cable, and a DVI cable. Unfortunately the DVI cable isn't a dual link DVI but at 1920*1200 it shouldn't matter. There is also a nice little blue monitor screen cleaning cloth. Oddly enough I also got an orange egg shaped cloth from newegg, so now I have two of these cloths.

Here are the official specifications for the monitor provided by Samsung:

Display:

Screen Size - 24" wide

Resolution - 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA)

Brightness - 300 cd/m^2

Contrast Ratio - DC 20,000:1 (1000:1) (typ.)

Response time - 5 ms

Viewing Angle (Horizontal / Vertical) - 160* / 160* (CR>10)

Signal input:

Video Signal - analog RGB, DVI, HDMI

Sync. Signal - separate H/V, composite, SOG

Connector - 15 pin D-SUB, DVI-D, HDMI

Power:

Power Consumption - 55 watts

Stand By Power (DPMS) - < 2 W

Features:

Plug & Play - built-in

Multimedia Speakers - No (digital / stereo audio out support for HDMI)

Optional Accessories - DVI-D cable

Special Features - low power consumption (0.3 W power off, 60 W operating power), LED brightness control, MagicBright3, image size, color effect, customized key, MagicWizard & MagicTune, Windows Vista Premium, DVI with HDCP, safe mode, SPDIF

Dimension:

Product Dimension(With stand, WxHxD) - 22.6" x 18.8" x 9.6"

Shipment Dimension - 26" x 22.5" x 6.7"

Weight:

Product Weight - 15 lbs.

Shipment Weight - 20.3 lbs.

Stand:

Function - swivel, tilt

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