X-bit labs

19" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part VIII. (page 24)

Category: Other

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 10/11/2007 | 09:24 AM ]

The monitor has 100% brightness and 75% contrast by default. I reduced them both to 55% to achieve a 100nit white. The brightness is regulated by means of pulse-width modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 240Hz.

The average irregularity of backlight is 4.4% for black and 3.8% for white, the respective maximums being 13.0% and 12.9%. This is a very small irregularity, which can hardly be complained at.

Color gradients look striped on this monitor. When the contrast setting is set at 15% or lower, dark halftones merge into black. When increased above the default value, it leads to a loss of details in lights.

Some defects can be observed in the gamma curves at the default settings: the curves are shaped differently and there is a characteristic bend in the right part of the diagram betraying a too high contrast.

The bend in the right part disappears when the contrast setting is reduced, and the curves get closer to the theoretical one, although do not quite reach it.

The color temperature modes are set up awfully. The temperature dispersion amounts to 3000K even in the most accurate mode, Warm. In the other modes there is a 6000K difference between the temperatures of different grays. The calibrator even couldn’t perform the measurement in the Cool mode.

The color gamut is quite ordinary except that the point of red deflects more from the one of the sRGB space than on other monitors.

Once again we see the depressing sight of a slow TN matrix. Its average speed is 13.4 milliseconds GtG with a maximum of 25 milliseconds. The response time is higher than the declared 5 milliseconds even on the black-to-white transition, so it would be ridiculous to compare this monitor with RTC-enabled models.

The contrast ratio is normal for ordinary work but doesn’t reach 300:1. The level of black is rather too high at the default settings.

The Samsung SyncMaster 920NW is a product the manufacturer sacrificed everything in to make it cheaper. The quality of its color temperature setup is especially awful. It’s up to you to decide if you can put up with such defects, but I’d recommend you to consider more expensive models from Samsung, for example the SyncMaster 940BW, which has much fewer drawbacks.