X-bit labs

20" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part V (page 14)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 12/21/2007 | 10:53 PM ]

The monitor has 100% brightness and 75% contrast by default. I achieved a 100nit white by selecting 10% brightness and 25% contrast. Light halftones do not merge into white at any value of contrast, up to 100%. The brightness is regulated by backlight modulation at a frequency of 308Hz.

Color gradients are reproduced perfectly, without any banding.

The monitor employs backlight lamps with ordinary phosphors, which provide an ordinary color gamut. The only oddity is that the point of blue differs from the one of the sRGB color space whereas in many other monitors the two coincide.

The brightness uniformity of white is 5.9% on average and 20.9% at the maximum (the top left corner of the screen is especially dark). For black, the numbers are 6.2% and 20.0%, respectively. This is not the best result possible but the irregularity won’t be too conspicuous. As the pictures above show, the backlight brightness is evenly distributed along the screen, without very dark or very bright spots.

The gamma curves are not very neat at the default settings. The gamma value is too low for the green and blue curves and the corresponding colors are displayed lighter and paler than they should be.

At the reduced brightness and contrast the curves improve and the colors are reproduced more accurately.

Of course, this model is far superior to most other monitors from this review in terms of speed with its average response time of 4.9 milliseconds GtG. However, it is not too fast as RTC-enabled monitors go due to the fact that its RTC mechanism doesn’t work on transitions from black. Look at the farthest row in the diagram above: those transitions take as long as 14-17 milliseconds as is typical of RTC-less matrixes. It is all right with halftone transitions – the response is never higher than 5-10 milliseconds. It’s not quite clear to me why the RTC mechanism is limited in such a way in this monitor.

The level of RTC errors, which are present in every RTC-enabled monitor, is acceptable at 8.6% on average. RTC-provoked artifacts will be visible in some situations, yet won’t be too annoying. RTC not working on transitions from black, there won’t be white trails behind letters of the application interfaces when you’re moving the windows around. The most sharp-sighted users are likely to spot the dark trail of the “ghosting” effect instead due to the same reason.

Alas, the color temperature is set up badly. The monitor’s colors tend to be bluish and there is a huge difference between different levels of gray. You can lower the level of blue somewhat with the menu settings, but it is very hard to bring this awful setup to normal without a calibrator.

The monitor’s maximum brightness is somewhat higher than usual, but the contrast ratio is, on the contrary, below the average level.

All monitors from Samsung feature MagicBright technology, which means a set of predefined modes you can switch through by pressing a single button. The implementation is better than the similar technologies on the Acer and ASUS monitors – the switching is indeed performed instantly and with a single button. These modes differ in brightness, contrast and, sometimes, in color temperature, provoking no distortions in color reproduction. So, I measured the brightness and contrast ratio in each mode:

The settings are overall adequate for the intended applications, yet I think that brightness should be lower by a fourth in each mode. As they are, the modes are meant for bright ambient lighting whereas the 2032BW is obviously a home monitor and is going to serve quite a lot of time under the mild evening lighting of a living apartment. So, you may want to configure the monitor manually for working with text and use the MagicBright modes when you need a brighter image, i.e. for viewing photos, for playing games, for watching movies, etc.

Unfortunately, you cannot edit any of the MagicBright modes.

One MagicBright mode enables the dynamic contrast technology which automatically adjusts the backlight brightness depending on the prevalence of lights or darks in the currently displayed picture. Dynamic contrast may be useful for movies but is absolutely unsuitable for work or games.

Highs:

• Superb exterior design
• Fast matrix with an acceptable level of RTC errors
• Handy MagicBright modes

Lows:

• Inaccurate color reproduction setup

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
• Movies and games