Fri, 02 Nov 2012 Samsung SyncMaster S24B750V LED monitor review

Putting aside the fact that this monitor is made by Apple’s arch-rival, Samsung, and admiring it just on aesthetics alone, it’s stylish enough to be mistaken for an Apple product. Samsung’s S24B750V is a Twisted Numatic LCD monitor with LED backlight and offers 24” of diagonal screen space in a 16:9 aspect ratio. From the start this is something a little different with the stand curving under one side and being supported there rather than the middle. This has the consequence that it needs quite a bit of plastic to sit on the desk, none of which contributes anything else to the package. The other side effect is that it means it can tilt back but can’t rotate or extend. It’s about as limited as you can get for viewing ergonomics. Also, despite the acres of plastic, the power transformer is a separate brick. Still, it does mean that only a slender cable comes up to the smooth, white back.

Around the back the interfaces are all set flush so at least there are no awkward ledges to fiddle under and the entire monitor is about as futuristic as you can get without it being holographic. However, in terms of those interfaces, all you get are a D-Sub analogue port and two HDMI ports. There’s no DVI or DisplayPort interfaces. There are a couple of audio in/out connections though, but as you’re most likely to be using the HDMI, sound can obviously come in through there as well. The hidden trick up the sleeve is stereo speakers built in which have a rather echoing, wooden sound, but it’s better than nothing.

On the specification side you’re looking at some fairly average numbers. It’s full HD at 1920x1080 but 250cd/m2 brightness and 1000:1 contrast ratio aren’t world-beaters. Where it does score highly is the refresh rate and this is a blistering 2ms and yes, it doesn’t really matter what you throw at the screen, there’s no ghosting or blurring. The colours, sharpness and contrast are all fine in themselves, but when putting it under practical tests the flaws start to show up though.

The viewing angles aren’t bad but that’s rendered irrelevant because the colour consistency isn’t even across the panel either. There’s a large circular patch from the bottom half that’s significantly brighter than the top left and right corners. The top left corner is darker than the top right one. As well as this, there’s light leak on at least two sides. If you are working with critical colour you can forget this monitor right now. On the tonal range it’s actually a good balance between highlights and shadows, but digging right in to the very bright and dark ends shows some differences. There’s clear delineation in the highlights but the bottom 15% of the shadows pretty much merge into one.

There’s also a 27” version of this monitor which features the same stylish stand and pure white, plastic back.