Steep
Nutcrack Rapids
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- 16,628
- Name
- Hugh
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Wanting to upgrade my 19" crt to a LCD, there are so many LCD monitors around that I could look from now till doomsday and not make my mind up which is best so I decided on the price I wanted to spend (£250 max) bit the bullet and started looking. One that caught my eye was the Samsung 205BW for various reasons, good name, good refresh rate at 6ms, a choice of analogue and DVI in plus OcUK had it on special for £228 plus del. I checked a few reviews and couldn't find a bad one, they pretty much all said 'not great but good', for the money I wanted to spend I would be very lucky to find 'great'. One review said Amazon had it for £199.99 with free del woot! I kept looking and found it for the same price in PCWorld which meant I could have one today (28/01/07). I popped down to my local branch and they had one in stock so I bought it there and then.
It's very well packed, comes with all the connecting cables and a CD with drivers and setup software. I used the DVI cable, just plugged it in and away it went. The screen looked decidedly odd once XP had booted, all stretched out and it took me a minute to figure out the res was still set at my old monitors' size of 1152x864. I changed it to 1680x1050 (the 205bw's native res) and everything went back to normal looking. I do think it's odd that I don't get a selection of resolutions with the correct ratio of 16/10, in fact the only one that is correct is the maximum of 1680x1050, all others available distort the screen to a degree.
It was also said that there was some light bleed from the top, I can't see this at all in normal use but playing a DVD (Gladiator which has black bands top and bottom even on this widescreen monitor) there is a greying at the edges, most notably at the top but it's really not a problem once you stop looking for it, ie it doesn't interfere with the film.
Unusually for a 'budget' 20" this one will raise and lower on it's stand so you can both tilt it and erm raise or lower it to suit your veiwing angle. Here's a pic of it in lowered position, the one above ^ is raised. it's spring loaded acting as a kind of counter balance to make it easier to do.
I was concerned before I bought it that images would not look right, I'd heard that often colours would be wrong on LCD monitors. So far I have no complaints at all, photos I've looked at all seem to show full detail and good colour balance/range. When I get time and the extra desk space I'll connect the old crt and this one side by side, display the same image on both and check thoroughly. Then again maybe I won't, why spoil a good thing
I'm really impressed with it so far, the screen is the same height as my old 19" Hansol crt but makes a bit more use of it, it's also quite a bit wider (2.5-3 inches), not a duff pixel to be seen. Now that I've used Samsungs monitor set up program which is like adobe gamma but more involved and seems well presented, the colours are punchy and the brightness is just right. I think prefessional reviewers just have to find something to be negative about, to me this thing is just about perfect for my needs.
The only downside is that I'm likely to get RSI trying to get my mouse pointer from one side all the way over to the other!
It's very well packed, comes with all the connecting cables and a CD with drivers and setup software. I used the DVI cable, just plugged it in and away it went. The screen looked decidedly odd once XP had booted, all stretched out and it took me a minute to figure out the res was still set at my old monitors' size of 1152x864. I changed it to 1680x1050 (the 205bw's native res) and everything went back to normal looking. I do think it's odd that I don't get a selection of resolutions with the correct ratio of 16/10, in fact the only one that is correct is the maximum of 1680x1050, all others available distort the screen to a degree.
It was also said that there was some light bleed from the top, I can't see this at all in normal use but playing a DVD (Gladiator which has black bands top and bottom even on this widescreen monitor) there is a greying at the edges, most notably at the top but it's really not a problem once you stop looking for it, ie it doesn't interfere with the film.
Unusually for a 'budget' 20" this one will raise and lower on it's stand so you can both tilt it and erm raise or lower it to suit your veiwing angle. Here's a pic of it in lowered position, the one above ^ is raised. it's spring loaded acting as a kind of counter balance to make it easier to do.
I was concerned before I bought it that images would not look right, I'd heard that often colours would be wrong on LCD monitors. So far I have no complaints at all, photos I've looked at all seem to show full detail and good colour balance/range. When I get time and the extra desk space I'll connect the old crt and this one side by side, display the same image on both and check thoroughly. Then again maybe I won't, why spoil a good thing
I'm really impressed with it so far, the screen is the same height as my old 19" Hansol crt but makes a bit more use of it, it's also quite a bit wider (2.5-3 inches), not a duff pixel to be seen. Now that I've used Samsungs monitor set up program which is like adobe gamma but more involved and seems well presented, the colours are punchy and the brightness is just right. I think prefessional reviewers just have to find something to be negative about, to me this thing is just about perfect for my needs.
The only downside is that I'm likely to get RSI trying to get my mouse pointer from one side all the way over to the other!