Here's a philosophical question for you. How many colours can you see, and do they look the same to you as they do to me? That can keep you awake all night, if you're not careful. Is red really red? Or is it a bit like a pale pink?
Monitor science has the answers, or at least some of them. This 22-inch Samsung monitor, for example, is capable of a whopping 97% of the NTSC gamut. Allow me to explain. A gamut is the number of colours available to a monitor.
It can vary enormously, but one useful point of reference is the NTSC colour gamut used by US televisions. It's not an especially wide gamut (the word gets better the more you say it), but it is a standard. Cheap monitors are often only capable of 40% of the NTSC gamut, professional ones may provide 110% of it.
Thus, the fact that this affordable Samsung is capable of 97% is a Good Thing. It achieves this thanks to an improved backlight, which means that although it's an old-fashioned TN panel, and fast for gaming, it's still got great dynamic range.
Whites are whites, blacks are black and everything in between is wonderfully punchy. Possibly too much so: the heavy saturation may make it a little over the top for professional photographers trying to match printers' colours, but for everyone else it's absolutely worth the small premium attached.
Design-wise, it's the best-looking monitor here, although the menus can be a bit tricky to navigate and being able to adjust the height without resorting to piling books on your desk would have been nice too. Still, you can't have everything, but you can come close.
Size: 22-inch
Max resolution: 1680x1050
Refresh rate: 2ms
Inputs: DVI, VGA
Pixel pitch: 0.282mm
Panel type: TN
Contrast ratio: 1000:1-3000:1
Brightness: 300nit
Adam Oxford
// Overview
Verdict
Rich colours and a fast response time, there's not a lot to fault here
I'm a proud owned of this monitor. I've had a plenty, even at my job I work with varying high grade LCD-monitors and I could really advice this monitor for gaming and video playback. Fast response with a great colour balance.
Don't let people whine about TN-panels, in the end the TN always loses in image quality, but for the buck you paying this monitor is the one you want, unless you got double to spend for the same size monitor.
Well, it was £260 when I reviewed it. The prices change so fast these days that by the time the mag goes to press they can be out of date, let alone by the timethe review gets up here.
I'd like to look at that OCUK one actually. I'm afraid the 'value' badge made me a bit fearful and I didn't even ask them to submit a sample for the review, but I have read very good things about it, and wouldn't mind finding out if they were true.
I got me a 19" samsung tv-monitor and i gotta say the pictur is ace. only 1440x900 max resolution but hey. samsung make some great stuff and well done to the guy who bought off ebay. insane bargain there.
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