- Average user rating: 2.0 stars out of 12 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
2.5 stars
"Not that special"
Pros: Good looks, Good height etc. adjustment, Clean cabling
Cons: Terrible software, Uneven backlight, Minimal connectivity
Summary: I am using this for business, so I guess you can call me a fairly basic user.
Starting with the good, my office mates have commented positively on the style. Ironically though it is the shiny white stand and rear which look really good, whereas I find the silver front bezel a bit tacky.
The height and various rotation adjustments are excellent. You can rotate sideways around the base as well as pivot through 180 degrees. The reachable height is quite good, although not as high as a colleague's Dell 1905FP. On the other hand you can lower the screen till it hits the stand, something not possible with the Dell. I really like this. It can also be tilted backwards, like a laptop screen, until it faces completely upward. The whole mechanism is pleasant, not too stiff, if a bit creaky and not quite as precise as the hinge of, say, an IBM laptop.
Running off DVI (haven't tried VGA) I find the image quality subjectively very good, but let down by some unevenness in the backlight, noticeable on mostly white pages, such as an empty Word document. My colleague's Dell 1905FP, ironically based on an older Samsung Panel, performs better here.
Finally onto the main reason why I've marked this monitor down, the software. This is going to be a rant, unfortunately. Why did they make you depend on software to do even the most basic adjustments, such as brightness and contrast? It's stupid! I guess it would be fine, if the software was stable, but evidently that's not one of Samsung's strengths. They should stick to what they know! You only need to read this page:
http://www.geocities.com/icecow88/magictune.html
In my case I initially thought the software wouldn't work at all. It blue-screened my otherwise 100% stable Win2k machine after the obligatory reboot. Restoring the 'Last Known Good Configuration' I subsequently discovered the MagicRotation module was the problem and managed to solely install the MagicTune. I ended up shelling out another $40 for Pivot Pro (3rd party), which works fine, albeit doesn't automatically detect the screen orientation, like the Samsung software was supposed to. As to the MagicTune, it is now (so far) working, but let me ask you, how much disk space would you dedicate to such a program? 1M? 10M? Apparently Samsung think 144M is required to change the brightness once in a while. It's the most ridiculous piece of bloatware I've come across in a long time.
