Samsung SyncMaster BX2350 review

The Samsung SyncMaster BX2350 is yet another thin 23-inch, LED-based monitor option from Samsung. So the question is, why buy this over the PX2370? Although the BX2350 looks very similar to its brother, it includes some clear differences. Instead of a circular foot stand, seen on the PX2370, the BX2350 includes two wide span "feet" as its foot stand. Also, the BX has two HDMI ports versus the other's single HDMI. The BX2350's overall performance is on par--or better, in some cases--than the PX2370; however, it has very apparent clouding at the top and left edges of the screen. Also, though we're usually fans of "touch areas" instead of buttons for the onscreen display (OSD) array, we're even bigger fans when said touch areas work consistently and we aren't constantly, mistakenly powering the monitor off by grabbing it in the wrong place (we experienced both when using the BX2350). Both the PX2370 and BX2350 can be found for about $330. It's close, but we still recommend the PX2370 overall, thanks to its lack of backlight clouding and better designed OSD array.

Design and features
For the third time in less than a year, Samsung has released a stylish-looking 23-inch LED-based monitor. The SyncMaster BX2350 looks like a cross between the PX2370 and the XL2370. It has more-angular corners, like the PX2370, but its profile--in particular, the way it juts out at the back--is more reminiscent of the XL2370's design. Also, like the previous Samsungs, the BX2350 has a plastic, transparent overlay that covers its outer edge. That's pretty much where the similarities end, though.

Instead of a circular or oval-shaped foot stand, the BX2350 includes two chrome feet that extend out at 45-degree angles. Hitting the display from the sides makes the screen wobble, but thanks to the wide 14.3-inch span of the feet, we never thought it was in any danger of toppling.

The bezel is 0.8 inch wide and when viewing the monitor from the side, the profile is a thin 0.75 inch deep. The full width of the panel is 21.8 inches, and the distance from the desktop the bottom of the bezel is 3.5 inches. The back of the display is covered with horizontal grooves that feel like wood paneling.

The panel tilts back about 10 degrees, with no height adjustment, pivoting, or swiveling included. Connection options include two HDMI ports, one VGA, and an audio out. Sadly there's no DVI port; however, Samsung includes an HDMI-to-DVI cable, allowing you to connect it to most video cards.

All of the connections sit on the back of the display, in the lower midsection of the panel. The ports face backward, instead of down as on most monitors, making them easy to access.

The lower-right corner of the bezel includes the OSD array. Using "touch areas" in place of actual buttons for the OSD, the BX2350 retains the elegant look of the Samsung's past LED-based monitors; however, what it retains in aesthetics, it loses in functionality. The touch areas can be consistently unresponsive, and there were a few times during testing when we accidentally powered off the monitor when grabbing it from the right side.

The OSD button array consists of a Menu button, Up and Down buttons, an Enter button, and an Auto button. The Up and Down buttons also double as a preset shortcut and a customizable shortcut button, respectively. Its picture options consist of brightness, contrast, and sharpness. You can also set the color tone to Cool, Normal, Warm, or Custom, which lets you change the red, green, and blue attributes individually. There are five presets: Custom, Standard, Game, Cinema, and Dynamic Contrast. Each preset changes the color temperature or brightness of the display to be appropriate to the task you're performing.

Samsung gives the BX2350 several "magic" features shared by the PX2370. First up is Magic Eco, a power-saving feature that lets you set the brightness level to 100, 75, or 50 percent.

Next, in a multimonitor setup, Magic Return shifts all windows and your Windows toolbar from the secondary monitor to the primary monitor when power to the secondary monitor is lost or is simply turned off. On the PX2370, we experienced some minor issues with this feature that we thankfully weren't able to reproduce on the BX2350.

There's also an option in the OSD to set the refresh rate of the monitor from Slow to Fast to Faster. However, when we adjusted this setting, we didn't notice any performance difference.

Performance
We tested the Samsung SyncMaster BX2350 through its HDMI input, connected to a Windows Vista PC, using the included HDMI-to-DVI cable. The display posted a composite score of 96 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests. This was virtually the same performance we saw on the Samsung PX2370, which scored 97; however, there are a few minor differences worth pointing out. The BX2350's default settings are close to optimal, and as a result, it requires less adjusting than the PX2370 before we started testing. Throughout our color tests we saw no egregious color problems on the BX2350 and only experienced minor nonlinearity in one of our color scales tests. The BX2350 scored just a hair better than the PX2370 in these tests, as its color was just a tad less saturated and more accurate. In our Dark Screen test we noticed very apparent clouding at the top and left side edges of the screen, more than we saw on the PX2370. In our Black Level test, the BX2350 only crushed very dark grays, and the monitor was able to display down to a level-two gray, which is two levels above true black. This indicates an optimal black level for the display.