Ahab1973's Full Review: Samsung 906BW (Black) 19 inch LCD Monitor
Introduction - There was a time not so long ago when I knew more about electronics and computers than anyone I knew. Which is to say, not much, but more than most people. That made me feel good because I've never known much about much of anything else. Well, those days are gone (forever, I think) and I feel like I'm lost in the inky blackness of techno hell sometimes. Now I know how my parents and grandparents used to feel.
What do I know about computer monitors? Not a whole lot (Surprise!). I know how to plug them up, turn them on and push the buttons to try to get a better picture. I also know how to throw them if none of that works but they cost too much so I try not to do that. Anyway, if you need to know a whole lot more than that about this monitor, you might want to read another review. This one is going to be from the perspective of a guy who bought this monitor expecting to plug it in and have a nice monitor with good image quality. I know just enough to tweak all the settings and get the image that I want but I'm not sure the average person would. The average person apparently voted for George W Bush twice (Sorry. I just had to get that out).
What don't I know about computer monitors? Pretty much all the technical specifications and geeky little things. Start talking about all that stuff and you've soon lost me. And I think that's probably pretty typical for the average person who would go shopping for a computer monitor. You shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist in 2008 to buy and use one. Am I wrong? I probably am. Eighty percent of the people on the planet are probably secretly rocket scientists and I just don't know it because I'm not smart enough to know the secret handshake.
How do I use monitors? I don't need a monitor to do anything fancy. I'm not a gamer or anything like that. I just need it to display text, videos and digital images properly.
What did I want? So about a year ago, decided I wanted a widescreen LCD monitor. There were a few reasons for this and they are as follows -
1. I found that my old Viewsonic CRT monitor was putting out an awful lot of heat in the small room I have my computer in. If there's anything I really hate, it's a hot, stuffy room. Since the light source for LCD monitors is a little flourescent light, I figured it would put out a whole lot less heat than a big CRT. I was right. Don't ask me why it took me well over six years to notice it was my monitor that was responsible for me sitting here practically roasting every night. Probably the same reason I bought this monitor.
2. The old monitor was quite large on my desk (even though I have a large desk with plenty of unused space) and there's really no sense in taking up that much space if you can buy something that uses less of it, is there?
3. I like to watch widescreen DVD movies on my computer and I figured a widescreen LCD monitor would display them in a more pleasing fashion than my old 4:3 CRT.
Shopping - Well, I chose to buy mine at my local Circuit City because I see no need to order something as fragile as a computer monitor from some random place online and then wait for it to arrive, hoping it actually works when it finally does and that it wasn't dropped, bumped, thrown around or just generally abused in transit, unbeknownst to me.
So, I went to the store and was not pleased with the prices. Really. Why so high? I know it's a relatively new technology and all but please.
Anway, they had a large selection but most of the ones that really made me salivate were prohibitively expensive. It was really hard to get a good idea what kind of image quality I could expect at home trying to judge from what it looked like in the store displaying a picture that was probably intended to make any monitor look great. I did fiddle with the controls a bit but the sales guy kept pestering me and it was hard to think with him looking over my shoulder the whole time. I tried asking him a few questions but he was (quite naturally) useless.
So I finally selected the Samsung SyncMaster 906BW. This was mainly based upon the fact that the image quality appeared to be slightly better than the others I could actually afford and I'd heard Samsung monitors were supposed to be good.
Out Of The Box - Well, I got it home, hooked it up and was pleased at first. Then, I gradually noticed that one side of the screen had a strange, faint flicker. I tried all sorts of weird things that you'd probably only try if you didn't have a clue what was causing a weird flicker. I finally decided it must be defective and returned it for an exchange. Luckily, I made the right decision in not ordering it or the subsequent return and exchange would have been a mess, I'm sure.
The second one worked the way it was suppsed to. Which is to say that it wasn't defective. It doesn't exactly work the way I'd like for a monitor to work.
What I like -
1. It looks nice sitting there on my desk. The styling is very sleek and modern. Which doesn't mean much but I guess it counts for something. I can look at it and feel like I have a fancy monitor.
2. When you actually have all the settings just so, it has acceptably pleasing image quality, with fairly nice colors and reasonably sharp detail.
3. It kind of helps you out when you first hook it up by getting most of the initial settings out of the way with an "auto adjust". Which is kind of cool because you never have to mess around with the picture height and width adjustments. The monitor always does all this stuff.
4. You can hook it up with an old fashioned analog cable or a newfangled DVI cable. I haven't yet been able to acertain the difference because even though I used to have a DVI cable that came with something else, I've lost it and have no clue where it is. I refuse to buy a new cable just to try it out, although I am tempted.
5. This monitor works very well in concert with widescreen DVDs. As I mentioned, part of the reason I wanted a widescreen monitor was so that I could more fully enjoy widescreen DVDs without spending over a grand for a large widescreen LCD TV. At least I accomplished that much. Pretty much the only time I ever feel completely satisfied with it is when I'm watching a movie.
6. It doesn't put out enough heat to supplement your furnace in the winter and make your AC work harder in the summer.
What I don't like -
1. Out of the box, it's bright. And I mean really bright! Imagine staring at an exposed 40 watt bulb two feet in front of your face. That's about the way it feels if you're viewing anything with a white background. I turned down the brightness and it was still too bright. Lovely! I finally was able to get a pleasant level of brightness by going into the color adjustments for my graphics card and adjusting the brightness and contrast settings there as well. But ummmm....why? Why should this be necessary? I'm not sure. Either I'm missing something, I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like to feel like he's staring at the surface of the sun while online or Samsung just made a monitor that is too damn bright unless you go out of your way in order to tame it. I'm guessing it's the latter since I've seen the same complaint in other reviews of this model. What everyone else is thinking, I don't know. I hope they aren't telling me this thing is an excellent display right out of the box. I'd hate to think of someone torturing themselves (possibly for years) with the default brightness.
2. Once I had the brightness at an acceptable level, I noticed that there was very little shadow detail in digital images and movies. Anything that's in shadow or darker areas is either completely black or barely visible. If I adjust the brightness, contrast and gamma in order to get better shadow detail, I'm right back to everything else being.........way too bright.
3. This monitor has a lot of presets for different color, brightness and contrast settings. I found all of them to be basically useless. They are all..........way too bright.
4. The stand has very limited adjustability. My computer desk top is high and I sit low. This is the way my desk and chair are and I can't change them. The stand that comes with this monitor will only allow it to be angled down so far before it will not go any farther. I ended up having to use spacers to prop the back part of the stand up so I can view at a comfortable angle. This is really inexcusably shoddy, considering that the design of LCD displays lends itself very well to almost endlessly flexible mounting. Couldn't they design a stand for the thing that took advantage of that? Apparently not. Of course, this is not unique to Samsung. I don't think any monitor manufacturer really goes the extra distance so they're pretty much all equally useless in this regard.
5. It's a minor quibble but the buttons for the adjustments are on the bottom edge where you have to reach up under the monitor in order to push them. It's just awkward and even though they are marked on the front, I often end up pushing the wrong button simply because I can't actually see the buttons and my hand is at an awkward angle.
6. Text is not sharp out of the box. Nor is it sharp after the auto adjustment. Nor is it easy to get it sharp manually. It took quite a bit of tweaking in the menu before I was able to get the text to appear really crisp. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, it kind of "slips" back to it's default uncrisp state and I have to do it all over again. That's just irritating. And why? I have no clue why this should be. Why should you have to make a single adjustment to a $300 computer monitor in 2008 in order to get plain text to appear crisp and readable on the screen? Maybe I'm just stupid and there's a good reason for this but isn't this why we have smart people who work for companies like Samsung who can come up with solutions for these problems so dummies can use their products without some kind of degree?
7. There are only 3 presets for the gamma on this monitor. If you don't find any of them particularly pleasing, you're just stuck with the best of the three. Additionally, the actual difference between the three is incredibly subtle so they're almost pointless.
8. The color never looks exactly right. There's no saturation control (which as far as I know isn't available on most computer monitors but it would be nice). The colors on this monitor always seem to be a tad too saturated no matter how much I fool with the color adjustments. If they can't invent a simple saturation control, it would be nice if the saturation wasn't off and pretty much impossible to change by default, wouldn't it?
Would I buy this again? I might. But only if I couldn't afford anything better. I would be more discriminating if I went shopping for another monitor today. I'm not sure I'd end up with a better monitor but I'd know basically what to avoid and I sure would try.
Conclusion - This monitor (although one of the cheapest in the store) was expensive, considering all the irritating little imperfections. The first one I bought was defective straight out of the box for no obvious reason. The box didn't have a mark on it that would indicate any kind of mishap or abuse.
I've managed to use the monitor that replaced the defective one and it suits my needs reasonably well but I feel like I got burned and I don't like it. I almost feel like I'm being generous with three stars. I don't recommend this to anyone who is looking for something they can just use without fiddling around with it to get everything just right. I also urge people to be wary of Samsung products. This monitor isn't the first Samsung product I've had problems with. I have a Samsung DVD player sitting uselessly in my closet right now. I bought it new just a couple of years ago for $200 and it never worked right. About a week ago, it started just freezing up on movies. I simply gave up on it and hooked my old Panasonic back up (which works flawlessly, of course).
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