Samsung 223 (216) BW - Testing
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Putting the monitor together can be completed in just a few seconds, since all you need is a screwdriver. It has a DVI and D-Sub port; the cables are masked with a little back piece. The base looks pretty solid and robust; a little shaking of the table will not have any effect on it.
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As soon as you start up the monitor you'll probably look over the OSD control. The buttons for handling this are located at the right bottom of the monitor, just under the power button. At first it may seem hard to travel around in the menu, but after a little time for accommodation you'll observe that's quite ingenious and intuitive.
Configuring the monitor is a must-do task, as the factory settings seems a little too light (brightness). There also exists five pre-set settings that can be chosen with just a few button pushes: Internet, Game, Sport, Movie, Dynamic Contrast and Custom.
Clicking through applications with the mouse can be more comfortable than using the OSD menus. The software that comes with the monitor is called MagicTune. It includes all of the settings from the OSD in a nice little application that can be installed as a stand-alone and quickly accessed from the tray menu.
The dynamic contrast should be the perfect choice, as this has the task of changing the settings accordingly with the screen contact. Unfortunately, it fails to work correctly, and most users tend to give up on the software. It even looks like it's still in the beta stage at times.
The monitor's viewing angles are fine, with no problems reported -- as long as you look at it directly. The viewing angle from above is also good, however from below it is a disaster. If you are closer than one meter to the monitor, and you look at it by having the level of your eyes below the center of the LCD, you will already see a difference. The colors begin to look washed out and problems with shading will also make their presence known.
This is a common issue with TN panel LCDs. The colors, on the other hand, look good, while backlight bleeding is only a little noticeable in the bottom of the screen as long as you maintain an acceptable brightness. For me, this is 50 for contrast and 20 for Brightness. Remember that all LCDs have their brightness set on full, or at least quite high, so don't complain if you set this feature to full.
As far as the dead pixel policy, in our case the limit is five. So until you gather five of those dead pixels, no warranty issue can be started. The response time is 5ms; that is considered high these days (the lower, the better, since we're talking about response time latencies), with the mass appearance of the 2 ms G2G monitors. In real life, however, it isn't observable as long as you use your own eyes (and you don't have super evolved ones). However, here is a picture of the basic text in this domain:
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(Image made with Pixepran. First is how it should look and then how it actually looks.)
As long as you're playing older games, the monitor will stretch everything to fit the full screen. The stretching is done gracefully and will look natural; you won't notice it after a short period of accommodation.
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->Image is courtesy of dr_dream forum member on http://www.xpc.ro/ <-
If you are into games, don't forget the WideScreenGamingForum, as they offer support for wide screens in various older games also. However, the real strength of a big widescreen monitor is in the area of movie watching. The widescreen aspect feels natural, and you will see the movie on almost the full surface of the screen.
On the other hand, be advised that for large LCDs, high quality is needed. Also, if you look at them from a shorter distance, a movie of the usual CD quality will look pixilated. Such movies should be viewed from about two meters away. HD quality is still recommended.
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