I picked this up from ebuyer.com for just over £209. I was looking for a largish panel to double as a Video out display for my MacBook Pro (via DVI) and a gaming panel to attach my Xbox 360 to (via VGA). It’s an aesthetically pleasing enough design. Although the piano black glossy surround and matching plastic base are absolute dust magnets. If you’ve had or seen a Playstation 3 - it’s that kind of a surface. The panel itself is matte (good for haters of the glossy surfaced screens) and runs at a native resolution of 1920 x 1200. This makes it a 16:10 ratio as opposed to the current trend of 16:9 screens geared around HD content.
It sports DVI and VGA connections but no HDMI. The stand, which is very difficult to connect initially, offers some tilt movement but no height adjustment. The menu/input buttons are located at the right side of the screen, keeping the front clean and smart. The menu system itself is a fiddly affair and far from intuitive. It’s no more advanced than the OSD’s of the CRT’s of old. One thing that is nice, and not always a feature of TFT screens is a separate input select switch. If you intend to share the screen across two devices it makes switching a breeze and saves delving into the menu each time.
Screen quality is a disappointment. Perhaps this is a tad unfair given the SM2433BW’s price point but if you’re used to looking at the more expensive IPS type panels (I spend much of the day looking at an iMac 24″) this type of screen is immediately and obviously inferior (this Samsung uses the far cheaper TN type panel).
So for serious work (any type of colour correction would in my opinion be a no-go) this probably isn’t the screen to opt for. However, for gaming it is more than ample. Call Of Duty: World Of War on the Xbox 360 looks great and there’s no obvious lag or streaking in the image. There are however, far cheaper/better gaming monitors out there if that’s the primary concern.
In conclusion, if you’re after a cheap and cheerful large resolution screen for a bit of everything, you could do worse. Personally, for a screen this size I feel it makes more sense to either opt for a smaller size IPS based screen or stump up the extra cash for an IPS 24″.
NOTE: My unit was actually faulty. Lowering the brightness to anything less than about 90% on the OSD induced a humming/buzzing noise. This wasn’t audible when the X360 was on (thanks to it’s obscene running volume) but with a MacBook or similar connected it was an irritation.
