Thoughts on a Samsung Syncmaster 215TW, 21" Widescreen

[Maviryk]

Well, a special someone wants to buy me a Samsung Syncmaster 215TW for my 21st birthday.

I don't want her to waste her money, so... anyone know how good it is?

Specs are:
Monitor Type | LCD Flat Panel Screen
Screen Size (Inches/Diagonal) | 21
Contrast Ratio | 1000:1
Response Time (Milliseconds) | 8
Audio Inputs | Yes
Screen Perspective | 16:9
Video Inputs | Yes
Screen Resolution - Maximum | 1680x1050
Connector - Analog | Yes
Connector - Digital | Yes
Speakers Built-in | Yes

It's going for about 580 after taxes. I've looked at it inside stores. Has inputs for RCA, DVI, VGA, Component. Heck, it even has Picture in Picture. How would this monitor compare to say a 2005FPW or 2007FPW? The only thing I see that bugs me about it is it's refresh rate is only 60Hz at 1680x1050. I could see minor backlight bleed, but it went away after turning down brightness from 100 to 75.

All the inputs are nice though, I'm thinking if I get it I could plug in my Xbox via component and watch TV via the RCA.

Thoughts?

 

[gtsimmo]

I bought the samsung 215TW Monday and so far I am very pleased with it. However, the first one the store gave me was DoA (the right hand side of the screen was blue) and was an open box return item so I had to get an exchange. The 2nd one i got works just fine.

Overall the image quality of the monitor is great. World of Warcraft simply looks spendid at 1680 x 1050. I didnt notice any ghosting but havent tried running a fast paced FPS game on it yet, I will try playing FEAR on it tonight. I tried playing a LotR dvd and quality was good but had to fiddle with the contrast a bit, i found that the "internet" or "text" setting on automatic setting worked best given my lighting in my room, but i expect that given any monitor some adjustment are needed first time around. I especially like the magic tune software that allows me to easily adjust the monitor setting from Windows so I dont have to fiddle with the buttons on the monitor, it has several pre programmed settings to choose from or you can choose a custom setting and set the contrast and brightness yourself. The magic rotation software is nice when your working with long vertical spreadsheets and the monitor rotates easily and effortlessly. The PIP or PBP (picture by picture where the screen in split in two) works nicely but is also found on the Dell models.

However, on the downside using the composite video input (the yellow input) yielded very poor visual quality when I tried hooking up my PS2 to it. Playable but not recommended. I expect using a component video input or s-video is minimum must if you want to use the aux video inputs. I do have satellite dish receiver that has component, s-video and composite outputs so i could test them all out and compare the quality but havent thought about doing so until just now.

I was planning on getting the Dell 2005fpw which cost about the same but when i took in the factor that the 215TW had a higher contrast ratio 1000:1 compared to 800:1 and a slightly bigger screen 21 inch compared to 20.1, I decided on the Samsung.

Edit: Oh the monitor has a 16:10 aspect ratio not 16:9. You can also set the monitor to run in letter box mode at 4:3 from the monitor menu if you need to run a game that doesnt support wide aspect.

Edit2: Ok I got home and tested the monitor when hooked up to my dish receiver. Using just the composite yellow plug, the quality of the reception is what i get on when I use my WinTV PVR2 USB receiver on my laptop, i would say less then ideal but none the less viewable. Using the S-video plug yielded better results, however using the compenent video input was by far the best image quality when hooked up to a regular dvd player. So in conclusion I would say the monitor is suitable for TV if you have a receiver with either S-video or component video outputs.

Oh and I'll post two pictures of I took of my monitor