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Samsung SyncMaster 19" 930B??? $446.49

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Fdisk

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Jan 29, 2005
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Ok, I pretty much dislike Best Buy, but one of my clients has a son-in-law who works there and may be able to get me a decent discount. I read Tom's Hardware review and several threads about the L90D+ with interest. Call me old fashioned, but for a monitor, I prefer brick and mortar. So if anyone would be kind enough to look over the specs and offer their advice, I'd appreciate it. Even better if someone who owns this could reply.

TIA!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat01011&id=1099394930415

1280 x 1024 maximum resolution at 75Hz
0.294mm pixel pitch
Ultrafast 8 ms response time
300 cd/m² brightness; 700:1 contrast ratio
30-81kHz horizontal frequency, 56-75Hz vertical
160° viewing angle, horizontal and vertical
Analog RGB and DVI digital inputs
Picture enhancements technologies include MagicBright II, MagicColor and MagicTune
Safe mode offers down-scaling to UXGA
Built-in power
Product Details
Warranty Terms - Parts 3 years
Warranty Terms - Labour 3 years
Product Height 16.8" with stand (14" without)
Product Width 16.6"
Product Weight 11.2 lbs. with stand
Product Length 7.9" with stand (2.4" without)
Monitor Type Flat-panel
Display Type Active-matrix TFT LCD
Screen Size 19"
Viewable Screen Size 19"
Maximum Resolution 1280 x 1024
Brightness Lumens 300 cd/m²
Portrait and/or Landscape Viewable Landscape
Contrast Ratio 700:1
Dot Pitch 0.294mm
Flat Display Yes
TV/Cable Ready No
Picture-in-Picture No
Inputs Analog RGB, DVI digital link
Compatibility PC or Mac
Vertical Frequency 56-75Hz
Horizontal Frequency 30-81kHz
On-Screen Image Controls Yes
Accessories Included D-sub cable; power cord; user's guide, monitor driver, Natural Color and MagicTune software
 
Surely someone has this monitor. :) New to LCD specs, so if someone could just look it over, I'd appreciate it!

Thanks!
 
kiljaden5 said:
circuit city has a rebate:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sams...sem/rpsm/oid/118808/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

this is probably the same monitor as the 915N except with DVI input.. to compete with the Hyundai L90D+

I saw it at the store just a few minutes ago, looks nice

Thanks for the reply, but after seeing the Sony HS95P/S I'm spoiled. It looks incredible! I'm still waiting to hear back on employee discount so in the meantime, this is what I did:

I'll be picking mine up no later than a week from tomorrow from CompUSA. They are offering the same $599 after $100 rebate as Best Buy is. But I called and spoke to the business side rather than regular retail side (actually by mistake. I dialed the business number) and I'll be paying $630 and still get the $100 rebate for a total of $530 plus tax. All I did was talk to the guy and complained about not carrying more of a selection of monitors I was interested in like the ViewsonicVP912B. I continued saying that the Sony was the only one I was interested in that they carried in-store but it was too expensive. He then threw out a number and that was my queue that we could haggle and settled on the $630 price as opposed to $699. I just crunched some numbers and I am falling a bit short of the price today so I'll call him back tomorrow and see if there is a little more wiggle room. If not, I'll wait for my bonus check next Friday and pick it up then.

I went with CompUSA over BB as they have a 21 day no questions asked versus BB's of 14 days. I am also willing to pay sales tax to have the peace of mind of being able to exchange it if I get bad backlight bleeding or stuck/dead pixels. But with this deal, my sales tax will be covered and then some.

If I can get a better deal fom BB, I'll get it there.
Also this monitor was the only one not running a slide show loop and had XP on it. I was able to open a large text file in Notepad and maximize it to closely examine the text. It looked good, but was difficult to really judge it due to the extreme lighting all box stores seem to use. But Sony must have confidence in this display since it was actually set up to play with. All I could do with the others was watch them as they cycled through.
 
I got this the other day, I have to say it is an absolutely awesome monitor. No dead pixels, no blurring, no fading, and all that mumbo jumbo. Very Good Quality Monitor but it didn't come with a Digital Cable. Comes with a bunch of programs so you can adjust without using the buttons (which kind of hurt for my long pianist fingers)

-1cem4n
 
I just bought the new 930B at BestBuy yesterday. $469 - $90 mail in rebate = $379 final cost. Seems excellent for gaming so far. WIll post more info later or answer any questions if anyone is interested.
 
Grimdeath said:
If it's the same display as the 915N which is the same display as the L90D+, how are they getting 160 Vertical where the L90D+ is 150?

Good question! I'd like to know too.

Also, if you get a DVI cable (I would) the rebate eats up the cost.
 
Hello everyone,

I was excited to see this monitor arrive as well. Thought I would post my comments in hopes it may help some of you decide yes or no on this monitor. Disclaimer: I am not a professional monitor tester! I am a hardcore FPS gamer - mostly RTCW. Some Doom 3 and some HL2. I have been computer gaming for ages, (read I am veeeery old). This is the 2nd LCD flat panel I have used. I use a Hewlitt-Packard L1955 at work. Very nice 19" monitor...but its 20 ms response time means it is NOT a gaming monitor.

Below is what I posted yesterday on some other sites.

Testing a new Samsung 930B 8ms monitor. Apparently, they just got released. Picked one up tonight at BestBuy for $470. $90 mail in rebate applies this week only. Final cost will be $380.

I have a feeling Samsung was getting a lot of complaints and losing a lot of business to competitors with 8ms flat panels that had analog AND DVI connections, (namely the Hyundai Imagequest L90D+ that uses the same Samsung panel). The Samsung 915N had analog only capability. No word yet on whether they will offer both models or this will replace the 915N.

Initial impressions - Day 1:

Pros - Looks very clean and stylish. Black finish complements all of my other computer components. Installing the driver and additional software very simple from included CD. Adjustment buttons seem well designed and fairly sturdy. Text seems very clear right out of the box. Colors very vibrant. So called "Magic-Bright II" feature gives 6 custom settings for Text/Internet/Movies/Sports/Games/Custom.

Cons - Out of the box the instructions not very specific though assembly is basically a no-brainer. No height adjustment, no side-to-side adjustment, no pivot feature to view websites, etc. vertically. Adjustment buttons on bottom of monitor seem well-designed and sturdy; yet labels for buttons are merely recessed letters in same black color. No contrasting color makes them virtually impossible to read due to brightness of monitor. Hmm... Will let you know how easy the on-screen menus are to operate once I get the freakin buttons figured out. This part is quite lame.

So...even thought the monitor looks gorgeous it has the feel of a product that was rushed to market due to Samsung losing business to competitors. Not really striking me as an extremely well thought out product so far.

Further thoughts to come after I go test Wolf and Doom 3 for a bit.

Day 2 - OK guys - this thing is growing on me. Reaaally starting to like this monitor a lot. Pros are becoming more so and cons becoming less important. Really like the clean styling and matte black finish. Buttons seem sturdy and are easy to find by "touch". Monitor is bright but not overly so. Still really like the vibrant colors. All of this while testing so far with only the analog input and having done no calibration at all save the "AutoAdjustment" button. Still think the text looks very crisp. I am having fun trying out the "custom" modes.

Man is it fast. I like to play RTCW a LOT. Initial testing in both RTCW and Doom 3 reveals no visible ghosting, tearing, blurriness, etc. Maybe some others could see some bluriness...I definitely can not. It seems every bit as fast as my trusty old CRT, but the colors will blow you away. Text also appears razor-sharp.

As for the cons from yesterday. It is true that there is no height, side-to-side, or pivot adjustability on this monitor. But you know what? My work monitor has all of those and I never use them. Not saying you wouldn't. I am saying I don't. This monitor sits at the correct height for me and I don't need to move it from side to side for any reason. Also, while the pivot feature on some monitors is cool you may want to ask yourself two questions. 1 - Would you ever use it. 2 - How much twisting, turning, pivoting, is the monitor going to take before something is out of spec or doesn't work correctly any more?

Lack of labeling in a contrasting color on push buttons on underside of monitor is still bothering me a bit. There is really no reason this could not have been done. However, I am now only in day 2 and I have already learned by "touch" which buttons operate which functions. This is becoming less of a major concern to me and more of a minor annoyance. On screen menus are fairly intuitive.

Fianlly, as has been pointed out by others this monitor does support DVI connections. However, it does NOT come with a DVI cable. For me this is less of an issue as the 6 new flat panels we got at work did and we do not have any graphics cards with that functionality. The 6 DVI cables that were just sitting around have now turned into 5. Somehow, one appeared at my house and I will be testing this with DVI connection shortly.

All in all...really liking this thing and thinking it is NOT going back to BestBuy beofre the end of my 14-day return window.

If anyone has any questions for me please feel free to ask. I will try to reply.
 
I have a question, have you checked for backlight bleeding or stuck/dead pixels? A little more info on the image quality in Windows and text would be appreciated.

Congrats on the new monitor. :)
 
FDisk,

Testing the monitor with "Dead Pixel Buddy" revealed 0 stuck/dead pixels and no backlight bleeding on black screen. Program is available here:

http://www.topqualityfreeware.com/diagnostic11.html

Image quality in Windows appears very good to me. Word, Excel, etc. look very nice. Let's put it this way. On the few other LCDs I have used in the past I have always used the Windows "Clear Type Tuning" program to make the text clearer. On this monitor, I have not even bothered to install it because it looks very good without any adjustments. Disclaimer: I do not do any CAD design, Photo editing, etc. (Your results may vary) :)

Day 3 - I am really enjoying the Custom settings button. This feature enables you to toggle between 6 different custom settings, each with a different combination of pre-programmed brightness/contrast levels all with repeated pushes of a single button. Very nice feature.

Liking this thing more and more every day.
 
I just got this monitor as well and am pretty satisfied with it except for 2 things.

1. I have slight backlight bleeding all around my screen, which makes a sort of light glow come out of the entire border of the screen. I'm not actually sure if this is really bleeding, since this is my first LCD. Would showing pure black on the screen not have a trace of lighter color for it to be considered without backlight bleeding? I've never actually seen it.

2. The top half o the screen seems to have a darker contrast then the bottom. That is to say, things seem darker and a bit finer detailed on the top half rather than the bottom half. note: forget this one... seems to be dependent on my angle. If I squat and look at the bottom edge of the screen with a level eye it displays the same deep color as the top. So i just have to find a way to sit lower or elevate my monitor.

I'd like to know if anyone has these problems or if you can tell me, if what I have is backlight bleeding. Does no backlight bleeding show a pure color when all black is displayed (even though the color will be grayish in this case) without a trace of lighting at all?

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Reiniku,

I do not claim to be an expert but I have seen pictures of backlight bleeding before and think I would recognize it. Look at the 3rd post on this thread for a sample picture:


http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=375399&highlight=backlight+bleeding

I have no backlight bleeding at all on mine. Try running the Dead Pixel Buddy program I referenced above. When I run it and choose the black screen I see uniform color/brightness/contrast across the entire screen. If you do not I would return the monitor for another if you still can. There are many perfect examples of this monitor out there. Mine has no backlight issue and no dead/stuck pixels. Hope this helps.
 
If you use a Kensington stand/wall mount, you can set it to portrait and just use the nVidia rotate feature to get a portrait mode going. I just did it on the Acer AL1912b and it works just fine without wearing out the wires from twisting.
 
Well I went to Circuit City and looked at the 930b for my self. I couldn't look at much except the desktop and that Aquarium screensaver. The 930b doesn't have any greater viewing angles than any other TN panel. The near by 913 had a much better viewing angles due to it being a PVA panel. The 930 didn't look any better or worse than the 913 but that could be biased by each being on a differant computer and the 930 was on an emachine with crappy onboard analog vga chip. The controls under the besl bottom is no biggie as you just set it and forget it.

So you have a great gaming TN panel with somewhat narrow viewing angles or a great viewing angle but much slower PVA panel for watching DVD movies. Too bad you can't bave both on one panel technology yet but maybe we will next year.
 
I'll be picking up this monitor later today, I'll have the DVI cable on Friday so then I'll be able to give a comparison between the VGA and DVI picture quality

Hope I get a perfect one, if not, i'll just exchange hehe
 
just got it and hooked it up... first impressions- WOW

I'm not noticing any ghosting at all, there is a little bit of backlight bleeding but its very marginal.. i'm yet to test for dead pixels, but if I have any I can just exchange it at Best Buy.. the beauty of buying an LCD in a store....
 
checked for stuck / dead pixels.. and there aren't any! I still can't get over how crisp and bright everything looks.. really didn't expect to be this pleased with this monitor
 
Fdisk, the discount at best buy wont get you more than 20-30 bucks 40 tops, they dont make thier money on big stuff, but accessories, like the dvi cable. My friend at best buy got my a 6' usb printer cable that is 26.99 retail. she got me the cable for 1.21. so my 52.99 dvi cable is gonna cost me like 2 bucks, thats where you want the employee discount, thats where best buy makes thier money.
 
T'wolves said:
Fdisk, the discount at best buy wont get you more than 20-30 bucks 40 tops, they dont make thier money on big stuff, but accessories, like the dvi cable. My friend at best buy got my a 6' usb printer cable that is 26.99 retail. she got me the cable for 1.21. so my 52.99 dvi cable is gonna cost me like 2 bucks, thats where you want the employee discount, thats where best buy makes thier money.


I ended up going with the Sony HS95P/S and it included both cables, but yes, you are correct about the small stuff being big $$.
 
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