Samsung SyncMaster 753 DFX

...the internet I spotted this Samsung monitor for £80 on ebuyer. The brand of samsung and the price instantly sold it to me and I had made my mind up, i proceeded in buying this.

The first thing I noticed about the monitor the first time I got it was that the box was huge and I struggled to get it through the door but eventually I succeeded after a little bit of kicking. The monitor comes with a power cable and attached to the monitor ...
...compare it to my cousin's Samsung TFT monitor I feel the picture is more crystal clear while his monitor is more colourful and detailed in some respects. I have my computer near the window and in the past the sun has tended to have a glare effect on my old monitor which really annoyed me when I was doing school work. This monitor has anti glare which means any sunlight won't reflect on it which is very nice as I can have the monitor facing the sun. ... more

With the ever increasing demand for TFT (thin film transistor) LCD monitors the price and demand for CRT(cathode ray tube) has dramatically increased. Therefore it wouldn't have been unusual for me to capitalise on an opportunity like this by purchasing a nice, cheap CRT monitor. On the market there are 2 types of computer monitors you can purchase, these are CRT and TFT. CRT stands for Cathod Ray Tube, the glass portion of any traditional monitor. Operates by shooting electrons through a screen which enables images to be projected on the back of a phosphorescent coating on the screen. CRT monitors are the computer monitor equivalent to tube televisions of yester year. The other type of monitor on the market are TFT monitors which are a type of LCD flat-panel display screen where each pixel is controlled by transistors. This technology provides the best resolution of all the flat-panel techniques. Also sometimes called active-matrix LCDs. TFT monitors can be compared to LCD televisions that are now beginning to increase in popularity. CRT monitors usually have a large behind because it uses tube technology whereas TFT monitors are considerably smaller because it uses LCD technology.

Around Christmas last year I decided to purchase a brand new monitor because I wanted a bigger screen for when I was watching movies or playing games. For a few days I was looking around the selection for TFT monitors but as they were just beginning to get popular the price was exceedingly high, £200 for the cheapest model which had a lack of features. The only real reason for me to even consider buying a TFT monitor would be the fact that I would have more desk space because CRT monitors are notorious for taking up space. I decided that I needed to look at other monitor options before I should invest my money on a substandard monitor. After browsing around the CRT monitors on offer on various sites on the internet I spotted this Samsung monitor for £80 on ebuyer. The brand of samsung and the price instantly sold it to me and I had made my mind up, i proceeded in buying this.

The first thing I noticed about the monitor the first time I got it was that the box was huge and I struggled to get it through the door but eventually I succeeded after a little bit of kicking. The monitor comes with a power cable and attached to the monitor the cable you plug into the graphics adapter of your computer. The monitor is incredibly heavy weighing in at 16kg, which isn't that heavy but if you're taking it up two flights of stairs it can be frustrating. Another problem the monitor has physically is the back of the monitor sticks out a whole lot, you'd expect it to be shaped like a box but its shaped more towards being a rectangle. This is particularly bad as my desk cannot be stood against the wall else the monitor won't fit onto the desk. Sometimes I feel a slight paranoia that my monitor will fall off the desk. Luckily the monitor is kept on the desk as its placed onto a circle stand type thing where you can rotate the monitor (any ideas on what it is called on a postcard)

The first time I set my eyes upon my monitor I couldn't believe how flat the screen was compared to my last monitor which had alot of vertical and horizontal curvature. The flat screen makes looking at the monitor much nicer. The monitor delivers a very clear quality picture and when I compare it to my cousin's Samsung TFT monitor I feel the picture is more crystal clear while his monitor is more colourful and detailed in some respects. I have my computer near the window and in the past the sun has tended to have a glare effect on my old monitor which really annoyed me when I was doing school work. This monitor has anti glare which means any sunlight won't reflect on it which is very nice as I can have the monitor facing the sun.

When you first plug the monitor in there is no need in installing anything though there are CD's given to you which are drivers and some tool that increases quality of the colours but I don't use them because I lost the CD's. Your computer will instantly recognise the monitor as the SyncMaster 753. The size of the monitor is 17" (16" viewable) which means that the picture will be large and when I first got my monitor I found movies looked alot better on a large monitor as opposed to my 15" hunk of junk.

The maximum resolution of the monitor is 1280x1024 which is sufficient for me as I choose to use 1024 x 768 but alot of monitors in this price range from what my friend's have told me can exceed resolutuions of 1600x1200. The maximum refreshrate capable of this monitor is 1280x1024@65Hz. For those unaware of what refresh rate is the maximum number of frames that can be displayed on a monitor in a second, expressed in Hertz. Usually the human eye can see the differences in refresh rate upto a maximum of around 60-70hz. You can usually tell that there is a low refresh rate by the flickering you get from a computer screen, refresh rate decreases the flickering so a low refresh rate means you can see more flickering. If you take a mobile camera phone and preview a picture of your monitor you can see scan lines horizontally move up and down. The higher the refresh rate the lesser the chance there is of eye strain. The higher the resolution the monitor is using then there are more scan lines. I use a resolution of 1024 x 768 and my maximum refresh rate is 85hz which means it is hard for me to see the flickering of the screen, but at a higher resolution like 1280 I will be able to tell slightly whether there is alot of flickering.

I feel that this monitor is great value for money and considering the prices of TFT monitors right now I'd buy a CRT monitor to hold off the temptation till the price is right. If you can fit the box of the monitor through the door then you have succeeded. I'm pretty sure this monitor is going for under £80 now as I purchased it nearly a year ago. The monitor is of great quality and I can be reassured that if I bought another Samsung monitor it will be reliable like the one I have now.  

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