Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Cheap, easy to use, good quality |
| Disadvantages: |
It's a CRT ! |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
I've had this monitor for around 2 years now and it is still running in the same condition as when first purchased. I run the monitor at 1152x864 with a refresh rate of 75 Hertz on my Geforce 6600GT with a lower resolution in games to keep my frame rate high.
I know CRT monitors are fast becoming a legacy technology but that wasn't due for consideration 2 years ago especially with the problem of my other monitor failing and me requiring and emergency replacement for less than £100, this clocked in at £60.
The picture quality is always sharp and the colours are of a high standard. The monitor easily pumps up to it's max resolution of 1280x1024 but with the degrading refresh rate of 60Hz, I read somewhere that the lower the refresh rate the more damaging to your eyes a monitor can be so I like to keep mine as high as possible thus I don't use the monitors max
resolution - besides 17" really isn't big enough for this sort of resolution in my opinion.
Surprisingly the monitor is relatively small for a CRT, I think it's the smallest CRT monitor I've ever had and that's being compared to a line of 15" moitors! Of course it still takes up the majority of the space on my desk but I'm still waiting for TFT monitors to drop in price before I decide to buy one.
The base of the monitor is a circle shape and seems to be quite sturdy. I can fully adjust the monitor and it can point up at a fairly high angle and can near enough rotate the monitor on a full 180 degree turn from a centre point indicated by an arrow on the base. The casing for the monitor is nicely curved in and doesn't have that age old 'blocky' look expect from CRT monitors.
The monitor came complete with one dead pixel (black) toward the top left and none have reared their ugly dead pixel-ness since purchase. I actually made a totally white PowerPoint presentation to check because I was reading something in MicroDirect where I bought it from about the accepted range of dead pixels in the different classed monitors.
The front panel configuration is easy to use as prior to the normal headache of having to set the monitors colour levels and geometry, the auto-adjustment feature of TFT monitors is one thing that I really do appreciate. I'm unsure if this feature comes on any CRT monitors as I have never seen it myself.
Windows XP has no problem installing the monitor as a standard plug and play, but I always install some drivers I found online to no benefit at all apart from the monitors proper name being displayed in device manager etc. The monitor actually came with a floppy disk containing the drivers but I've not had a floppy drive on my computer for a few years now. I don't believe the monitor includes Macintosh drivers however.
I kept the quick installation guide for the monitor but I haven't kept much else, the guide seems of a good standard and offers driver installation instructions and diagrams for both Macintosh and PC installation. The guide is presented in around 14 different languages.
After reading the guide I can vaguely remember when I installed the monitor, the stand wasn't pre-attached to the monitor and had to be done manually although I cannot recall any problems achieving this.
I'm guessing not many are interested in this review but for those who are and on the lookout for a new CRT monitor, if you can find this or perhaps another in the SyncMaster range I'd definitely recommend you give it a look.
The TFT boom was getting hotter and hotter when I bought this monitor so I'm doubting that much CRT technology advancement has taken place since then.
**I've never had any dealings with
Samsung due to this monitor so i will leave manufacturer support on satisfactory.**
helpful
helpful
helpful
helpful
