Performance Continued and Conclusions
General Monitor Issues.
Nokia Monitor Test is a freely downloadable application for testing various aspects of a monitor's performance.
Geometry: My 955DF has always had slight geometry issues, and the Nokia Monitor Test shows this quite clearly. The screen image is practically impossible to get EXACTLY right, and there appears to be a small amount of stretching in the corners of the picture. At its native resolution, The 172x was perfect in this regard - due to the way that LCD panels have their pixels laid out, everything is perfectly square, and there's no stretching or squashing of the picture anywhere on the screen. Other resolutions were, to be honest, ugly - the native resolution of the Samsung 172x gives it a 5:4 aspect ratio - not the 4:3 ratio that most video resolutions produce. This resulted in a horizontally squashed (or vertically stretched) picture - even general text is blurry when displayed like this, and is a strain to read.
Convergence: The convergence test measures how accurately the red/green/blue electron guns are firing at the shadow mask - in this test, white lines should appear if the convergence is correct. Strangely though, all I got with this test on any monitor I tried it on was a series of red, green and blue crosses, all joined together - so this test may well be broken. To make sure that it wasn't my video card, or PC that was causing this problem, I tried this test on a variety of systems - and they all exhibited the red/green/blue crosses behavior, so either the test IS broken, or the docuementation provided with the Nokia Monitor Test software isn incorrect in how its description of how this test should work.
Focus: Focus is a measure how well the monitor can display the same picture in different areas of the screen. A pattern is displayed in the centre of the monitor as well as at each corner - the pattern should be identical in every aspect in all areas. On the 955DF, the patterns at the side were slightly different, mainly due to what appeared to be blurriness, but in a 2+ year old consumer-grade monitor, I expected this. As with the first tests with this application, the 172x was perfect in every regard.
Resolution: The resolution test checks to make sure that the monitor can accurately display the resolution it is set at, with a series of horizontal and vertical lines. Both monitors accurately displayed both the horizontal and vertical line patterns without any issues, though moire was definitely noticable on my 955DF in the higher resolution mode.
Readability: If driven at resolutions higher than they can physically display, CRT monitors will often produce a picture, especially of small objects/text, which becomes blurry. To test this, the readability section of this software displays the word "FULLSCREEN" in a very small font many times over, filling the screen. On the 955DF, this was perfectly readable until I went past 1280x960 resolution, after this point (up to the maximum 1600x1200), the text was noticably blurry. The 172x was actually the opposite - at native resolution (1280x1024), the text was clear, but at lower resolutions it became fuzzy and difficult to read. As an aside, I've also found that at native resolution, text on the 172x is very easy to read, especially when combined with Windows XP's "ClearType" feature. Native resolution is 1280x1024 though, and if you find the text too small to read on a CRT at higher resolutions, you're not going to find things any easier in this regard on an LCD - you can run it in lower resolutions, but as shown in this test, that tends to make things quite blurry.
Moire: Moire occurs when fine lines or small patterns seem to "wave" or "swirl" in front of the eyes, even though they are drawn perfectly clearly on the monitor. Surprisingly, I noticed very little moire on my 955DF, only noticing a small amount of waving when the smallest and most intricate test pattern was drawn (less than was noticed in the resolution test actually). Again, the 172x was practically flawless here, with only minor disturbances to the test pattern being seen (which may actually have been more of an optical illusion than a fault with the monitor itself).
Colours: This test is probably the most useful when looking at an LCD - though not for the reasons it was initially designed. This test is supposed to show inconsistencies in the colour reproduction on a monitor by displaying a series of flat colour screens (in red, green, blue, black and white) - and on my 955 DF, there are patches, albeit fairly hard to spot, in the colours, with bright and dull spots appearing in various areas of the display. The colour reproduction on the 172x is uniform across the screen, as you would expect, but that's not what this test is useful for. This test can be used to highlight dead pixels - they will appear as off-colour, light or dark spots (depending on how they have died) on the flat colour screens, highlighted very clearly. So not only did my 172x display the colours evenly, but I'm happy to say that there are no dead pixels on this screen at all.
Screen Regulation: This is often the most noticable flaw with consumer-level CRT monitors. If screen regulation is a problem, the screen image will appear to expand when very bright, and contract when very dark - this is often very noticable at the edges of the screen. And it's a definite issue with my 955DF - I've noticed it before, but this test really highlights the problem, with the image expanding and contracting quite badly. Again though, the 172x passes with flying colours - as you'd expect, since the pixels on it are physically fixed in place and are unable to move in and out from the centre of the display. Again though, this test can be useful in determining another aspect of LCD performance - contrast. And the 172x doesn't disappoint, with very black-looking blacks, and white-looking whites, especially in "Internet" mode. It's also acceptable in "Text" mode, though the white is a little greyish, and again, "Entertain" mode seems too bright, with the whites looking like they're ready to fry your retinas, and the blacks appearing more of a "dark shade of grey" than true black. Given though that LCDs really can't produce true black (the liquid crystals don't get dark enough to block ALL the backlighting), the results are excellent in "Internet" mode, and easily acceptable in both "Text" and "Entertain" modes when you use them for their intended purposes.
Conclusions:
If true colour reproduction is critical to you (for example, if you work with digital images for a living), then this monitor, or any 18-bit LCD for that matter, may not be for you. It can't provide you with the true 24/32-bit colour depth that is critical for this kind of work, and people looking for a monitor for this purpose should probably still consider a professional-level CRT monitor for their needs.
The biggest problem most people will have with this monitor is the price - you can buy a decent (something like my Samsung 955DF monitor) 19" CRT for considerably less money, and can get good consumer-level 17" CRTs for less than half the asking price for the 172x. But CRTs are bulky, they use a lot of power, they get hot, and most have geometric display issues which can drive some people (like me) insane. The 172x isn't perfect - as mentioned before, it "cheats" to display its claimed 16.2 million colours, and this can have noticable effects (more noticable to some people than others). If you're not using a video card which can adequately display 1280x1024 pixels whilst performing your favourite tasks (gaming being a noticable example of this), then you may well be better advised to spend your money upgrading other parts of your system. But couple this screen with a good video card (such as a Radeon 9600XT or nVidia FX5950 for instance) in a high-powered system, and you're likely to be very impressed with it, especially if your video card has a DVI output, which seems to provide a picture with more vibrant and better-contrasted colours.
Backed by Samsung's seven-day zero defective pixel warranty, the 172x is a sound investment - no longer to those who wish to have the advantages of an LCD have to put up with dead pixels or slow response times, the biggest Archilles Heels of such devices to date. I've been using the 172x for the last two or so weeks now as my main monitor, and I have to say, I'm extremely impressed. I've gamed with it, I've watched movies with it, I've browsed the Internet, worked on business documents, and even typed up this review whilst using it, and I haven't found it to have any critical faults in anything I've used it for. It isn't perfect, of course, but neither is any CRT monitor you're likely to buy, and whilst I haven't been able to test it alongside other LCDs, I have used them at various times in the past, and the 172x seems to me to be superior to them all.
I picked my 172x up from AusPCMarket, who are selling it for AUD$836 including delivery. Several other retailers (both online and otherwise) are also selling the 172x, so it shouldn't be too hard to find - although I understand that early stocks sold "like hotcakes" and there may be a short delay in obtaining one while Samsung ship more into the country. After using one I can completely understand why - recommended!
Note that some early review samples of the 172x were based on 25ms panels. Retail units - and the one reviewed here - are based on superior 12ms panels.
Samsung products are distributed in Australia by Altech Computers.
|
