Samsung has always been one of the better if not the best choice when it came to desktop monitors. With screen sizes increasing steadily, the battle for desktop-monitor supremacy has moved up a gear, and now manufacturers are continually producing better and better HD monitors. Awhile ago, Samsung has deemed it necessary to produce monitors that provide decent image quality, but at a more affordable price. Of course, such a combination would come with a trade-off or some sort of compromise, which we will be exploring here.
The first thing that should be noted is the native resolution of 1,920×1,200, which is HD resolution and useful for a number of reasons; such as being able to open multiple windows at once without maximizing them and yet remain viewable. Here’s the catch; though the resolution is 1920×1200, which is enough for HD, 1,080p image should optimally be used meaning 1,920×1,080 resolution for best image quality. So should you try to plug a device that inputs 1,080p signal into the 245B, the resulting image will be scaled to fit the native resolution of the monitor, which will affect the image’s sharpness.
The stand is a decent one, though you don’t get pivot capabilities. But, you can still get the regular height adjustment, up-down angle tilting, and a twist pad built into the base of the stand allows you to pan the monitor left or right (viewing angle is 160°). The overall design is a simple black, with buttons evenly spaced between each other situated at the bottom right of the monitor. Pressing the down button brings up the the MagicBright settings, which is for you to change between various presets. The Samsung 245B has a response time of 5ms, which is great. It also has a high contrast ratio of 3000:1 on dynamic mode and 1000:1 on static mode. What actually differentiates the 245B from the other 24” monitors is the TN panel used instead of the S-PVA panel in others. This means that instead of being an 8-bit colour panel, it’s a 6-bit colour one.
This display panel proves to be a competent one for gaming purposes. One good thing about the TN panel is that it switches quickly, with a gray-to-gray response time of 5ms, and there’s no hint of motion smearing. Video-wise, the quality is decent, but not really a match for HD TVs. There’s no HDMI port, which is a bit disappointing. It has a HDCP compliant DVI port and an analogue D-sub, the standard fare. Still, without 1:1 pixel mapping the HDCP support may not be all that useful since high-definition sources you try to plug in will be scaled to the native resolution of the display panel.
Though it may not be the cheapest 24 inch display around, but it is still considerably more affordable than some of the higher end models. If you are a little tight on budget, Samsung’s 245B is one you can consider.
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