The Samsung Syncmaster XL20 Monitor - Review

A new era has begun. Forget about all the TFT backlight monitors that you have seen, or you have read about. Also forget about all the CRT monitors you have seen or read about.

I am not exaggerating one second stating that in the monitor world a new revolution is started - the LED backlight technology is taking over. The Samsung XL20 is a live example of this statement, even if it looks extremely expensive (approx. 2000 USD, compared to a normal monitor, it is), for a LED backlight monitor, it has an extremely low price. If we take the NEC SpectraView Reference 21 LCD2810 WG LED, as an example, when it was first released (two years ago), it costed about 9000 USD. Now, the price for that device is about 4000 USD, obviously not everyone can afford a monitor at such a price, adding to that not everyone needs such a device. The SyncMaster XL20 wants to be closer to the people that work with Desktop Publishing, offering a monitor that many would not consider because of the high price.

The colors are so full of life, which makes the opinions about it take two different roads: on the first look, you feel that your head is hurting when you see such an intense red color, or such a raw green, but on the other hand you feel that you have not seen such a richness in colors ever before. The monitor obviously demands a period of getting used to, for the users that are not familiar with it. For that, in the beginning, you do not need to use the Custom or Calibration modes, and you can chose the classic sRGB mode, or the AdobeRGB. I felt it on my own skin, what 114% NTSC wide gamut means. It is a different world, you feel like you are rediscovering the colors. The gamut record was also kept until now by a Samsung 931c monitor, which could show 92% of the NTSC color space. If most of the TFT monitors would display a gamut between 110.000 and 120.000 pixels, 931c displayed 136.000 pixels. The new Samsung XL20 is displaying 163.000 pixels. Another big advantage of the LED technology is the uniformity of the backlight. The biggest difference of the brightness was of 8-10%, from 275 cd/m2 to 250 cd/m2.

Making a comparison, on neon lighted TFT monitors, these differences are of 20-20%. In conclusion, we can say that the Samsung XL20 is a monitor that will change the way we look at TFT devices from now on. Also, it is expected that other competitors of Samsung will release similar devices in order to keep the competition battle going.

Source: http://www.i4u.com