The second 27-inch monitor to enter the market after Dell's, Samsung's 275T comes with a much more sombre design than Dell's piano black and aluminium combination. Apart from this, almost everything is identical to Dell's screen. Almost.
Design
The monitor as expected is huge, solid, and is framed entirely in matte black, the menu buttons featured at the bottom right. The video inputs are at the back of the monitor as usual, but interestingly component has been moved to the left hand side. We're ambivalent on the move -- on the one hand it could provide easier access to your console, on the other hand neat freaks will be annoyed by the increased presence of cable. No cable management is supplied.
Features
The usual bevy of video inputs are present -- DVI, VGA, composite, S-Video and component, the latter featured on the side as mentioned before. Four USB ports are included, as is an extra power jack should you need to power an add-on speaker bar. Unlike the Dell there is no 9-in-1 card reader here.
Colour adjustments are impressive, allowing you to set Cyan, Magenta and Yellow colours on top of the usual Red, Green and Blue in both saturation and hue, allowing the user to calibrate the screen with greater precision than other screens. On top of contrast and brightness, gamma is also offered.
Picture in Picture (PIP)/Picture by Picture (PBP) is available, allowing you to place a composite, S-Video or component output within or next to a DVI or VGA output, so two sources can be watched at once.
Hardware scaling options are sadly limited -- you can either stretch a smaller resolution to the full size of the screen (potentially distorting the image), or stretch it while maintaining aspect ratio. Unlike the Dell 2707WFP there is no 1:1 mode, which will annoy purists.
The stand is solid and terminates in a circle shaped base, offering height, swivel and tilt adjustments.
Performance
Anything we threw at this monitor it chewed up and spat out with some of the finest quality we've seen. It blitzed through the Displaymate tests, the full greyscale range being visible and gradients not becoming too dark too soon. Gaming was spot on thanks to the 6ms response time and 1080p hi-def movie watching (with the usual caveats of it coming from a clean or digital source) was spectacular, the vibrant colours and tone definition standouts. Viewing angles were within expected levels for the screen, allowing for slightly wider movement before colour shifts began.
Quickly hooking up our Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, we learnt that component can only support up to 1080i -- there's no 1080p here folks. Fortunately through an HDMI > DVI cable we were able to display 1080p on the screen on the PS3 -- to get the same benefits on the Xbox 360 you'll either have to purchase the VGA kit or wait for the HDMI enabled versions to hit the stands in Australia.
The Samsung SyncMaster 275T is an excellent screen, pitched at about the same price as Dell's 27-inch when it's not on special. A brief shop around will show prices up to AU$300 less than the retail, making it good value -- however you miss out on the 9-in-1 card reader featured on the Dell, and more importantly, the 1:1 hardware scaling. If these aren't important to you, and you can get a good price, then the 275T is a good buy.
chvostoskok
21/04/2008, 10:11 AM
rating
10/10
i noticed sound of trafo in case of both LCDs 275T. i have silent PC. its very light low buzz - i can hear it max. 10cm from backside of the LCD. its not CON !
Pros: zero dead subpixel waranty (at first i found one dead subpixel and i used warranty -the second LCD has no one)
watching movies is amazing
black-gray-white scale is great
0,303mm pixels are what i just need
cheaper than 27" acer (in CR)
not so heavy (10,4 kg)
has *not* pivot :-) (possibility for nothing)
good colours and contrast depth
classical black style, thin bezel
USB hub
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rd
10/12/2007, 07:37 PM
rating
9/10
the Samsung 3yr no dead pixel warranty is what really splits the Samsung and the Dell. Try getting Dell to replace the screen which has several dead pixels in the middle of the screen but none elsewhere.
Pros: excellent
Cons: as others have said
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KidRaga
27/11/2007, 07:15 AM
rating
9/10
I've been using this monitor for the past week and I must say it's quite an amazing monitor. Having inputs like component and even s-video/av is a great bonus. However not supporting 1080p over component is quite a big disappointment.. DVI works great with 1080p and it's supposedly supposed to work with VGA. However I'm having trouble getting the monitor to detect the 1920x1080 signal from an Xbox360 VGA cable and only detects it as 1400x1050 so the screen gets cut of and is unusable (if someone figures out how to do it, please post :). I haven't tried other VGA inputs at that res so can't report on that.
Pros: - Great monitor overall
- Super fast refresh
- Excellent contrast for an LCD
- 1080p looks great
- Optional speakers if you really want (although I don't see it sold where the monitors are sold)
- 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i also look great
Cons: - Can't do 1080p over component
- Can't get 1080p to work properly over VGA from an Xbox360
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m4h
31/10/2007, 09:16 AM
rating
9/10
I've been using a CRT before this, and I've looked long and hard at various LCD monitors to find one with minimal compromises in terms of color and respone time. This monitor not only delivers the goods, but also adds a bonus of bigger text and larger vieweing area compared to the more common 24-inch monitors.
Pros: color quality, viewing angle, response time, many adjustable settings.
Cons: the price... but you get what you pay for
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