Review: Samsung SyncMaster 2343

As a huge fan of Samsung monitors, I was naturally quite intrigued when I started seeing their new line of 16:9 monitors. These monitors were significantly cheaper than their 16:10 brethren of similar resolutions, but I always wondered if they were still as good. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the (relatively) new sizes, here ya go:

20" 1600x900
21.5" 1920x1080
23" 1920x1080
23" 2048x1152
24" 1920x1080
24.6"' 1920x1080

Primarily it was the odd one that caught my attention, initially simply because of the strange resolution (2048x1152), but the more I thought, the more appealing the idea became. Now, I'd been wanting to upgrade my primary display for a while now, but had just never gotten around to it, so when I saw that Micro Center had this display on sale for $200, I decided to take the plunge. Overall I couldn't be happier.

The 2343 is a very bright, vivid panel, with a very low pixel pitch ratio, resulting in a very sharp picture. Because of the low pixel pitch ratio, some people will not like it, but if your eyes are still good (at least close up), it is a very enjoyable experience.

Samsung has mercifully not put a reflective coating on this one, and in fact, the only shiny part of the entire monitor is the bezel, which has the touch-sensitive buttons that Samsung has started putting on a lot of their monitors recently. It does come with a pretty crappy stand (only tilt controllable...and only just barely), but has a standard VESA mount on the back under a cover, so you can put it on anything you want.

The bad point of the monitor itself is that it makes my other panels look like crap. I had previously had the fortunate accident to have similar pixel pitches on all my monitors, but now I have an odd man out, which has been screwing me up a bit tonight. Aside from the pixel pitch, this one is just so much brighter and the colors much more vivid than on my aging 225BWs and my aged TFT8030.

I haven't done much gaming on it yet (I only got it this evening), but I did fire up Borderlands for a bit to see how it fared. I did not see any tearing or ghosting, so the 5ms refresh rate seems to be fairing quite well. Honestly I find it amazing that 5ms is now considered a middling refresh rate, I remember back when I was looking into getting my first panel and Samsung had just released their first 5ms panel :P Anyways, back to the panel in question. :D

One big thing that I was looking forward to with this monitor is that the resolution is slightly larger than 1080p in both dimensions, so I should be able to view 1080p content in a window. I tried testing this with a movie trailer that claimed to be 1080p, but it turned out to be quite a bit smaller... My BD-ROM drive is on the fritz right now (needs drivers), but on Sunday I'll get that working and see how a BluRay movie looks on it :D

If anyone has any questions about the panel, I'll be glad to run tests on it (though I'll be gone Saturday and most of Sunday).

Overall, the SyncMaster 2343 is a good solid monitor with a high resolution at a relatively low price. It feels a bit like the 2443's little brother, with its rounded back (waay more rigid than my 225BWs, btw) and touch sensitive buttons. The stand is definitely the weakest point, but pair a couple of these with a good dual VESA mount, and I think you would be very happy. This is a 16:9 panel, so not the thing for 16:10 purists, but it's a tad wider than WUXGA and only 48 pixels shorter, and actually has slightly more screen real estate. Additionally, since it is 16:9, movies should look great on it, with no annoying black bars.

:pics:

Hahaha, good point :P Sorry, I was kinda out of it on Friday... here ya go:

Not exactly an unboxing, but here's the ridiculously thin box it came in...thin box was mostly due the to crappy stand they gave it...that was what took up most of the thickness in the other Samsung monitor boxes I've seen.

Here's the monitor itself...it's the second from the left...I love that I have to give directions to my monitor :D

Here's the thickness:

and compared to a 225BW:

I measured, and it turns out that the 2343 is actually a little bit thicker, but I never would have guessed just looking at them. The 225BWs have a lot of flex, but as I mentioned, that's all gone with 2343.

Something I forgot to mention; the startup times. The SyncMaster 225BW takes a full 5 seconds from off to display..the 2342 takes 1.5 seconds. Makes for much quicker access.

Looks like a very good monitor, I love Samsung stuff. I am picking myself up the 2494HS on Saturday :D.