According to Samsung, 'the 2493HM has all that you need in a monitor. With a height adjustable stand (HAS), built-in speakers, HDMI technology, full 1080p HD, 10,000:1 contrast ratio and fast response time, you will be able to power through a work day and watch a movie or play games'. For this monitor, Samsung has abandonned curvy lines for a glossy square bezel. When it comes to the ergonomics, Samsung are not exagerating. They have even omitted to say that it has DVI and VGA sockets as well as the HDMI. On top of this, the base is not only adjustable height-wise, it can also pivot and is mounted on a platter. On the audio side, the screen has both 2 x 2 watt speakers and a headphone out. The menu buttons are tactile and, a nice surprise, you don’t have to press them ten times to reach the options you need.

The colours:



Visually the default colour settings are pretty good. In testing we did notice a small red tinge in the darker grey tones where it shouldn’t be. The average difference between displayed colours and those you should see is 3.2. Not bad for a screen for the general public. If you put the Gamma in mode 2 however and also alter the brightness and contrast to 30 and 100 respectively you’ll get an even better score. This improves the greys but above all reduces brightness given out by the screen from 360 cd/ m² to 200 cd/m². Without changing these settings, your eyes will quickly get tired.

Games:


With its spec it didn’t look as if it was going to be a screen for gamers. Our tests confirm this: gaming is not its strong point. Its responsiveness is too low to give a fluid image in FPS (Unreal, Call of Duty…). Image delay is around 1.5 frames. It will be very little handicapped then, if at all, during online or LAN games. If you are not a gamer, it will be more than good enough for you

Films:


Image quality from a PC leaves something to be desired. If your player doesn’t prepare the image at all, you will get some marked flickering, due to a weaker than average contrast. To get a better image quality, best to use another source, like the PlayStation3 that has an excellent Upscale and gives good quality for SD sources.