Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX

Awarded for innovation at CES 2008, the SyncMaster 2263DX promises--in Samsung's words--to allow you 'to communicate more simply and more easily.'

To do this, Samsung has included a webcam, a microphone, a pair of 1.5 W speakers and a two-port USB hub.  There's also DVI, VGA and HDMI ports, and--of course--the famous extra screen, an auxiliary 7'' alongside the rest of your monitor.

Our initial tests showed that, with the default settings, colors aren't particularly accurate.  In particular, dark grays are spoilt with blue tints and lighter shades, including whites, show up too red.

The fact that this gives a DeltaE score of 4.8 would be bad enough, but trying to fix the problem only makes things worse.  Whatever we did to correct one of these two color defects, it only intensified the other.

You can strike a certain compromise by switching to 'Gamma 2' mode and turning the brightness right down to 27, bringing DeltaE down to 3.8, which is better, but far from excellent.

The upshot of all of this is that it's probably best to avoid the 2263DX for any professional photo retouching without carefully calibrating it first.

At last: an honest manufacturer!

According to the specification, this monitor has a contrast ratio of 1000:1.  We measured it at 900:1--a good score that's also very close to Samsung's own claims.

Gaming: Average performance

Again referring to Samsung's specification, this is a screen with a response time of 5 ms, which is all well and good, but the press release goes on to describe this as 'an extremely fast response time.'  This is a rather unusual boast, especially given that the manufacturer has the best response times we've ever tested--way below 5 ms--on the SyncMaster 2253BW.

Indeed, the 2253BW is much more suited to demanding applications like first-person shooters.   The 2263DX will be fine for less powerful games and office work, though.