Samsung SyncMaster S27A550H

Samsung is promising big things with its new 27'' monitor including some new energy-saving features, like sensors that measure ambient levels and detect when the user leaves the room.  But will it be able to win over gamers and graphic designers as well as green customers?

Hardware and Design: slightly unconvincing green features

It might be easy on the eye, but the S27A550H isn't going to win any prizes for hardware or usability: the display tips back just a few degrees and only offers VGA and HDMI inputs.

To win over green customers, Samsung has added three eco-friendly features: an energy-saving mode, an ambient light detector and proximity sensor.  All the energy-saving mode does is turn the brightness down, which you can do on any monitor yourself.  The ambient light detector is handy, reducing brightness according to current conditions, but for some users—including photographers and designers—it's important to use the same settings every day.  Finally, the proximity sensor detects the absence of any movement in front of the screen.  After a certain period of inactivity, it can either turn off the backlighting or reduce it—you can choose the result and the delay in the settings.  It's a very useful little tool that's also available on some Philips monitors.

Disappointing contrast, colours aren't accurate

Before we get started on the picture quality offered by the S27A550H, you should know that if you're planning to use it with HDMI, you'll need to adjust the 'black level' setting, which handles colours from 0-255 or 16-235.  Switch it from 'normal' to 'low' unless you want anything black to look like dark grey.  There's no need to make this change in VGA—and indeed you can't.  All of other advice applies to both connection types.

By default, this monitor has a blue tinge, a gamma curve that's totally off the map and a deltaE score, measuring the discrepancy between the ideal colours and those actually shown on screen, of 4.5.  We usually only consider colours to be accurate when this value passes below 3.0.


Adjusting the colour temperature from 'normal' to 'warm 1' gets rid of that blue tinge and straightens out the gamma curve, but the deltaE score is still 4.0, which won't be good enough for demanding users.  The only way to do any better is with a calibration profile.

We're a little disappointed by the contrast, with the contrast ratio never climbing above 640:1 thanks to blacks of 0.38 cd/m² against whites of 185 cd/m², meaning it doesn't reach the average of 850:1.

Responsiveness: fast enough for gaming

That poor colour handling is all the more disappointing when you consider that the S27A550H is actually pretty responsive.  According to our tests, it has a ghosting time of no more than 10.5 ms.  That's more than good enough to attract avid gamers looking for a large, attractive display on which to indulge their favourite pastime.

They might occasionally be put off by the odd trace of reverse ghosting that we spotted during our lab tests.  It is, however, very minimal and remained invisible with applications, games and movies when you turn the 'smart response' feature up from 'fast' to 'very fast'.

Responsiveness
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Gamers will also be thrilled to find an input lag that falls below the threshold of human visual perception, meaning it won't have any kind of impact on their multiplayer performance.