Samsung F2380M: black ghosting and other problems--and some solutions

Wow! We've just had a look at two Samsung F2380M monitors with a big display problem: black ghosting, a very annoying dark blue trace around moving objects on screen. 

Samsung F2380M MARCHANDS €     Amazon.co.uk  457.56  Compare prices

As soon as we switched it on, it was horrible: it's impossible to miss the blue trail behind moving objects.  We tried a second monitor and it had exactly the same problem.  It's so obvious (even moving the cursor causes ghosting) that there's clearly something wrong.  We just couldn't have missed this when we first tested it.  And something is wrong: a quick look at the menus revealed the configuration problems.  Getting rid of the black ghosting was easy, but as that wasn't the only problem we found, let's take a look at what we had to do to sort them out ...

Problem 1: Wrong Resolution

Before we even noticed the dark blue ghosting, there was another problem.  Using a HDMI cable, the 1920 x 1080 signal had the wrong resolution.  To correct it, use the Menu button to access the Setup & Reset options, then from PC/AV mode, move to PC mode.  Once that's done, the signal is displayed correctly at the right size.

Problem 2: Black ghosting

The down arrow button opens the MagicBright menu.  The Dynamic Contrast mode, which is the default setting, suffers from the dark blue ghosting problem we identified.  You can try out different modes, but we found Games was the best.

Problem 3: Posterisation

This problem was most visible in videos, or when objects with subtle colour gradients move across the screen, producing a very marked posterisation effect.

Again, all you need to do is pay a quick visit to the OSD on the monitor: this time open the Menu, go to Image and then Response Time.  Once you're there, move from Accelerated mode down to Normal.  This one setting solved the whole problem.

Problem 4: Ghosting

Several readers have already told us they didn't enjoy the ghosting on this monitor.  As it happens, the one who showed us the two faulty F2380Ms normally uses a pair of Dell 2308WFPs, a monitor we know well because we've tested the whole family over the years.  Here's how it performed in our responsiveness test:

And, to compare, here's the F2380M's result:

Samsung F2380M

0.5 against 0.95 means that this Samsung display is only half as responsive, and moving from one to the other is a real shock.  As this is an average result, it's also possible that the ghosting appears different in different colours.  The most noticeable impact is visible when you move a black object across a grey background, where the ghosting is very obvious.

We retested the responsiveness of the two problem screens, and, weirdly, got a slightly better result using 'Fast' or 'Normal' as our Response Time setting, rather than 'Accelerated'.  It's still nothing like as fast as the Dell, which is the clear winner in this area.

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