Left Mouse Button will be covering the biggest news items from E3 throughout the conference, as well as any media and videos that come out. We’ll also be doing feature articles on our thoughts for each of the conferences, as well as articles on games we like, and maybe ones we don’t! Stay tuned for more today and for the rest of the week!

Current Coverage

Microsoft Conference – Our thoughts on Microsoft’s outing of the Kinect, games and other stuff that popped up at their conference.

When exploring for information on this 23″ widescreen monitor I’m about to review today, I found a surprising lack of informative critique on the matter, mainly because Samsung’s newest outing in the LCD Widescreen Monitor market is so new. So I thought I’d fill in the void. I shall attempt to do this as most other places see fit; discussing packaging, design, calibration and my general feeling towards it. Read on!

Packaging and Construction

One of the big plusses for me with the Samsung SM2333SW was that it came with cables. Lots and lots of cables! Usually monitors can be somewhat stringent on the types of cables they supply in the box, but I was happy to find not just a DVI cable, but a VGA one as well, which is pretty nice of them. Along with the cables came a CD containing tuning, drivers, documentation and other software to improve your monitor. Sadly most of the content on the CD wasn’t designed for 64bit Windows 7, but I can hardly fault them for that. The monitor itself was well packaged along with its stand. One of the important aspects to buyers of Samsung monitors may be how the stand was constructed, given that there have been complaints that Samsung stands require heavy force in order to push the stand in and aren’t always great. I’m happy to report this stand was a simple screw in alignment feature that was placed onto it and constructed with ease. My only slight complaint with the stand is that it cannot be pushed up or down, and that at times the monitor appears to wobble. Whether this is a stand fault or I haven’t put it on properly remains to be seen.

Design

Samsung make extremely stylish looking screens, and the 2333 is no exception. The front face is similar to Samsung screens in having a curvature at the bottom, with a blue led horizontal stripe to represent power. The screen is polished piano black and makes the display stand out. The controls for the display options are at the side of the screen, and my only complaint about these is that they’re not particularly obvious, preferring to maintain the blackness of the entire screen than add anything that would make them stand out as an obvious control feature. Samsung tries to compensate for this by having a navigation bar on screen that tells you what button is where, but i’m still finding myself pressing the wrong button when controlling the menu interface. This is a small niggle, and I’d far rather have the controls on the side than the front, for aesthetic reasons.

Screen Options and Calibration

The Samsung SM2333SW runs at a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels on a 23″ widescreen monitor size. If you want non technical “market” jargon, the resolution is True HD. This means you’ll need a fairly powerful computer if you intend to use it for gaming. Games that aren’t able to support this resolution will be expanded to “best fit”. Luckily the monitor comes with an option called “Image Size” in its display options that allows you to determine whether you want to expand everything to widescreen, or to leave it at it’s native resolution. This means you’ll end up with black bars at the sides and possibly top, but it does stop games that are old from being overly expanded to ugly an degree.

The monitor is TN-Panel based. This can raise the ire of reviewers as Twisted Nematic is considered the weakest of the panel technologies. Sadly however most monitors on the market today use this technology due to it being cheap and the price war that it has created. To look for an alternative technology such as IPS you would need to spend a good amount and it may not be worth it. The good news is that TN has improved alot recently, and if you are using your monitor primarily for gaming or watching movies you’ll likely not notice the difference. You could even edit your photos and probably still not notice the difference. Professional experts however in photography may want to look for a more dedicated monitor. During our photo test the Samsung faired well but compared to the old Viewsonic VP930 it wasn’t as clear in colour clarity. The Samsung does have its advantages however over the old Viewsonic in that the monitors contrast, brightness and ability for colours to shine out was far better. Indeed in one photo the Samsung was able to point out blemishes the Viewsonic failed to notice.

Viewing angle also suffers though because of the TN based technology. This won’t affect you if you’re using the screen directly in front of you, but if you require the screen to be viewed at different angles similar to a television then you’ll find the colour and screen start to wash out beyond a 180 degree horizontal viewing angle, with similar results for vertical.

For testing of the monitor we put it through the LCD Monitor test images over at Lagom LCD Test. These images help to determine how an LCD monitor is performing and gives you a rough idea as to how to “calibrate” the options to improve it. Surprisingly the results of the image test found that the monitor was already calibrated out of the box, and by the end of the test no adjustments on how the monitor is set up occurred. This may change as usage continues and we’ll update this page if neccessary. During the colour test all colours displayed perfectly, but due to the technology the monitor uses the lilac/purple screen did show noticable differences in colour wash, with the top of the screen a pinkish lilac colour and the bottom of the screen becoming more deep purple.

The menu system is rather helpful and as mentioned earlier attempts to compensate for somewhat difficult to see buttons by offering an on screen interface that shows where the buttons are proportionally. The display options are fairly detailed, and give you good options in tuning the monitor as you like. They also include a magic tuning that will automatically tune the colours of the monitor depending on the scenario you are using the monitor for. At the moment these options are off for me as I prefer to control my colour and contrast options myself.

Testing

In order to test the SM2333SW we ran it through an assortment of every day applications we are likely to use. These include the internet, the game Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and the recent Tron Legacy trailer.

Our first port of call was internet usage and everything is HUGE! Even as I type this there is wide open space to type things and even though I might be on another line by now i’m still on the first line and wheeeeee!!! It’s actually fairly daunting for me since my old monitor was a 20″ standard TFT screen that ran at 1280×1024. Be warned if you’re making the leap into widescreen monitor usage that things appear LARGE and small all at the same time. Happily though everything displayed online is crisp and sharp without being to jaggedy. Text and images both appear bright without any loss of colour or saturation. Flicking through pages quickly results in no refresh rate jutter or ghosting of text.

Our next test was with gaming. Loading up Battlefield: Bad Company 2 I found the colours to be oddly richer than the screen is in normal use. As a comparison I shut it down and attempted another game (Rollercoaster Tycoon 3) and found the colours to be normal. I can only conclude therefore it was Bad Company 2′s fault! Continuing on, the screen suffered from no ghosting during hectic fighting in the desert, and thankfully my graphics card was able to cope with the new resolution push. My only complaint may be that the contrast is a bit too high in the game. Desert based maps for instance were extremely blinding, with objects in the distance becoming difficult to see. To investigate further I switched on Team Fortress 2, but didn’t notice the same problem.

Our last test was with a movie. For this we downloaded the recently released Tron Legacy trailer at 1080p. I was happy to find the monitor performed very well with the movie at full screen – the movie was rich in colour and was very sharp with HD quality goodness! Again no ghosting or artifacts occured and the movie played out excellently.

Conclusion

The Samsung SM2333SW is priced at around £160, and for that you get a very good bang for buck. The packaging, image quality and ability of the Samsung is brilliant. Like most Samsung monitors on the market it breathes style and looks well built. This monitor is definitely recommended if you’re thinking about going into the Widescreen future. The colour and clarity will wow you and despite a few niggling faults and that these monitors continue to use budget technology of TN, I would still highly recommend it.

Pros

-Excellent Colour, Contrast and Brightness

-Very good image quality all round

-Easy to construct compared to older Samsung monitor stands.

Cons

-Stand feels a bit wobbly

-TN panel may put off some people

-Photo quality will likely be better on more expensive monitors.

Score: 4.5/5

Apple have dissapointed me! This is no great cause for alarm however; I have an iPod like most of the population, but i’ve never been a mega fan of Apple, my roots firm in the PC section, where I know how things work, and enjoy the comfort of a right mouse click (an old joke, yes I know). Despite that I do think Apple are a neccessary factor of the tech industry; their shiny toys and powerful operating systems are not only tantalising to those who can afford it, but they force improvement within the industry when it comes to MP3 players, operating systems and the like.

So it’s not surprising that Apple decided to turn its attention toward the tablet PC, a section of the industry that is dogmired with clunky design issues, poor interfaces and hardware problems. Recent designs have seen the tablet PC change into a somewhat clunky mix of laptop and tablet put together in order to improve the market, but problems with the tablet PC are as bad as ever. They sit in a peculiar corner of the market; artists can use them for digital drawing, but why buy expensive when a digital board can do the same? Business groups can use them for the jotting down of information on the move, but why use a tablet PC when sometimes a pen and paper, or the cheaper PDA, can suffice?

So the poorly kept secret of Apple developing a tablet PC sent the industry into an excited frenzy (one it apparently is still in despite the results of the show). Could Apple solve all our problems? Could they develop something that not only breathes new life into the tablet PC sector of the market, but also revolutionises how we see the modern PC?

The answer seems to be mixed, but personally I feel it’s a no. Apple instead presented what I feel is a slap in the face; one though that we’ll take because we love Apple tech so much. The iPad is odd; design wise it will be the sleekest tablet PC on the market. Software wise it has all the power of an iPhone on a larger screen. Instead of developing an operating system more in tune with Apple OS, they’ve decided instead to go with the more recognised iPhone OS.

Will it sell? Most definitely. Even if Apple’s first steps into the tablet PC business is on rather shaky grounds, the iPad will still be an enticing offer. A browser, ebook reader, music player, video player and the full app store all in one stylish design? You can hear the roar of excitement already. It’s rather dissapointing though if you consider that the iPad leaves a lot to be desired. Its hardware is not capable of digital drawing and gaming wise don’t expect to be playing Mass Effect 2 on it any time soon. Battery wise it’s an improvement from most Apple technology, but is still rather mediocre. By and large its first outing is poor, but you can bet Apple won’t care when the money starts to roll in.

It’s all rather underwhelming. Apple’s outing into the tablet PC neither revolutionises the PC, nor does it particularly breathe new life into the tablet PC market. Comparisons between it and competitors are stark, almost to the point that the iPad barely could be considered a tablet PC in the conventional sense (other than similar size). It’s ability is lacking, but the app store will no doubt improve this. Rumours that the browser does not use Adobe Flash are proving true, which is a rather bemusing situation considering how much of the Net uses Flash technology. Continued competition between Google and Apple may see Google Maps dissapearing from iPhones and the iPad sooner than you think.

There is hope however; this is after all Apple’s first steps into the tablet PC sector, and just like the MP3 player it will no doubt take a while for them to get into the full swing of things. The naysayers who complain that the iPad is nothing but a large iPhone are correct, but the potential is still in Apple’s court. It will be up to the competitors to get organised if they want to beat it, and that will mean drastic changes in developing tablet PC’. Despite being probably the most underwhelming presentation of Apple’s newest tech, Steve Job’s will still be smiling. We’ll just have to wait and see how well the iPad does.