Samsung Syncmaster 931C

Beautiful colour, with a 2ms response time and a fairly low price. Fantastic, but...

While the 931C is a TN panel, don’t hold this against it – it has a claimed 97 percent coverage of the NTSC colour gamut, compared to other monitors which average about 72 percent. This is all courtesy of a new CCFL backlight which allows more subtle gradations of colour to be achieved. It shows too, with Far Cry looking more luscious than ever before.

The buttons are on the bottom – and although we prefer them on the fascia itself, it’s certainly better than on the side as with some models.

The 931C claims a 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, which means it has a base level of 700:1, but sometimes the monitor finds ways to add a little more detail into the picture on the fly between frames by increasing or decreasing the output of the CCFL.

A 2ms response time means gaming is fantastic, although interestingly, an option to turn off the Response Time Accelerator (RTA) is available in the menu, dumping it to a slower speed. Why this is there is unknown – certainly, no image degradation was noticed by having it on.

The screen is the classic matte rather than gloss – meaning minimal reflection – and is embedded in a piano black bezel. Its only movement function is tilt – at this size, though, this is acceptable as the monitor is still light and manoeuvrable enough to be able to swivel and adjust as necessary.

Then there’s the bad bits – viewing angles are quite small, enough that on a Windows desktop with the monitor parallel to your face the top of the monitor gradates to a darker image, while the bottom is blown out contrast-wise. There doesn’t seem to be a way to find a happy medium either. There is also slight light bleed from the top and sides.

If you’ve still got a predisposition towards 4:3 or are on a budget, then you’ll not see much better image quality than on this very screen, providing your willing to look over a few annoying flaws.