So after a very brief dalliance with HP’s monstrous w2408h, which had the worst backlight bleed I have ever seen in any monitor, I came across the 2343bwx at my local microcenter.
299.00 for a 16:9 monitor with a 2048 x 1152 monitor with some fantastic specs seemed like too good a deal to pass up, and as it turns out, it is.
There aren’t any official reviews online yet for this monitor, so I’d throw out some of my initial impressions.
I’ll start with some thoughts on why you may not want to consider this monitor:
The first and most obvious consideration with this monitor, is that it is a 16:9 rather than a 16:10 monitor, so it 1) may look weird when you first set it up, and 2) may need a little video card tweaking to get the resolution to work just right (I have an x1900, which gladly handed me the monitor’s preferred resolution, no questions asked, but if you have an older video card, this may be an issue).
One other thing to consider is, unlike many newer monitors, this only has a dvi and vga port for connecting your pc. No component or hdmi inputs. The HP I had for a week had hdmi, and the gateway 22” I had before it had component. It limits the monitors ability to double as a tv, so, if you have a cable box in your room or some additional components to hook up, you may want to look elsewhere.
The stand that comes with the monitor is not height adjustable, and it sits pretty low. The base of the monitor hovers a mere 3” above my desk, and the screen starts at 4”.
Samsung also decided to forgo the typical frills of a built-in usb hub and/or webcam, so no extra goodies here. Personally, I never used the built in usb on either of my previous monitors that had them, in large part, because I absolutely hate the look of cables and dongles hanging off of my monitor.
Finally, I mentioned the simple stand… it really isn’t ideal, but it’s something that I have every intention of ignoring in favor of wall-mounting. Here lies my biggest gripe with the design of the monitor. Samsung has offered vesa compatible screw points on the back of the monitor. There is a plastic plate, which you need to remove. However, the screw points are recessed into the monitor, so my standard mounting plate will not fit (it’s a circle recess). Apparently Samsung sells an adapter plate to ease this problem, but personally, I think that’s nothing more than a cash-grab, and will be making a trip to home depot to rig a fix on my own.
So, that’s the entirety of the bad. Now, why should you get this monitor?
It’s a beautiful bright picture. It handles color and particularly high def video content subjectively to me at least, much better than the hp w2408h. It also has an intuitive and detailed set of menu options to tweak your image until you (or the image on the screen) is blue in the face.
It has minimal clouding, and an even backlight.
Because it’s resolution is 2048 x 1152, instead of 1920 x 1200, you can open two 1024 windows side-by-side. This is nice since so many websites are now coded for 1024, it means two windows, with 0 horizontal scrolling.
The monitor itself has a minimalistic design that puts the focus on the content rather than the monitor. That may sound weird, but is basically blends into your desk, gives you a ton of screen real-estate, but just doesn’t feel that big. The bevel is only about a half inch thick, so most of this monitor is, in fact, screen. It also sports some very slick touch sensitive controls on the bottom right, so there are no physical buttons popping out anywhere. It makes for a very attractive profile.
I haven’t popped in the driver/software cd that came with it, so I can’t really speak to that, but they do give you a (comically short) dvi and vga cable in the box. The manual is on the cd, so other, than a quick start guide and power cable, you’re not getting a lot of additional swag.
Final thoughts: This monitor is an obscene value for the money. The HP was 469.00, and this monitor is 299.00. I strongly feel that this outperforms the HP in every way shape and form, and gives you more screen real-estate to boot. It is a less traditional form factor, but if you’re not doing a ton of gaming (haven’t tried yet, but my suspicion is some games will likely get cranky at this resolution), but you do watch a lot of video, or just want a great monitor with an absurd amount of real-estate, I can very comfortably recommend this monitor.
Feel free to hit me with any questions.
Loading ...