Customer Reviews

Samsung SyncMaster 204B 20.1-Inch LCD Monitor (Black)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I use this monitor for AutoCad, internet surfing, and games.

This monitor seems like a huge upgrade from a 19" monitor. I expected to barely notice the size differance but it is very noticable.
THe adjustments on the monitor seem to work alright. It tilts back and forth, swivels from side to side, goes up and down, and rotates. All of the movements are smooth. The only problem here is when you rotate the screen the cords in the back don't allow for a smooth turn.
I got zero dead pixels.
The colors are very nice. The picture is sharper than a 19" LCD. Because you should run this monitor in it's 1600x1200 native resolution you will probably want to use Windows to increase the size of fonts so you can easily read the text. Speaking of text, it looks good to me.
So far I have only tried Battlefied 2 on this monitor. I was really worried about this area since many LCD monitors don't do well with games. Don't woory about this monitor it performs nicely. I actually noticed little details in the game I had not noticed before. I did not see ghosting or blurring. I flew around the jet for a long time with no visual problems.
I did 3 months of research before I pulled the trigger on this one. I was quite nervous as these things don't come cheap. I'm glad I bought this monitor and would not hesitate to make the same choice again.

For the money this Monitor is great, especially if you are using it just for surfing or word-processing! It has some of the best specs out there such as very fast response and natural looking colors.

HOWEVER, its not the right choice for pro-level graphic design or photo editing. The viewing angle is so limited that there is a major vertical shift in brightness of the screen. No matter how I adjust, the top of the screen remains significantly darker than the bottom. The contrast is on this thing is also a problem. It's not balanced and although colors seem rich, a lot of detail is lost.

If you are doing graphics related work, save yourself the headache. My unit is going back tomorrow!

I bought two of these, so far so good. I do a lot of spreadsheet work and like the squarish format over widescreen, I am able to open 4 to 6 spreadsheet windows and place them all. With a widescreen, the vertical placement is difficult. I used them at work for hours on end, really comfy on my eyes. I am glad I got them. Am a bit leery about the problems mentioned, but so far so good. I hope they will make this squarish format for a long time to come and not go with the widescreen fad. I run it at 1600 x 1200, which is perfect for me. Hope the industry goes back to squarish monitors, much more practical for work, with spreadsheets and word processing, powerpoint, coding, etc. Widescreen just doesn't have the vertical distance.

Most folks report good things about this monitor and I don't doubt them but my experience has so far been very different. I bought this unit in late August. The unit arrived in perfect working order and with NO dead pixels. The monitor was truly beautiful with great color depth and high contrast and like all LCDs - no reflections. Very easy to use and watch. But at the end of 3 weeks of use a black horizontal line about 10 pixels high showed up about an 1/8th of the way down the screen. I tried refreshing the screen believing it was an artifact of the video card's refresh logic but that didn't make it go away so I tried rebooting the machine - and the screen came back in a series of 1 inch high bands of dark and light pink horizontally across the screen. I contacted Samsung support to get a replacement instead of contacting the original seller in the belief the turnaround would be faster since Samsung offered to immediately send a replacement to the nearest UPS store. But when that unit arrived approximately 5 days later it was also defective - it worked at first but after one hour the screen started turning on and off randomly. I contacted Samsung for a replacement and they have yet to schedule a unit to replace it. They have a 7-14 day window in their warranty replacement guarantee - but it starts from the date of the ticket and instead of admitting the first ticket's replacement unit was defective they opened a new ticket. It's been two full weeks since I had a working unit and will be at least another week before I get a replacement because "they had some trouble setting the serial numbers straight."

I concur with the previous reviews. There is one thing that I want to add.

My wife liked this monitor in the store. But, she had been using a 21" CRT at 1024 x 768, and I was very concerned that a jump from there to 1600 x 1200 would be more of a font size reduction than she bargained for. And, my general feeling about LCD's is that, if you don't use them at their native resolution, they don't look all that good.

I'm happy to report that I was right and wrong. 1600 x 1200 WAS too much of a change (fonts too small), which was the bad news. She settled for 1152 x 864 as to the smallest fonts that she could deal with (yeah, I know I could specify "large fonts" in Windows, but that breaks quite a few things).

The good news is that this monitor looks absolutely great at 1152 x 864, even though that is not it's native resolution. Whatever they have done, they sure have improved the way these monitors, or at least THIS monitor, interpolates pixels, as must be done when the monitor is used at a non-native resolution. Note that 1152 x 864 preserves the exact 4/3 ratio that the monitor has in it's 1600 x 1200 native resolution.

The result wasn't quite as good when I tried using it with 1280 x 1024 output from the display card. If that is what you plan to do, you should check it out someplace before buying.

So, if that particular consideration was a concern that you had, particularly if 1152 x 864 is a resolution that you think might be a good one for you, check out this monitor. I think that you will be pleasantly surprised.

I waited for a while to upgrade to a flat panel monitor. I read many reviews before purchasing this 204B. I play BF2, COD2, Medal of Honor, online games. I think this monitor is the perfect size and has nice clarity for text and pictures. It also plays games well with seemingly no lag or hesitation with it's 5ms refresh rate. I use it with 2 computers, my gamer on digital and my general use machine on analog. I can switch between the two machines with a touch of a button on the front of the monitor. It makes it nice for multitasking for gaming on one machine and editing pictures, scanning, emails, ect. on the other machine. I give Samsung an A+ for this beautiful LCD monitor. I bought this monitor on 3/19/06 and have decided to buy another one today 3/23/06. I believe anyone that buys this monitor will be happy they did, I know I am........Cheers!

Being mostly a gamer, but on the side a digital photographer and programmer/network specialist, I can say this monitor truly stands out for it's 2D quality.

The 3D graphics accleration however, is not something to go crazy about. The 5ms response time is certainly accurate, yet if you're searching for that particular game monitor that has the least ghosting when put up against a CRT, you should stick with a more "Sonic" brand name. They seem to have the edge as far as response time goes.

Aside from the drawback for gaming, the monitor is perfect for any other use. While watching movies, you'll get a slight "twinkling" effect around certain high contrast color edges, but you'll only notice it if you're seeking it out. Enjoy the movie, don't critique the monitor.

The 2D color rendering is some of the best I've seen out of the box in an LCD. If the color is not to your liking straight off though, Samsung gives you a fantastic suite of calibration tools to help you make sure what you're seeing is true color as measured by science. The niftiest color tool is the one to make sure what you see is what you print (on paper I mean).

Everything else the monitor does is just icing on the cake. MagicRotation, MagicBrite, color presets, and much much more. Of note for those who are trying to remain future-tech conscious; this monitor is NOT HDCP certified or compliant so don't expect it to be the Windows Media Center PC monitor for your next upgrade (or for Windows Vista).

I didn't keep it because of the slight (very slight) ghosting in games. That's just because I'm an extreme nitpicker when it comes to my gaming experience. If you want visual real-estate, great color, nifty gadgets, and the all around good looks (case-wise) in an LCD, certainly go for it. If you want the best of the best for gaming, continue looking.

I've purchased this monitor, because my eyes had trouble seeing small things on my 19" CRT monitor. This one is 20.1 and does not sound like much more, but it is. LCD screens give you the true size, while CRT say they have more then they actually do. I ran my old monitor at 800x600, which turned out to be a problem with some websites. I was looking for something that allows a larger resolution, without going into small prints. I know windows lets you enlarge characters, but it does not effect images.

Not to long a go, I did buy one of the new Microsoft keyboards that has a natural curve to it to help with my writs. It does help a lot by they way, but what I really liked was the little switch that lets you enlarge or reduce fonts in the browser.

Anyway, back to this monitor. I run it at 1024x768 and the resolution is just perfect. I love the crisp pictures and the great colors. This company thought about their product for a long while. It even has a utility that matches real photos through a scanner to your monitor. True colors through and through.

Overall, no more problems with high resolution websites, and my eyes can finally relax. One more important thing, the installation was a breeze. This was the easiest I have seen in a long while.

I also like the option that you can rotate the monitor from vertical to horizontal. Works great with Word documents. I've found that you should guide your power and monitor cable around the right side to the merger clip behind. This makes it a smooth rotate. For some reason the manual suggest to go left and right, which kind of makes it harder to rotate because of one cable being in the way. Not a real issue, just keep them to the right side and it does not happen.

I can only recommend this monitor.

I bought one Samsung 204b a year and a half ago. 6 months later, I bought another one. I've been 100% satisfied with both. They're simple, streamlined monitors (i.e. no speakers, built-in USB, cameras, etc.), but that's exactly what I wanted.

I have the two monitors connected to one computer, and rotated to portrait mode. See the "customer image" that I uploaded. This allows me to create, edit, and read Word and PDF documents in the way they were made to be read, without scrolling up and down. This also lets me see more of a web page, again without scrolling. The difference in ease and comfort has meant that I can do much more on the computer, without feeling that I need to print everything out. When I want to look at photographs that work better in landscape (normal) orientation, I can easily rotate the monitors back to landscape mode.

This monitor worked perfectly for the first 3 weeks. Was absolutely satisfied with price & quality. Unfortunately after 3 weeks, I had an entire horizontal line of dead pixels right in the middle of the screen. My first samsung purchase & I am not happy that I have to get a refund from samsung because they are out of stock on this model. I have been informed that the refund will take anywhere between 6 to 8 weeks. So what they are telling me is that I will have to ship back the monitor & wait 8 weeks to get a refund & in the interim I wont have a monitor. Very very upset.