1,920 x 1,200 TFTs

Is your monitor giving you tunnel vision? We put 6 TFTs through their paces, looking for a wider horizon.

Samsung SyncMaster 275T

Manufacturer:	Price:
	£899.98
Reviewer:	Review Date:
James Morris	Oct 2007

Quality	41/50	82%
Features	21/25	84%
Value	13/25	52%

Overall

75%

Verdict: A huge screen both in quality and size, but with a price to match.

The Samsung SyncMaster 275T is our sole representative of 1,920 x 1,200 TFTs that isn't 24in in width. This imposing black beast offers 27in of screen instead, and sports an imposing price tag to match.

You get quality for your money though. Samsung hasn't bothered with pointless integrated speakers, but instead provides a host of useful features. A four-port USB hub is built in, with two ports on the rear and two on the side. Apart from the requisite DVI and D-SUB inputs, you can hook up analogue video sources via composite, S-Video and component.

The 275T has great image quality on offer as well. The angles of vision are wide, with excellent contrast at both ends of the brightness range. The 275T recorded the highest video bandwidth of all the TFTs we tested according to DisplayMate, and was second only to Eizo's professional-grade ColorEdge CG241W in the static image quality tests. Not surprisingly, digital photos were blessed with excellent fidelity in the image editing test.

The superb static quality results translated well into real-life, full-motion usage, with the shadowy areas of Prey showing almost as much detail as this month's Dell and Eizo 24in entries. Although the 6ms quoted response time isn't quite as fast as current state-of-the art monitors, we didn't detect any sluggishness while playing Prey or Need for Speed: Carbon, which looked stunning. The 275T is an excellent gaming monitor, so it's no surprise that this screen was supplied with two of this year's four Dream PCs. Only Dell's supreme 2407WFP-HC can better it.

While performance in our movie tests was also excellent, the 275T fell clearly behind Dell and Eizo. Colour fidelity and dynamic range were commendable with both Blu-ray and DVD footage, but the black levels couldn't match our two top-quality panels. It's great for watching videos, but the Dell and Eizo monitors are better.

Nevertheless, the 275T is an excellent monitor. However, it costs significantly more than a 24in panel for exactly the same resolution. You're paying quite a premium for the extra width, even if the image quality is highly commendable.

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