TechRadar Verdict
Pros
- +
Good colour reproduction
- +
Bright, vibrant display
Cons
- -
Small text hard to read
- -
No USB or FireWire throughput
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The Samsung SyncMaster S27B750 is a 27-inch, 1080p display with a polished black bezel integrated into a glossy white stand. It's more Bang & Olufsen than Apple, and may or not be to your taste, but it's both stylish and understated.
The arched base supports the screen on one side and provides about ten degrees of tilt, but has a fixed display height.
On first use, imagery seemed quite muted, necessitating a trip to the menu - accessed via touch-sensitive buttons - to alter the colour and gamma settings. You also get presets for brightness and viewing angle, which attempts to compensate for viewing position.
Overall we found the colour fidelity to be good, with clear distinction between areas of low contrast, and with very little banding in gradients. When playing colourful media, like a movie, the monitor remains viewable from quite a wide angle, but with white or pale backgrounds, the colour shift is immediately noticeable.
Indeed, a pure white backdrop revealed colour variation near the edges and blotchy areas at the bottom. These are indicative of the quality of these low-priced panels, but will largely go unnoticed.
Audio from the built-in 5W speakers is a little woolly, and while perfectly acceptable, they're never going to replace dedicated external speakers.
In terms of connections, the S27B750 isn't exactly well endowed, featuring just two HDMIs and a single RGB In, plus audio In/Out. This is fine if it's acting as your TV and games monitor, and it works with any Apple gear that has HDMI out, but for most Macs you'll need a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. And because of its HDMI-only connection, you don't get the luxury of USB, FireWire or Ethernet ports.
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The native 1080p resolution and vivid colours makes this an ideal monitor for multimedia and general computing, but it's not great for text; in fact it's surprisingly poor and gets worse as font size decreases.
So if your work involves staring at words or figures all day, it would be worth investing in the higher pixel density that 2560x1440 monitors can provide.