Samsung SyncMaster 970P Review

For Samsung SyncMaster 970P (Silber) (Silver, White) 19 inch LCD Monitor Products from online stores: Target: $829.99 | In stock: yes 1 Store Offers from $830-$830

Quibbling over off-to-one-side viewing angles is particularly silly when discussing the SyncMaster 970P, because the display will gladly corkscrew or limbo or play Twister to give any onlooker a clear view: Its triple-hinged, desk-lamp-style base is one of the most flexible on the monitor market.

In its usual pose, the monitor measures about 17 by 20 by 9.5 inches (it weighs just over 16 pounds). But the base lets you swivel the screen 90 degrees left or right; adjust its height over a range of 5.3 inches; and tilt it all the way from quite a bit forward to way, way back -- folding the monitor flat so coworkers standing around a conference table can see a presentation on the horizontal LCD, or even tilting it past horizontal for viewing by someone sitting on the opposite side of your desk.

Won't your across-the-desk audience see the display as upside down, you ask? Not if you install Samsung's MagicRotation utility, which lets you flip the screen image through two 90-degree rolls by pressing Ctrl-Shift-R a couple of times (or skip directly to a 180-degree inversion by pressing Ctrl-Shift-8).

You can also pivot the 970P from landscape to portrait mode, or vice versa, for your own viewing of a full-size word processing or lengthy Web page. Clicking on a dialog-box checkmark puts the MagicRotation software into automatic mode, redrawing the display a few seconds after you pivot the 970P from landscape to portrait mode or vice versa.

Finally, the last trick up the Samsung's sleeve is another utility dubbed MagicZone, which launches a special cursor with which you draw a box around a portion of the display -- such as a DVD or video playback window, whose brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation you can adjust independently of the rest of the screen. Samsung brags that the 970P's response time is a speedy 6 milliseconds, so videos and fast-moving game screens are free of ghosting or streaking.

Not Much To Complain About

With such versatility coupled with first-class display quality, the SyncMaster 970P nearly scores a rare five stars on our ratings scale -- and probably would take the prize with a slightly lower price.

Stretching to come up with a few more gripes, we can say that MagicZone would probably be more useful on a larger, higher-resolution screen more likely to host multiple application windows, and that Samsung's Taskbar icons take a bit of practice (you double-click to launch MagicTune, right-click to see the MagicRotation menu, and left- and then right-click to create and adjust the MagicZone).

Also, the monitor is OK but not exceptional at the universal LCD challenge of scaling to screen resolutions below its native 1,280 by 1,024; SVGA and XGA images are predictably a bit pixelated. Scrolling up and down through portrait-mode Web pages, as with the SyncMaster 204T we tested last month, brought a slightly annoying right-to-left redraw or flicker.

And twice, while pivoting between portrait and landscape mode, the corner of the screen hit the power button and turned the thing off.

But these are trivialities. The next time a Mac addict tells you that elegant design is exclusive to Apple products, mention the 970P.

Skip To Page 1 If Ikea Sold Monitors ... • 2 Tilt, Swivel, Flip, Pivot, Somersault

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