Update 12/13/02
It's been nearly two years since this review but I felt the need to insert a relevant update on this monitor. After more than two years of heavy usage, I will have to speak about one negative point: around the borders, the UV coating has been coming off for some odd reason. I recall that after cleaning my monitor screen with a paper towel, the coating began to come off! I have no idea why but now I must live with a scratched UV coating on the monitor. I have yet to contact Samsung customer support on this issue but this might be a caveat to those who currently own or are planning to purchase this monitor. I've currently stemmed the tide of the scratching by being more gentle when I clean and more gentle when I transport my monitor. I urge everyone to do the same!

- John

Intro
I'll get to the point: I love this monitor and the price tag that it carries. The Samsung 955df is definitely one of the best value-priced 19" monitors you can purchase on
the market today.

Features and Upsides
The sleek contours of this monitor are just the beginning of a fantastic journey into monitor real estate heaven. It boasts a completely "DynaFlat" flat monitor display. The glass pane of the monitor is completely flat and will offer no image distortion when viewed straight on. There is 18" of viewable screen area and the 955df offers a .20 mm dot pitch (horizontal) for razor sharp text viewing. It supports a maximum resolution/refresh of 1600x1200@65Hz. I doubt you'd want to work at that resolution but it's nice to know that it's there if you'd like to use it. (I currently work in 1280x1024@75Hz). The higher refresh rates reduce the amount of flickering (screen refreshes) that the monitor does. Although I would have liked to have seen a 85Hz refresh rate at the resolution I work in, 75Hz is sufficient. I work on the computer for long periods at a time and I have no viewing problems with that refresh rate.

There's no BNC connections for you BNC fans out there but it probably won't be too much trouble for you to use the classic 15-pin VGA port. The digital control panel pops out from the front. The control panel has the usual complement of tools to optimize your monitor to your preferences.

The Bad
With something too good to be true, there is always a catch. With this monitor, there are a few. On the either edge of the monitor, there are two vertical "bars" that are about 1 inch in width where the monitor gets slightly grainy. It miffed me at first when I got the monitor but I have gotten used to it now. Still, the graininess is sufficiently clear enough that it's much better than my 15" monitor I had used before I got this 19" monitor.

The weight of the monitor is an issue. The Samsung 955df weighs a hefty 52 pounds. Try lugging that around on a consistent basis. You'll get pretty buff! Anyway, once you set this monitor down somewhere you probably wouldn't want to set it elsewhere anytime soon.

The dimensions on this monitor is 18.4" x 19.0" x 18.3" so it's quite large. It'll definitely take up a lot of desk room (compared to smaller monitors or those expensive LCD monitors). I know the 19.0" depth might be hard to deal with; I know it was a problem for me and the small desks provided in my dorm. But I did work around that but I don't think I'll be doing any homework on my desk anytime soon. =)

Final Thoughts
This monitor is an excellent deal as much of the positives of this monitor outweight the bad. The combination of price, features, screen real estate, and quality of construction make this monitor a fantastic value and hard to pass up. Check it out at a demo display to see if this value-priced monitor will fit into your needs. If you need higher quality you might want to pass this monitor up and get something more pricier but I must say that this monitor rivals the quality of monitors that are priced at least $100 more.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 340
Operating System: Windows