I would like to make this review short but sweet. Let me get right down to the important question many are asking when looking for a TFT monitor nowadays. Yes, this monitor is great for gaming so long as you follow 2 things:

1) Play all your games at the 172T's native 1280 X 1024 resolution.
2) Use the Digital (DVI) as opposed to the analog connectors to hook it up to your video card.

If your video card has problems playing games at a resolution of 1280 X 1024 or if your card has no digital output connector, you might want to consider upgrading it. I am using an MSI GeForce 4200 Ti with 128 MB of SDRAM and it runs UT2003 pretty well at this resolution even though I noticed a slowdown compared to when running it at 1024 X 768. ATI RADEON 9500 PRO or (even better) RADEON 9700 PRO video cards would make excellent companions to this monitor as these cards can play games at these resolutions without breaking a sweat.

I have played Unreal Tournament 2003, Battlefield 1942, and Warcraft 3 on this monitor and the gaming experience was nothing short of amazing. I only noticed very miniscule blurring or ghosting when playing the fast paced game of UT2003... certainly not enough to bother me, and I play games frequently. Games and DVD movies have never looked better even compared to my Sony 19" Trinitron monitor. Play games at lower resolutions however (ie. 1024 X 768 or 800 X 600) and you will encounter blurriness and ghosting. Even when using the digital inputs.

An important note worth remembering is to install the driver software first before connecting the monitor to the DVI connector of your video card for the first time. Otherwise you will get a no signal present message from the monitor when you boot up your PC.

Text are clear and sharp even when viewed from an angle. Colors are vivid and accurate. This is true specially after using the Samsung's "Natural Color" applet which is an excellent color adjustment software that comes with the monitor. This software allow you to calibrate the 172T as well as the printer so colors will be displayed consistently.

Other features of the 172T include a thin bezel (less than an inch) surrounding the TFT and a simple but effective height and viewing angle adjustment mechanism which also allows the monitor to be mounted against walls. The wall mounting brackets come with the package as do both analog and digital cables.

One minor problem I had with the monitor was the OSD controls which I found un-intuitive. Also certain functions like contrast adjustment seem to be disabled when in digital mode. I haven't figured out why this is so. Another problem is that the stand mechanism does not seem to allow the monitor to be tilted 90 degrees (on its side) so one can view the screen in "portait" mode which might be better when reading multi-page documents or web pages.

After you have calibrated this monitor, hooked it up to the video card's DVI connector, and set Windows and games to run at its native resolution of 1280 X 1024, it will be hard to go back to viewing a regular CRT display.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 600
Operating System: Windows