Samsung SyncMaster 700s

The SyncMaster 700s 17in monitor is one of the rather grandly titled Total Performance Monitor range from Samsung. The 700s is quite stylish, with a nicely rounded front bezel and a fairly narrow rear. The screen has an anti-glare coating and there's only a small amount of curvature evident on the FST tube.

Connection to your video card is via a normal 15-pin, D-type socket at the rear of the monitor, and there's no option for BNC cables. You have to go for the more expensive Professional model at £599 if you want a BNC connection.

The 700s features ten control buttons, with two separate knobs for adjusting brightness and contrast on the bottom edge. These knobs provide a reasonable range of adjustment to cope with most ambient lighting conditions. Pressing any of the six outer control buttons brings up the on-screen display, and adjustments are made using the four cursor buttons in the centre. The cursor buttons are arranged in a straight line, which is a little illogical. A cross would have been preferable, which is more intuitive when making adjustments.

Two of the control buttons have dual functions, and it's not very clear from their labels exactly what the secondary functions are. Similarly, the geometric distortion button has two functions: one to adjust the pincushion and trapezoid, and one to alter the parallelogram and tilt of the image.

Somewhat unusually on a monitor of this class, there's also a temperature control button which allows you to alter the colour balance between one of two settings. Further control buttons let you adjust the size of the image, degaussing and resetting the monitor to the factory defaults.

The actual viewing area is 15.6in diagonally, and you can easily adjust the image to fill the screen. The 700s has a 0.28mm dot pitch and produces a reasonably sharp image of 1,024 x 768 at 85Hz resolution. The overall focus is good, even at the edges and in the corners.

The SyncMaster can handle horizontal frequencies in the 30 to 69Hz range and vertical frequencies between 50 and 160Hz. Maximum resolution supported is 1,280 x 1,024 at 60Hz. At this level, the image wasn't totally stable and there was a slight flicker.

As far as power management is concerned, the 700s has standby and suspend modes in addition to on or off. In normal operation the monitor consumes 90W, in standby 55W, in suspend less than 15W and, when off, less than 8W. The system known as PowerSaver operates with any VESA DPMS-compliant video card. If your PC can't support a display power management function, you can buy an optional DPMS program from Samsung to enable the power-saving function.

The monitor's tilt/swivel stand provided a firm base, but although the horizontal movement was fairly smooth I found the tilt motion stiff. Still, with an MRP of £449, the SyncMaster 700s is competitively priced.

Author: Dave Stott