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Samsung SyncMaster 2494HM review

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Verdict

A few minor flaws, but the design, features and high-quality panel make for a compelling purchase

Review Date: 5 Oct 2009

Reviewed By: David Bayon

Price when reviewed: £205 (£236 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
6 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Image Quality
5 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

It may be surprising to see a £200 plus monitor earning such high praise when so many others offer good quality for less, but the small premium is always worth paying at these large sizes. And the Samsung SyncMaster 2494HM certainly offers plenty to justify the outlay.

It's a stylish yet understated TFT, using the more conventional of Samsung's two main TFT designs: a glossy black squared-off frame with a neat silver bar running along the bottom edge. The stand is wide and sturdy, with 10cm of height-adjustment range and a pivot on the back to rotate it to portrait mode. It also offers a pair of USB ports.

Your PCs and consumer devices are all catered for thanks to the HDMI, DVI and VGA ports on the back, and there's a 3.5mm audio input to feed the integrated 3W speakers. They won't match a pair of external stereo speakers, but they'll do well enough for everyday listening.

The 1,920 x 1,080 panel is up to Samsung's usual high standards, with smooth gradients, accurate colours and a good level of brightness once we'd tweaked a few settings - it's a little dim out of the box, so we switched to custom colour and raised the brightness. The only minor blips were the resulting not-so-deep black level and some slightly iffy viewing angles. This may not be one for editing photos, but videos looked punchy and full of detail.

There are a few design issues, such as the slightly unreliable touch controls on the front, but these are outweighed by the clean menu design. It may be a little dearer than most at this size, but unless you really don't need the speakers and integrated USB hub, we'd pay that little extra for the superb SyncMaster 2494HM.

Author: David Bayon

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Comments

User comments

I don't believe it!!!

I have just taken delivery of a Samsung 2433BW today. I'd been looking for a suitable 24" monitor with pivot mode but could not get the EDGE10, reviewed a few months ago, anywhere.

As my money was limited I went for the 2433.

This monitor has everything I wanted apart from being 16:9 rather than 16:10 ratio at a great price.

I must say the Samsung monitors look excellent. I was always an Ilyama man - but no more...

By JohnJohn164 on 5 Oct 2009

High end monitors?

It is interesting that you class these as high-end monitors. My 17" monitor is years old now, but it has 1024 vertical pixels, and these ones you tested have only a handful more. Anyone ambitious to edit A4 documents full screen without zooming in and/or scrolling needs more vertical pixels to do this. Hence despite the great panorama of these screens, they offer no advantage to the office user. The 'High end' tag should surely be used to describe monitors offering a larger vertical resolution of at least 1200 pixels?

By JohnLaw2 on 28 Nov 2009

@JohnLaw2

If you put it in portrait mode you would get 1080 pixels across (you probably have 1280 on your 17" monitor, if it's like mine) - but 1920 down! That should be enough for anyone!

By JohnGray7581 on 8 Dec 2009

@JohnGray7581

Yeh,but then you don't get the 1920 pixels wide.

@JohnLaw is correct, the monitor manufacturers seem to be pandering to the 'HD' revolution.
The enthusiast TFT on the alist is 1920x1200, but costs £819. Damn lol

By GAZZAT5 on 1 Jan 2010

It's that stupid 16:9

Seems like this days everyone offers monitors for watching movies and they forgot that some folks use it for work.

By greensturm on 4 Jan 2010

... and the same goes on with laptops and it makes me angry because it's so hard to find one with monitor, where you can see more than 3 lines of text.
They now produce laptops with 768 vertical pixels (like in a stoneage)

By greensturm on 4 Jan 2010