Monitor testing is usually subjective and differs from person to person, but there are a few technical tests that can prove a monitors worth. In these tests, the resolution is set at 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz, and photographed with an Olympus E-1 in a completely dark room.

This first test is just a screen of black, and shows the amount of backlight bleeding on the panel. Ideally, the whole panel would be completely black, but the bottom and top has a little backlight showing. The sides appear to be perfect.

This is just a screen of white. This would show any dead pixels, but there aren’t any, so test passed!

Each shade of grey should be easily distinguishable from each other, which is true for this monitor. The picture does not do it justice because of the limited dynamic range of the camera sensor, but to the human eye, the contrast is perfect.

Samsung SyncMaster 226BW (2ms response time)

Samsung SyncMaster 2463UW (5ms response time)

To gamers especially, ghosting is a very important characteristic to LCD monitors. CRT monitors usually do not suffer from ghosting because each pixel refreshes very quickly, but in LCD monitors, the pixels turn on and off slower and if it is slow enough, ghosting appears. These images of a car moving from right to left were captured at 1/60th of a second. The monitor was outputting at 60 frames per second, so this is the equivalent of one frame. As you can see, the 226BW is better in terms of refresh rate as the “ghost” appears to be less visible than on the 2463UW. The 226BW is rated at 2ms response time, while the 2463UW is at 5ms. Ghosting usually appears at around a response time of 12ms and above, but this is subjective and differs from person to person.

The viewing angle is listed as 160 degrees on both vertical and horizontal. This is an accurate measurement, I found that around 160-170 degrees the panel starts to darken.

Now that the panel is finally fully examined inside out, let’s start having some fun!

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