Samsung Impressive Performance: compare Samsung LCD vs Samsung CRT

The quality and fine pitch of Samsung monitors have long impressed me, even back when a Samsung 17" CRT was a fancy and expensive monitor to have. The 225BW black LCD is my first experience with LCD monitors. I don't even own a laptop. I do all my work on desktops, using my monitors for photoshop work, aftereffects, FLASH, and a lot of protools sound editing and mixing.

For over 5 years I've depended upon four Samsung 955SL (19") monitors, 2 on my PC and 2 on my Mac. SL stands for "short length", which at the time was true. Ha! A 16" deep monitor in 2000 was considered "short". Meanwhile my friend David had purchased a new fangled LCD monitor at the time -- a little smaller than the 225bw -- at a bargain price of $2500.

I and others have waited patiently for the price on LCD's to come down. Plus I was skeptical that LCDs were REALLY an improvement on image quality over CRT's.

I recently brought home two 225bw's and set them up to run off my Mac, which has a dual head graphics card. Can you imagine TWO of these monsters running off one G4? That's right.

SETUP AND CONNECT

Setup was slightly tricky. First I disconnected my 955SLs and then connected the 225's with the same analog VGA cables. It was not necessary to get a MAC to VGA convertor as they recommend, perhaps because of my specially installed video card.

Then I hit the power button. Nothing. There was no power. Reason: There is a physical toggle power switch behind the monitor where the plugs are that you have to turn on first to get power! No software or driver was required to get things started.

Then, once you have an image, you need to choose the right resolution. If you fish around trying different settings in OS ten's "displays" menu, the Samsung 225 will prompt you as to the resolution setting you should choose from the list (which will probably be 1680x1050 -- really the only choice for great results.) The 1680x1050 option may not appear until you reboot your computer.

Once you have this correct setting, you do actually have 33 percent more screen space for your stuff. There is no squeezing or stretching compared to the old 1280x1024 setting. I opened up a protools session which I had been running on two 1280x1024 monitors, and each screen now has 33 percent more available area. That's great.

The menu structure to access the monitor's settings is very much like the 955SL's, although there are a slightly smaller variety of settings to adjust. Missing from settings on the CRT there is no parallel rotation, no pincushion/trapezoid, no pinbalance, and no linearity settings.

There are four little buttons on the front that allow you to navigate the Samsung's own internal menus. Brightness, contrast, and sharpness are the most important ones. There are also a wide variety of color temperature options including cool, warm, normal, and custom.

It is worth noting that the 225's screen is mounted on a pedestal extension which can easily be elevated 4 inches. This is an exquisite design feature. Just remove the pin in the back and the whole screen slides easily up or down. While no screen rotation is available, you can tilt the monitor to face up or slightly down over a range of about 18 degrees.

INITIAL PERFORMANCE IMPRESSIONS

The thing that surprises me right away about the 225BW's is they are unbelievably bright compared to the older Samsung CRT's. Wow. These things must be (subjectively) three brighter than the CRTs which are still running right here on my PC. The brightness and contrast settings I choose initially as most pleasing are brightness 71 contrast 57. If you go brighter, the 225bw seems slightly washed out. After a time a less bright image setting may be less fatiguing on the eyes.

I have always been highly skeptical about "hot spot" lighting and off angle illumination issues with LCD monitors, which have a "rear projection" quality. And it is true, if you get off angle with these things, they can yellow substantially. But within 25 to 30 degrees off axis the performance, sharpness, and color stability are still excellent.

Primary colors on LCDs look phenomenal. Where their performance is less impressive is in the subtle shadings between colors.

WHAT ABOUT SHARPNESS?

I had long suspected a slight degrading of image sharpness in LCDs compared to high end CRT monitors. Yet I'm not sure. For sharpness of text and fine detail in images, I STILL prefer the performance of Samsung 955sl CRT's.

There is more jagged aliasing in the 225. Anti-aliased text with soft edges looks fuzzier on the 225. Single pixel text that has no soft edges (no anti-aliasing) looks very sharp down to the pixel. I would say the Samsung 955 CRT is perhaps 30-50 percent sharper than the 225 in some spots. It's subjective, but LCD's in general have a harsher "digital" look, especially on photos, and color gradations are not as subtle and pleasing as on a great CRT.

If you wanna do a real "torture test" for your LCD flat panel monitor, try the "girl with the fish net stockings" image test. Or Spiderman. Or Gomez Addams in a pinstripe suit. Any kind of finely detailed, undulating grid will reveal the LCD's deficiencies, compared to a CRT. In the LCD, there tends to be slightly more noise, jaggedness, and aliasing.

For best text appearance, it is important to go into Mac settings/appearance and change the Font smoothing style from "NORMAL best for CRT" to "MEDIUM best for flat panel".

Another deficit in the 225bw (albeit a trivial one) is that while my CRT's can perform well at a variety of resolution settings, there is only one optimum setting for the 225bw.

HUGE SCREEN SMALL FOOTPRINT

Huge screens, small footprint...what else is there to say? In my cramped little studio, these LCDs open up acres of valuable desk real estate. And with two of the 225's side by side, the screen area is absolutely enormous. If I put em side by side the effective image width is 38 1/2 inches. Each monitor is 11 5/8 inches high.

Corner to corner each monitor is indeed 22 inches exactly. The older Samsung 955 SL's which were sold and represented as "19 inch" actually measure 17 3/4 from corner to corner.

CRT "short length" monitor depth is 16", while the new LCD's are no more than 3" deep. However, with the 225's pedestal stand, which makes the 4 inch lift possible, the depth of the units is about 6-7 inches.

CONCLUSION:

One interesting thing about these LCD's I have discovered too, is that sometimes when booting up your computer the monitor will display nothing! This might freak you out or make you think your computer has gone down, when in fact all you have to do is restart your monitor, and the image will come up!

In short, I am delighted to have more screen real estate AND more desk real estate. To spread a timeline across these two monster screens is an expansive graphic experience that can only be had in this 21st century.

It comes down to the superior brightness, size, and footprint of the LCD vs the less edgy and more visually soothing sharpness of the CRT. After my experience with the 225bw, I'd say it'll be hard to go back to the darker CRT.