Question 1

Is this a Matte of Glossy Screen?

Accepted Answer

Stay away from this monitor.  I purchased it from my wife, and the audio through the hdmi is horrible.  The screen was beautiful, so I assumed it was a bad sample.  Newegg cross shipped me another one, but it had exactly the same problem.  There was at least one other buyer on Newegg who reported the same problem, and Samsung never responded to either of us.  As a monitor, it is great, but only if you either do not intend to use the builit in speakers and are willing to connect it with DVI and send your audio to external speakers.  This monitor was sold at a premium price, but it has a severe design defect.  The audio has a very low maximum volumn and it sounds like you would get out of one of the tiny speakers they used to mount inside the case.  It appears that there is no audio amplifier built into the monitor.

Question 2

what; does 5000:1 mean?

Accepted Answer

Contrast ratio is kind of a meaningless specification, because there's no industry-wide standard as to how you measure it.

The two basic types of contrast ratio are dynamic CR and static CR. With dynamic CR, they take a TV and display a completely black image on it, and then measure the amount of light coming out of the screen. They then put on a full white image and measure the amount of light coming out of the screen. They then calculate the ratio of max brighness to min darkness.

With static CR, they display an image that is a 16-square checkerboard of alternating white and black squares. They then measure the light coming from a light area and compare that with the amount of light coming from a dark area.

Typical static CRs end up being in the 1500 - 2000 : 1 range, while dynamic CRs are more in the 12,000 - 15,000 : 1 range.

Manufacturers say that the bigger the CR spec, the better the screen can display variations in grey tones, resulting in better color imaging. But, the human eye can only resolve a CR of about 800 : 1. So, any CR above 1000 : 1 is fine. And, the human eye wouldn't be able to resolve the difference between two contrast ratios above that value, anyway.

That would be like having speakers that go up to 25 kHz, when the upper limit of human hearing is only 20kHz. There's no meaning to that spec, because you can't hear it, anyway.

Question 3

The description includes pivot but no pictures show a pivot to portray mode.  Does this monitor pivot to portrait mode?  If not, can you suggest an option?

Accepted Answer

I bought it to hang on a wall but I believe it rotates to portrait mode. It comes with several attachments to accomplish this.

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