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I got the Sony about a week ago and have not been completely happy with it. Today I decided to get the Samsung for comparison.
My rig.
With 1 monitor.
Housing and stand:
The Sony is very nice looking with great fit and finish. The glowing Sony logo is cool as are the touch sensitive controls. The cable management is great and completely hidden. The asthetics of this monitor are outstanding. On the downside the stand is quite short, does not allow the screen to rotate, and the tilt angles are less than the Samsung. The Sony does not appear to have a standard VESA bracket so if you want to put it on a monitor arm you are out of luck.
The Samsung also has great fit and finish but is a bit fugly compared to the Sony. It is utilitarian in design but is actually more flexible than the Sony. The stand is height adjustable, has great pivot range, and allows the monitor to rotate into portrait mode.
The Panels:
The Sony panel arrived with 5 stuck pixels. However they are so small it took me a long to find them on a totally black screen. In regular use you cannot see them. The biggest problem with the Sony monitor is a strange reddish-gold sheen when you look at it at the slightest angle. Even the slight angle that the far right and left edges of the screen are from center was enough to make it noticeable. I tried to get a picture of this sheen below.
This is extremely distracting whenever there is a lot of black on the screen. When playing Doom 3 it was unberable. This panel is fast enough to play games with very little blurring.
When playing games that are bright, with few blacks, it was very nice.
I went through 3 Samsungs today to get one that was acceptable. The first one I got had a cluster of 4 adjacent pixels stuck on blue that where visible from accross the room. The second had a group of 10 adjacent grey pixels and about 5 other scarttered grey pixels. the third has 2 stuck subpixels one white and one blue on the edge of the screen. They are so tiny you almost can't see them without magnification. The first thing I noticed was that the Samsung had slightly more vivid, saturated, colors than the Sony. The Sony's colors looked great until I hooked the Samsung up next to it. This really seemed to be the case with blue. If you look at the sky and water color in these shots you can see this.
The Samsung also has truer black and white. It does not have the weird sheen that the Sony has and has very wide viewing angles. I didn't notice the pink whites that other people have seen with the Sony but the Samsung white is "whiter". This is a shot of both screens showing a blank white screen.
Overall the image and color quality are better on the Samsung. However the Samsung is slower than the Sony. I have read much discussion about the speed of this monitor. Some people say they can't tell the difference between the faster 16ms panels and this one. I notice the difference, it is not huge but it is absolutely there. that being said, I am not having any problem gaming on this monitor.
My conclusion:
The Sony is faster, cheaper (about $500), better looking but has narrow viewing angles, and is a bit dim.
The Samsung is slower, more expensive, kinda fugly, and has great image/color quality.
This was a tough decision but I'm keeping the Samsung. Once you see it's nice black and vivid colors it is hard to go back. I wish it was as fast as the Sony but I guess that is the tradeoff you must make for image quality. I hope this helps somebody with thier decision.
My rig.
With 1 monitor.
Housing and stand:
The Sony is very nice looking with great fit and finish. The glowing Sony logo is cool as are the touch sensitive controls. The cable management is great and completely hidden. The asthetics of this monitor are outstanding. On the downside the stand is quite short, does not allow the screen to rotate, and the tilt angles are less than the Samsung. The Sony does not appear to have a standard VESA bracket so if you want to put it on a monitor arm you are out of luck.
The Samsung also has great fit and finish but is a bit fugly compared to the Sony. It is utilitarian in design but is actually more flexible than the Sony. The stand is height adjustable, has great pivot range, and allows the monitor to rotate into portrait mode.
The Panels:
The Sony panel arrived with 5 stuck pixels. However they are so small it took me a long to find them on a totally black screen. In regular use you cannot see them. The biggest problem with the Sony monitor is a strange reddish-gold sheen when you look at it at the slightest angle. Even the slight angle that the far right and left edges of the screen are from center was enough to make it noticeable. I tried to get a picture of this sheen below.
This is extremely distracting whenever there is a lot of black on the screen. When playing Doom 3 it was unberable. This panel is fast enough to play games with very little blurring.
When playing games that are bright, with few blacks, it was very nice.
I went through 3 Samsungs today to get one that was acceptable. The first one I got had a cluster of 4 adjacent pixels stuck on blue that where visible from accross the room. The second had a group of 10 adjacent grey pixels and about 5 other scarttered grey pixels. the third has 2 stuck subpixels one white and one blue on the edge of the screen. They are so tiny you almost can't see them without magnification. The first thing I noticed was that the Samsung had slightly more vivid, saturated, colors than the Sony. The Sony's colors looked great until I hooked the Samsung up next to it. This really seemed to be the case with blue. If you look at the sky and water color in these shots you can see this.
The Samsung also has truer black and white. It does not have the weird sheen that the Sony has and has very wide viewing angles. I didn't notice the pink whites that other people have seen with the Sony but the Samsung white is "whiter". This is a shot of both screens showing a blank white screen.
Overall the image and color quality are better on the Samsung. However the Samsung is slower than the Sony. I have read much discussion about the speed of this monitor. Some people say they can't tell the difference between the faster 16ms panels and this one. I notice the difference, it is not huge but it is absolutely there. that being said, I am not having any problem gaming on this monitor.
My conclusion:
The Sony is faster, cheaper (about $500), better looking but has narrow viewing angles, and is a bit dim.
The Samsung is slower, more expensive, kinda fugly, and has great image/color quality.
This was a tough decision but I'm keeping the Samsung. Once you see it's nice black and vivid colors it is hard to go back. I wish it was as fast as the Sony but I guess that is the tradeoff you must make for image quality. I hope this helps somebody with thier decision.
