Samsung Series 9 27-inch monitor (preview)
- 26 July, 2013 15:00
Samsung has been one of the driving forces in the take-up of LED TVs around the world. It has a long history of making some of the best LCD panels, with some of the best back-lighting technology available. This tech isn’t just restricted to the company’s TVs, though — last year we saw the Series 8 Business Monitor and loved it.
The new Series 9 monitor bridges the gap between the Korean company’s display divisions — it’s a computer monitor, but it looks like a TV, and it has built-in speakers that are surprisingly loud.
Samsung Series 9 (S27B970): Design and setup
The new Series 9 looks quite smart — it wouldn’t look out of place in an office, but it’d be equally at home in a penthouse apartment. The screen is finished in a very glossy coating, which might be annoying if you’re in a room lit by sunlight, but it also makes the entire package look stylish.
Being a 27-inch screen, the Series 7 is just about as big as you could want a computer monitor to be. A few companies, including Samsung, make 30-inch screens but we think that anything between 24 and 27 inches is the perfect size for almost all needs.
The base of the Series 9, which comes attached, houses all the monitor’s connectors — there’s dual-link DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, USB and a power socket. Samsung also throws a MHL-capable HDMI cable in the included accessory kit, because the Series 9 is MHL-compatible.
Samsung Series 9 (S27B970): Performance and picture quality
We’re expecting the Samsung Series 9 to perform largely similarly to the Series 8, because it uses the same panel. The screen of the Series 9 uses Samsung’s plane-line switching technology, which means hugely improved viewing angles and colour accuracy over a standard IPS or TN screen.
In the Series 8 from 2012, the screen was extremely detailed and clear, and the same is true of 2013’s Series 9. Being a glossy panel, it’s even clearer and more detailed than its predecessor, since there’s no anti-glare coating in between the LCD panel and the viewer’s eyes. And with 2560 pixels horizontally by 1440 vertically, there’s plenty of detail to see — far more than with any 1080p screen on the market.
If you connect over HDMI or DisplayPort, you can use the Series 9’s built-in 7-Watt stereo speakers. These are housed in the monitor’s base, and fire forwards — they’re not going to compare to a proper pair of speakers or headphones, but they’re definitely not a bad extra. We found the speakers’ sound more than loud enough to fill the small office space we tested the Series 9 monitor in.
Samsung Series 9 (S27B970): Conclusion
We’ll be running some more serious tests on the Series 9 monitor over the next couple of weeks. If you’ve got any questions about the screen, let us know in the comments box below.