Samsung 214T

Samsung’s 214T lords over other 20-inch panels with a screen that measures 21.3-inches on the diagonal. It boasts a 1600x1200 native resolution, and is encased in a thin-bezeled silver or black cabinet, with an ergonomic stand that offers a telescoping neck, along with swivel, pivot, and tilt functions.

Samsung also throws in a host of trademarked technologies—­­some built-in and some in the form of bundled software—that are intended to meet the demands of various types of content and user preferences.

MagicTune, for example, is a software supplement to the onscreen display controls, for additional image tweaking. MagicRotation—another bundled app—will automatically rotate your picture when you rotate the screen. And Natural Color provides printer calibration screens and custom-profile creation. The 214T also offers video and S-video inputs and a picture-in-picture mode for viewing content from multiple sources. All this, of course, comes at a premium.

The price tag seems warranted when you view digital images and DVDs on the 214T’s screen. With its true, deep black and stark, luminescent white, it’s no wonder the screen’s contrast is outstanding. Colors themselves are eye-popping and subtle detail appears distinct even in dark, shadowed areas. Indeed, we were convinced of the 214T’s abilities even before it aced DisplayMate’s (www.displaymate.com) battery of evaluation scripts.

We were, in fact, smitten with the big beaut, until it came to gaming, where signs of ghosting in three different titles left us cold. While the environments themselves looked stunning, movement—particularly in areas of high contrast—revealed a lag in screen-redraw times. For some folks, this is not an issue, and they’ll happily reap the benefits of the 214T’s gorgeous screen in all its other uses. For us, however, it’s enough to make us pass.