Samsung T27A950 27-Inch Class 3D LED HDTV Monitor – Black

Impressive TV/ Monitor, November 3, 2011

First I must say this monitor is a looker, it is very thin with an artistic design that keeps all of the connections and features you want while looking great at the same time.

Picture quality is very crisp and the back light is consistent across the whole screen making the color reproduction and consistency very good. With a 2ms response time games and video are both clear and crisp even under heavy action scenes. For the gamers reading this there is little to no screen tearing.

The 3D features on this monitor work very well. I have tried it through a PS3, on the PC with movies and also on the PC with video games. The 3D effect was not choppy or straining on the eyes over prolonged use. The glasses are a little bulky though and I wish the manufacturer had provided one of their slimmer lightweight pairs with a premium unit like this. It must be stressed though that when using 3D make sure to use a quality video card, receiver if you are using one and cables. If you don’t when 3D content is pushed through the system image quality will suffer.

The software on this monitor threw me for a bit of a loop when I first used it since what you label each input as determines how the incoming signal is handled. If you set an HDMI input as PC for instance it will look for audio over the HDMI cable plugged into it but if set to DVI PC it will not and will only look for the image portion of the signal. Once you understand this though the software is very well executed. Menus are clear and informative with as many advanced picture settings as an artist may want or as few simple settings a home user wants to configure to just get a great picture. There are also plenty of apps including support for Netflix and Hulu plus. Both ran well when I tried them out with minimal response lag from the TV.

The sound is OK and will do if you are not an audiophile. There are some features to enhance peoples voices in whatever you are viewing as well as a built in equalizer but overall the sound feels like an afterthought.

Overall a great monitor, TV, or both depending on your needs. The only lacking feature in my view is the audio, but if you are worried about that you most likely have an external sound system and this wont affect you.

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Pricey, but feature-rich and options galore., December 27, 2011

The Samsung T27A950 has had a slow transition from CES to retail availability. Touted as a flagship monitor, I was surprised at how little information was readily available from Samsung and third parties.

At MSRP, this product is really hard to recommend, but like all leading-edge technology, prices drop off a bit over time. Even then, the value of the monitor is really up to if you really need the plethora of features that it offers.

This monitor is almost fully-loaded with everything you can think of feature-wise. SmartHub has been cloned straight off of Samsung’s higher-end HDTVs, although it’s value can be overlooked considering you’ll most likely have a computer nearby most of the time. Regardless, the implementation is what you would expect. Menus are logically laid out and have pretty much any adjustment you can think of to adjust picture quality, sound quality, and what ever else you would like to fine-tune on the monitor. Anynet+ is actually pretty cool: when I turn on my PS3, the monitor detects the new signal and automatically switches from cable to HDMI, and vice versa for when the PS3 is shutdown. Although a computer is probably more useful, Allshare/Connectshare works as it should and supports most common mainstream formats, but it’s nice to have. Picture-in-picture has quite a few options: you can place a medium or small inlay in any of the four screen corners or display side-by-side and you can select which input to output sound. However there are some limitations such as the inlay is always from cable and the main screen will be an HDMI input and there is no dual-TV tuner so no PiP with two channels. But, the PiP with two different inputs is one of the main features I bought this monitor for as it seems to be quite difficult to find. MagicAngle adjusts display colors so that the display doesn’t look washed out at a user-selectable high angle or low angle, but that washes out straight on, so I fail to see this feature’s usefulness. As for 3D performance, I’m personally impartial to 3D. All I can say is that the feature works, but that’s not the reason why I bought this monitor. The future is 4K, not 3D.

For the price, Sammy really shouldn’t have skimped on the product by deciding to not include built-in WiFi nor rechargeable 3D-Glasses. The glasses included are SSG-M3150GB, but the glasses are physically imprinted as SSG-3100GB which is Sammy’s 2011 TV glasses. Cause for confusion? I think so, as the TV glasses are set to a different polarization angle. Therefore, the only way to get the 3D effect to work correctly is to offset the viewing plane by about 45 degrees, which is obviously not optimal for viewing. Also, this means that there is no rechargeable solution available as all of the glasses available at retail are for TVs and are thus offset. Luckily you can tell the difference between glasses as the ones that will work correctly are branded with a SyncMaster logo.

As for the design, what can I say? The design speaks for itself, definitely a showpiece. The display is very thin as well as the bezel. The brushed metal is beautiful. The “physical” monitor buttons are touch sensitive and nicely laid out, but not obtrusive when lit. As for practicality, you need to be more careful with this monitor than it’s brother the TA750 series. Make sure you only grab the monitor by it’s base and not the display. The remote controller is easy to use and looks nicer than in pictures; it has a brushed metal like look on it’s face, mush like that on the monitor, which looks very elegant. The 3D-Glasses easily fit over my prescription glasses and are very comfortable as they have rubberized sections. As for user interface, all of the display animations are sleek and top notch. As a hybrid monitor HDTV, this is perfect for a college student like me with limited living space.

Performance-wise, the display is gorgeous. FullHD 1080p 3D LED HDTV: pretty much every top-end feature of this generation. There is slight backlight bleeding in the lower left and right corners. There are plenty of display processing options to cater to your needs. Same goes for sound processing options. The speakers are surprisingly good, especially when the SRS options are selected. There are even options for external sound through either the HDMI audio return channel, or if your home theatre receiver doesn’t support ARC, you can use optical output from the monitor. The base and external power brick do get warm, but not to the point where I would be worried. And for you gamers out there, there is a game mode which disables a lot of the image processing to reduce display lag, and the image is still incredible to boot. Odd why they didn’t list that anywhere. Of course, PC gamers should still go with the SA950 for the DisplayPort/D-DVI for true 120Hz input, as HDMI maxes out at 1920x1080x60Hz. The LCD is capable of 120Hz, but there is no input capable of supporting that on the…

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