Samsung SyncMaster 943BX

Samsung's 19 inch SyncMaster 943BX end up impressing us so much? Out of the box, the 943BX painted excellent graphics and great video. It's versatile, too: The screen sits on a flexible stand that has adjustable height and can pivot, tilt, and swivel. For $260, of course, you shouldn't expect miracles the 943BX's native 1,280x1,024 resolution won't do high definition, for instance.

Powering up the 943BX provided a swift kick in the sensory regions. The panel's 300 cd/m2 brightness and 8000 : 1 dynamic contrast ratio (1000 : 1 typical) appeared spot on, with no retina searing glare.

Beyond that, there wasn't a hint of tearing, flaring, smearing, or ghosting (response time is rated at 5 ms), and text was readable down to 6 points something few monitors can easily do.

Best of all, blacks were black. And color? It's vibrant and has depth with clear distinctions among hues. When the blacks, grays, and colors mix in graphics or video, the result is an almost tangible image that reaches out to you.

Fine tuning the 943BX is a snap with MagicBright, an onscreen menu that lets you access several pre-installed video modes suited for sports, movies, text, gaming, the Internet, and more. You also get MagicRotation which lets you use hot keys to change the orientation of your screen image to landscape or portrait mode and MagicTune, an augmented software version of the OSD with options that are accessible with your mouse instead of the monitor's buttons.

Problems started to creep in when we paired the 943BX with another LCD for dual-monitor viewing. With a bezel that's just half an inch wide, the 943BX seems suited for the task, ideal for both office duty (having your email window open on one screen and a productivity app open on the other) and multimedia and gaming pursuits.

But while the bezel is indeed thinner than most, it still leaves you with an inch of blackness between the panels. That won't matter much when you're using the displays for dual view (essentially, separate desktops), but if you're extending your desktop across both displays, an inch is a lot of black space.