Samsung 2493HM 24"

[cmmcnamara]

Hey I was thinking about buying this monitor for gaming. It'll be running on a 9800GTX and eventually 2 of them in SLI so I'm not worried about its 1920x1600 resolution. I work at Best Buy so I'll get somewhat of a discount on it but I was worried because I originally planned to get the 2232BW which is a 22" at 1680x1050 but its response time is 2ms rather than the 5ms of the 2493HM. I'm wondering if its still going to be good for gaming. It has a higher brightness, higher resolution, larger screen, same contrast ratio but has a 10000:1 in Dynamic mode plus its 1080p capable for when I get a Blu-Ray drive and it even has the HDMI inputs. But despite it being better in all of these respects should I get the 2232BW or something else with a 2ms response time? Will that 3ms make a big difference in gaming? I play first person shooters by the way (GRAW, HL2, Prey, FEAR, BF2142, COD4, etc.).


EDIT: I just found out that the response time on the 2493HM is 5ms Black to White, when I know that gray-to-gray is normally what to consider for gaming. Does this mean that the GTG is actually faster than the BTW time and I have no worries, or could it be worse?

 

[cmmcnamara]

Anyone have any opinion on this?

 

[GrandStation76]

Hey there
Don't know if it's to late, but I have the 2693hm with the same response time, and no, it makes NO difference. There is no ghosting whatsoever that is noticeable to the eye. I also have owned two of the FHD2400 24" Gateways best buy sells (which sucked) that had a response time of 5ms or "overdriven" response time of 3ms and I also could not tell the difference whatsoever(no ghosting, but bad backlight bleed and color shift). I also have pretty picky eyes and very good vision
I hung on to my crt till about 5 months ago cause I knew the disadvantage's of lcd's, but this thing is AWESOME for games! I will never go back.
Hope this may help

 

[cmmcnamara]

Hey thanks for the response, no I haven't bought one yet hehe! I too am hanging on to my CRT but it's really time for it to go, I have a HP MX70 which is 17" for 1280x1024 max. It's serverd me well but I notice that the edges on all four sides seem to be "burning" away, almost like an extreme back light bleed on an LCD.

I'm really confused on what to buy for an LCD though. There are so many things to consider: panel type, response time, pixel pitch, color space %, input lag, etc. I'm at a loss. And in my new computer build, this willl be the single most expensive thing, so I don't want to go plop down a huge amount of money for something I'm going to be dissappointed in.

For a while I've been eyeing this Samsung 2493 HM at work and I finally got to view it up close and personal yesterday but I want to go to another store and view it because frankly this one has got a scuffed screen and dusty so I'm not sure if I was seeing it at its best. But I just read a review of it versus a similar BenQ and something I didn't know about the Samsung is that it internally scales smaller resolutions rather than use the graphics card (e.g. displays 1680x1050 with the black bars). This is looks better but at some instances I'd rather have a stretched image but the review said the 2493 HM only displays 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 fullscreen...which is dissappointing. I was probably going to buy the monitor on Friday (payday) but now I'm looking around again....its dissappointing. I've also been directed toward a Dell 2408WFP which I think is I-SPS but I've also heard that even though it is amazing for most graphics stuff (110% NTSC) its high input lag and 6ms response time (avg) isn't great for gaming, which is the primary purpose of my rig.

So with all of that shifting through my brain, can someone please help me settle on something, I'd rather not waste my money. I'm almost ready to just grab the 2493 HM and try it at home and pay the restocking fee ($75!) if I don't like it. Just help guys, I'm at the end of my rope looking for LCD's.

 

[smathews]

I have the 2493 connected to my Mac Pro. I went this direction because I'm sick of waiting for Apple to refresh their Cinema Display lineup.

The built-in speakers aren't bad - a nice touch over other comparable monitors. Colors and response time are very good, all in all a great purchase.

Only negative is that even after calibrating at the 1920x1200 setting in the Apple system prefs, I still see some ugly text in certain programs like Entourage. Changing the smoothing setting helps a little but some fonts just don't look good at small sizes or in bold.

Oh - and if you are worried about re-stocking fees buy from Best Buy and return within 30 days if not satisfied.

 

[cmmcnamara]

Lol I feel retarded now because I work there, but I was talking with some people at work and there is no restock fee on monitors so I'm good. I don't sell a lot because I work in Invetory so that's why. I'm just gonna go give it a try, I read the scaling issue is resolved by not using the HDMI port and using the DVI one, which is fine considering DVI=HDMI-Dolby 5.1/7.1 Sound Integration.