The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: 17" LCDs Reviewed

Spatial Uniformity

This monitor continued to impress us:

The overall uniformity of the monitor was good: all the values were within 15% of the total range, with the exception of two measurements. The lower part of the panel seemed brighter than the upper, but the asymmetry was nowhere near what we found for the 172X, for example, where a halo was clearly identifiable on the upper part of the display area. So far, the 710T shows very good performance for a fast TN panel.

Response Time - The Icing On The Cake

And now for the aspect that interests gamers most: response time. And here again, we got a pleasant surprise:

The monitor rivals the Hydis 20 ms panel. It was even faster in rapid transitions and slightly better in the medium tones (80 to 145). Of course it was still less responsive than the current champion for speed, the AU Optronics 8 ms, but it's much more versatile, as its static performance shows! All very much to Samsung's credit, and bad news for panels with extremely low latency.

Let's be measured in our enthusiasm, however. This is just one set of measurements on one monitor, and we'll confirm the trend when we have a few more fast panels to try out. For the moment, though, the Samsung panel represents the best compromise for all uses, including gaming.