24" LCD Round-Up: Acer S242HL, Dell U2412M, And Samsung T24A550

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Another batch of monitors just landed. This time, we're sampling 24" screens. If 27" is too big (and too expensive), and 23" is too small, this round-up is just what you need. We put three screens through the usual paces to find a definitive winner.

Calibrated Performance: Brightness And Contrast Ratio

Calibrating a monitor is akin to benchmarking under controlled settings. It isn't particularly meaningful to compare the out-of-box performance of one monitor to another. If you want to know what a monitor is capable of, you need to normalize settings in the same way you benchmark two graphics cards.

Once calibrated, Dell's UltraSharp U2412M is the only monitor able to maintain decent performance, as the other two monitors in our roundup fall short. More specifically, Acer's S242HL bid is unable to produce deep blacks, resulting in a very poor contrast ratio. Samsung's T24A550 suffers from a different problem. First, we have to settle for a 150 cd/m2 calibration because we're unable to achieve 200 cd/m2. However due to deep black production, the T24A550 is able to at least achieve a 448:1 contrast ratio.

Andrew Ku