Samsung T260, 26? LCD monitor review (my personal thoughts with photos)

Last week I bought this monitor. Since there are no professional or detailed user reviews for this monitor on the internet, I thought I should write my thoughts for anyone who is interested in this particular model or just looking for a 26” LCD for a reasonable price. I have already posted some of these details at hardforum; later I thought I should also post it here since I mostly hang around in here.

Background

I previously owned an iiyama E2202WS 22” (21.6 viewable) LCD monitor. I had it for about a year, even though I wanted to get a full HD monitor I didn’t want to spend money on a second monitor. Few weeks back one of my friends contacted me asking about used LCD monitors, this finally gave me the opportunity to upgrade.

Here in Japan, I don’t have a lot of models to choose from, and I'm on a tight budget, therefore I cant really afford an IPS panel. This narrowed down my options for just 4 TN panels . Some time back I posted here asking for advice on those specific models, but didn’t get many responses. Anyways, first I decided to buy a LG W2600V-FP it had a fully adjustable base (height, swivel, tilt), VESA mounting support and about $20 cheaper. I also saw the monitor at a store and it seemed fine. My second candidate was Samsung T260, but since I didn't see it in person I thought the LG was a safer bet. But that was a BIG mistake .

As soon as powered up the LG W2600V-PF, I was taken back by the horrible default color settings. There was a very strong yellow tint, I messed around with the controls for almost an hour but couldn’t get natural looking colors. To make things worse, there was a dead pixel on the middle of the screen. So I decided to return it the very next day. Since the store didn’t have additional units in stock, they gave me a refund. Then I decided to try my luck with Samsung. I bought it online for around $430 at the current exchange rate (it might sound a bit too much, but that is because the dollar has fallen against the yen over the last couple of months, if I use the conversion rate from just a couple of months back, then the price is like $350). Which I think is not too bad for a 26" 1920x1200 monitor. Luckily this time it worked out pretty good.

Review

Specs :



Product photos from Samsung website :



My comments :
Right out of the box I was impressed with the design; shiny glass like two tone transparent bezel look very sleek . Samsung call this series "Touch of color" because they intend to release this in several different colors. So far there is Black and Red (mine is Red). I have read there is a blue version too, but haven't seen any photos.

On the front of the monitor Samsung logo stands out from the rest, other than that, SyncMaster T260 is printed on top left corner,5ms 20000:1 on top right corner and HDMI on bottom left corner, but apart from the main logo, rest of the text is printed in a much darker shade of gray, almost invisible. Touch sensitive power button is located on the bottom right corner of the front bezel. There is no LED power indicator (I like it because no distractions when watching movies in a dark environment). However, there is a blinking red LED to indicate standby/sleep mode. Strangely, monitor control buttons are located on the right side of the monitor, since you cant see them you'll have to feel them with your finger tips. This could take some getting used to, but after few times it is pretty easy. Samsung also provides a tray application to control all the settings from Windows. Application CD contains the monitor driver, MagicTune (the tray app), color profile, MultiScreen, and NaturalColor applications. I only installed the driver, color profile and MagicTune, not sure what the rest of them do.

This monitor has 3 inputs : 15pin D-Sub (Standard VGA), DVI-D and HDMI. However, Only VGA and DVI cables are provided, no HDMI. But luckily I already had a HDMI to DVI Monster cable, therefore I could start right away. Factory default colors were far better than LG, with just some small tweaking I was able to get very natural looking vibrant colors. Default 100% brightness was a bit too much, therefore I had to turn it down to around 50%. IMO contrast under dynamic contrast mode is pretty good; maybe a little too much for text, but good for videos.

And no dead pixels!

Finally here are my photos :

BOX A pretty colorful box, not your standard brown colored cardboard box.



Monitor





When looking directly color shift at the top and bottom is very small, unless you look very carefully at a single color image it is hardly noticeable. I also found the viewing angles to be quite satisfactory. I think better than the LG W2600V. Here are some photos taken at various angles [NOTE : I used a Canon P&S camera and then used 70% JPEG compression, therefore the images are not very sharp and contains JPEG compression artifacts; sorry about that]:

Straight



~45 degrees from side



~70 degrees from side (140 viewing angle)



~45 degrees from top



~45 degrees from bottom



Back light leakage is very little and in reality it looks very good.
Blank screen (light leak)




Blue screen (to check brightness distribution and viewing angle color distortions from ~2 feet from monitor)



EVEREST Monitor info



There was a bit of color banding visible when looked at some of the test images at lagom.nl, but that is to be expected from a 6bit TN panel. However IMO Samsung was better compared to 26" LG and my previous 22" iiyama.

The bottom edge of the screen starts at 12cm from the table surface, IMO that is a little bit too high, lack of a height adjustable base can be a problem for some. I had to raise my chair to get a comfortable viewing position. I should also mention that this monitor doesn’t support VESA mounting, however, I did see few places selling a separate VESA wall mounting bracket for T240/T260, but couldn’t find any information on that.




Right now I don’t have a gaming PC, but planning to build one sometime next year. Till then this monitor will be mostly used for standard desktop work and watching movies. Overall, I’m quite pleased with the monitor, and I think this is one of the better 26” TN panels out there. a worthy upgrade from my previous 22" iiyama LCD.

 

Thanks for posting this review PhoenixFx. It looks good and it reads easily. And it's a very nice looking setup you have there.

I assume you connected it through HDMI, you may want to add that.

 

Yes, through HDMI. Added that and few more details.