Samsung SyncMaster 2494HM review

It may be surprising to see a £200 plus monitor earning such high praise when so many others offer good quality for less, but the small premium is always worth paying at these large sizes. And the Samsung SyncMaster 2494HM certainly offers plenty to justify the outlay.

It’s a stylish yet understated TFT, using the more conventional of Samsung’s two main TFT designs: a glossy black squared-off frame with a neat silver bar running along the bottom edge. The stand is wide and sturdy, with 10cm of height-adjustment range and a pivot on the back to rotate it to portrait mode. It also offers a pair of USB ports.

Your PCs and consumer devices are all catered for thanks to the HDMI, DVI and VGA ports on the back, and there’s a 3.5mm audio input to feed the integrated 3W speakers. They won’t match a pair of external stereo speakers, but they’ll do well enough for everyday listening.

The 1,920 x 1,080 panel is up to Samsung’s usual high standards, with smooth gradients, accurate colours and a good level of brightness once we’d tweaked a few settings – it’s a little dim out of the box, so we switched to custom colour and raised the brightness. The only minor blips were the resulting not-so-deep black level and some slightly iffy viewing angles. This may not be one for editing photos, but videos looked punchy and full of detail.

There are a few design issues, such as the slightly unreliable touch controls on the front, but these are outweighed by the clean menu design. It may be a little dearer than most at this size, but unless you really don’t need the speakers and integrated USB hub, we’d pay that little extra for the superb SyncMaster 2494HM.