For its 27" display size, the 275T is a good ad-hoc personal movie screen for watching movies on the computer. It's not quite the wide screen HDTV of your dreams, but it beats any standard boxy computer monitor by leaps and bounds.

It's key to toggle MagicBright into "Movie" mode to bump up the screen brightness, then sit back a few feet for the best picture. The movie mode is really bright, so if one is sitting at the desk close the the Syncmaster 275T, it can become a little too bright to view comfortably. From several feet away the extra brightness does justice to the video.

The 16:10 display ratio suits letter box pictures well, and image quality is very good thanks to the high native resolution and 0.303mm pixel pitch. We were pleased there wasn't any noticeable light bleed through from the sides of the screen in very dark scenes.

The Syncmaster 275T is rated for a 1000:1 contrast ratio, but it can dynamically scale that up to 3000:1 in certain cases.

On many LCD displays there is a visible stepping effect when a colour transitions from one shade, to a very slightly lighter or darker shade. This is due to an inherent limitation of LCD technology, as it can display 16.7million colours.

This undesirable effect wasn't noticed with the 275T, which could just mean the media we tested it with wasn't particularly full of scenes that highlight such shortcomings. Regardless, we were quite pleased with the Samsung Syncmaster 275T ability to output full motion video to the screen over the HDCP compliant DVI connection.

Graphic Artist and Photog's Best Friend?

All is not perfect. Colour, or more appropriately reproducing accurate colour brightness wasn't necessarily as straightforward as we expected it to be. An example will best describe this...

We first created a dark maroon coloured square in Photoshop. Then with the test computer hooked up to a reliable ADI Microscan CRT, the colour swatch was stretched across the Syncmaster 275T and ADI screens. Now I know CRT and LCD monitors output colours differently, that's not what I'm getting at. If you're thinking about the Syncmaster 275T display for graphics work, you should know its high panel brightness can create a curious problem.

The dark maroon colour test patch on the ADI Microscan CRT looked dark in luminosity. The exact same colour test patch looked bright wine red on the LCD - not just a little brighter, but almost bright red.

If you're doing graphic art work where colour is important, you might be seeing unrealistic representations of luminosity with the Syncmaster 275T. Just keep that in mind and calibrate the screen first. MagicBright is especially bad at making everything overly bright.

Bigger Screen, More Windows Open at Once

When it comes to viewing webpages, work and spread sheets, a 27" wide LCD screen very simply enhances ones' productivity.

You get more done because you can see two or three windows on the screen at any one time. It's even nicer to put those 1920x1200 pixels to use for large Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

However, the real secret weapon in the 275T's arsenal is Picture in Picture. The PIP will display the Component, Composite or S-Video inputs in a small window in the corner of your screen so you can watch a video while busily working away. PIP only works with DVI and Analog modes.