With these three pictures we are showing you three things. The first image shows you the 171B when it has been oriented in the Portrait position. Note how the controls are now nicely at the bottom of the LCD, instead of up on the left hand edge. The second image just shows the unit in its normal landscape orientation with the base at the lowest level. The control panel is up on the right and side of the bezel and easily reachable, without being distracting to the eye in any way. Finally, the last image shows you the rear of the display, and illustrates the adjustable stand. The 171B in that picture is raised as high as the stand will allow for, which is roughly 55mm of travel.

A Display that Tilts 90 Degrees:

 Tilting displays are not entirely new to Samsung, but this is the first one we have seen in a while. The stand that the 171B uses has a built-in pivot which enables the display to rotate from the standard portrait position to a vertical landscape orientation. To do this one need only raise the monitor to the tallest height or tilt the display back slightly so the corners will clear the base stand.

The actual display image is pivoted with the help of some bundled software called Pivot Pro 6.01. To rotate the screen image, the user need only right click on the desktop and select "rotate 90" from the menu which pops up.

The software was buggy under our test system which was running WindowsXP, and would cause the system to reboot itself every time we clicked the start button with the screen in portrait mode.

Also of note, is that that the OSD menus are not affected by the software, so when you rotate the screen they remain in their original orientation.

The adjustable stand bolts on to the back of the actual display panel by the 100mm VESA mounting points and can be removed if wall mounting is more desireable.

The adjustable base is really welcomed, but when you are lowering the screen to the bottom the display 'thumps' into place, instead of making a nice smooth transition. From the down position, the display can be raised up 55mm.

Even though the power supply is contained within the panel unit, the display still manages to remain pretty slim at just about 65mm thick. A plug like the kind you see now a days for notebooks plugs directly into the panel display to provide power.

Apart from that the only other cable you can hook up to the unit is an analog VGA adaptor. Both cables can be threaded through the base to keep them under control and out of the way when rotating the display.

On this particular rotating stand, the 171B will tilt about 3 degrees forward and 15 degrees back to accommodate different user positions. The display moves smoothly, and can be tilted with just one hand if necessary.

There is a lazy-susan in the base of the stand, but we found it a bit stiff to use and wonder how effective it is over just rotating the entire unit.