Samsung SyncMaster FX2490HD review

With its chrome-effect stand and dark maroon bezel, this 24in is a stunning looking monitor. It’s actually an LED HD TV, but Samsung says it’s primarily a computer monitor. This is odd, as all the features you’d expect from a modern TV are present: a well-designed remote control, a seven-day EPG and interactive services via the Red Button. There’s also picture-in-picture support, so you can keep an eye on the match while you work on a document using the PC input.

The only disappointment is that there’s no support for Freeview HD.
On the rear panel are two HDMI inputs, a VGA interface, a Common Interface slot (for pay TV including Sky Sports), plus headphone and optical S/PDIF outputs. There are proprietary connectors for component video and Scart inputs, mainly because there isn’t room for the full-size connectors. Convertor cables are included in the box, though.

A large, glossy panel covers all the connectors to keep things neat. However, this means you have to remove it to insert a USB flash drive for media playback. There’s support for photos, music and a wide variety of video formats including MKV, AVI, MP4 and VOB.
Menus look far slicker than any computer monitor we’ve seen, and there’s a huge number of options. Apart from TV-specific settings such as creating a list of favourite channels, there are controls for adjusting sharpness, tint, flesh tones, white balance, black levels, dynamic contrast, shadow detail, gamma, colour space and more. In fact, the sheer number of options is bewildering and overkill for most people.

Still, we were happy to note that settings are saved for each input. Also, we quickly realised we’d need them as none of the three colour presets were any good. Dynamic produces overblown colours and sharpness; Standard is too saturated and yellow-looking, and Movie is too washed out. Unfortunately, even after an hour’s worth of tweaking, we were unable to obtain accurate colours. Skin tones were always too yellow, and contrast wasn’t up to scratch. Moreover, we couldn’t remove the over-processed appearance due to a combination of sharpening, colour processing and noise reduction.

When watching our test Blu-ray movies, we immediately noticed a lack of detail compared to a good-quality LCD TV, and test scenes also looked grainier than usual. The colour problem remained; the only time we didn’t notice it was in cartoons where the vibrant colours were appropriate.

We had to tweak colours and contrast when connecting a PC via VGA, but no matter what we tried, we couldn’t achieve a sharp, properly scaled image when using a DVI to HDMI convertor. Overall, the FX2940HD isn’t great as a PC monitor.

Regardless of our gripes so far, there’s a bigger problem: price. The FX2490HD may have a TV tuner, media player, and a variety of inputs, but it’s around twice the price of a standard 24in display. Considering you can buy a better-quality 32in HD TV for similar money, the FX2490HD is poor value.