Whenever a new sort of TFT panels appears on the market, that’s good news. However, such models tend to be in the premium design segment, which in turn puts a hefty price tag on them. Samsung’s S27B970D with a PLS panel is no exception, so that may hinder its mass consumption. 

Design is one of the more important features this monitor has to offer, and some may even consider this a flaw, depending on personal taste and needs.

Few will contend the fact that the era of 3D technology is well underway. 3D screenings are slowly outnumbering 2D ones in cinemas, and virtually all recent Hollywood blockbusters are shot with 3D cameras. The world with an extra dimension, whether on a cinema screen, TV or mobile phone, looks and feels different, interesting and attractive, so the only logical thing to expect is for all display devices to venture into 3D. Following this trend, LG has recently presented Optimus 3D, their new smartphone, and besides the TV, projector and DVD player, their 3D product gamma is now richer by the first PC peripheral equipped with passive 3D technology - a monitor bearing the number D2342P-PN.

3D display technology has slowly, but steadily moved from passive to active, but LG has decided to go against the flow and revert to passive technology. However, in order to be completely clear - the switch to CINEMA 3D passive display is anything but a step back, on the contrary. LG currently has four CINEMA 3D TVs in their product gamma, with several display diagonals each. Their characteristics are largely the same, the only difference being the design, vertical refresh frequency, as well as additional capabilities (such as DVB-S tuner implementation). We’ve tested LG’s 47LW5500 with a 47” diagonal, representing the golden middle in the fresh offer of the company.

We’re witnessing an oversaturation of the wide-use monitor market. The price range has shrunk so much that something simply has to be pushed out on the cheaper end, while something new has to appear to refresh the more expensive one. ASUS’ PA246Q doesn’t seem connected to this story in any way at first. It’s clearly labelled Pro and has a red line on it, so that it matches a DSLR objective, which is all that pros look for, right? The frame around the display contains metric and imperial unit scales, while the stand is optimised for measuring swivel angle in degrees. A separate button, clearly labelled with a removable sticker, calls several different templates, such as the centimetre net or A4 paper format. These are displayed over the image coming from your PC, supposedly significantly speeding up some processes in the graphics editing department. How these are better than the graphics tools on your PC, and why anyone would change the DPI settings of the PC to match those of the monitor, just so as to approximately place the image onto a rarely used paper format in professional publications, remains a mystery to us.