Samsung and ViewSonic are the only companies to produce panels with a 4ms response time this month. The 930BF started our tests well, narrowly winning the best gaming display in our eye-straining midnight shoot-out. It also offers the highest contrast and joint-widest viewing angles. A fairly large downside was the supposedly pure black screen as light poured into the display from around the edges.
OSD adjustments came in the form of warm, normal, cool and custom - not great if you're a high end user wanting Kelvin measurements. It also came bundled with its proprietary 'MagicColor' display calibration software. The key thing that impressed us with this was ability to save settings for multiple users and circumstances, though usage was somewhat unintuitive. Design-wise it isn't much to look at and the stand doesn't offer a great deal of movement, but we liked the cable tidy feature whereby part of the back removed to help hide the cables.
Response time aside, there are still higher quality displays in this roundup for less money. However, something that may tip the balance is Samsung's excellent dead pixel policy whereby the company will replace the panel if it develops even one bright or dark pixel within three years. Considering two of the nine monitors we reviewed had bright pixels, this is a valuable insurance policy which is well worth the premium. However, it's still not enough to take the laurels from Viewsonic this month.
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