There’s no shortage of choice in the LCD panel market at the moment, and while many manufacturers are now orienting themselves towards the LED-backlighting market few have done it in such a stylish way as Samsung. While a rather subjective claim, its BX2350 is one of the most aesthetically pleasing we’ve seen, and this is a lot to do with the sturdy, chrome-finish angular support.
Our quick take
Samsung’s BX2350 is an intriguing panel that does make sacrifices for its aesthetic merits, but justifies these with impressive performance and good software support. As well as being a decent all-rounder we were impressed by its abilities for video and gaming use and though it takes a while to get used to the settings and on-screen controls, still seems to justify the relatively high price.
Samsung BX2350 - 4.0 / 5
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Complementing this is an extremely slim and lightweight panel with an intriguing rough-finish on the back, a Perspex bezel and touch-sensitive controls. Unfortunately Samsung has made some sacrifices in terms of flexibility here and a 10-degree tilt adjustment is all that’s on offer. Twin HDMI ports show a clear tilt towards media and gaming use and though there is no DVI connection alongside analogue VGA, an HDMI to DVI cable is provided in the box.
A typical range of adjustments are available via the on screen display and though these take a while to get used to, we did find the controls to be more accurate than many rivals. Having said that, it’s an area that doesn’t really need “modernising” in our opinion and effective tactile controls would have been easier to navigate. The MagicTune software supplied duplicates many of these however, and allows users to make adjustments through a more comfortable window on screen. This offers a veritable wealth of tuning features and many are automated through the use of “Magic” branded controls to perform colour, economy mode and response time adjustments along with presets for gaming, video, standard and custom environments.
Overall we were impressed by the colour accuracy and contrast levels on offer with the BX2350, and though it takes some time to work through the various adjustment settings to determine their effect this is still easier than doing the same thing manually. Video playback was particularly impressive and a high refresh rate of 2ms means that response times are excellent in terms of eliminating ghosting and motion blur. Colours are accurate and though there is some backlight bleed that’s evident during darker scenes we were generally pleased with the performance on offer.
Additional features include the ability to tweak the screen to improve viewing angles using Magic Angle, and though we saw an immediate difference, it wasn’t too pronounced. It’s also possible to configure shortcuts to some of these customisation effects and tie them to on-screen controls, which is a useful convenience.
Overall this is a tidy, beautifully designed panel that while rather restrictive in certain areas offers impressive performance and a decent array of intuitive customisation. It’s an impressive solution for multimedia use and while a little expensive may well be worth the extra outlay in the right environment.
To recap
Great looks, an excellent response time and some impressive overall performance makes the BX2350 one to keep an eye on