Samsung 173T 17" LCD Flat Panel Display

Company: Samsung
Product: 173T Black
Street Price: $495 USD
Date Reviewed: October 9, 2003
Reviewed By: Rob Parks

Samsung 173T Testing:

For our testing procedure we set the desktop color to solid black and white to see if there are any pixels that will not turn off, and therefore will show as either white or a primary color (RGB). When desktop color is set to white to see if any pixels are dead, this will show up as a black dot in the white screen. We also played a few rounds of Unreal2 and Midnight Club 2 to test the gaming performance of this display.

Excellent results here with the 173T. One of the most impressive things I found with this monitor is that it had no discernable dead pixels. This is unheard of with an LCD screen. Most have at least one dead pixel that is visible in either the black or white screen tests.

Testing out the gaming performance was a little less impressive. Running at 1280x1024 there was some bad ghosting and tearing during Unreal2. In some cases it looked like someone had picked up the screen and was shaking it like and old etch-a-sketch. Most likely running in the 173T's native resolution of 1024x768 would correct this problem.

With Midnight Club 2 the ghosting and tearing effects were much less pronounced. In fact I would hazard to say that I did not even notice any while playing. This game is much darker than Unreal2 and game play is very fluid and less jerky. The colors were exceptional and the contrast made the game look that much more real.