Samsung Joins 16:9 Club-Releases Five SyncMaster LCD Monitors

We've seen more and more LCD panel releases with 16:9 aspect ratio, just as Digitimes reported. "The LCD panel industry's transition toward the 16:9 aspect is unstoppable". The changeover has less to do with excessive horizontal black bars while viewing anamorphic films, it is all about maximizing production efficiency. Fair enough, Samsung has jointed the club as well; rolled up a family of 5 SyncMaster ranges from 16-inch to 23-inch, all with 16:9 LCD panel with the exception of the bottom two models.

Two of the entry-model SyncMaster are 18.5-inch 933SN and 15.6-inch 633NW. Both have lower resolution of 1360x768 and only come equipped with VGA input only.

Moving up the chain are HDCP-compliant DVI models with the trio of Syncmaster 20-inch 2033SW (1600x900), 21.5-inch 2233SW (1920x1080)and 23-inch 2333SW (1920x1080). All three units share the same contrast, brightness and panel response rate of 1,000:1, 300 cd/m2 and 5 ms respectively. We haven't seen any 16:9 panel with better viewing angles; no exception to the newer Syncmaster, the 170/160 viewing angles indicate that these are TN+Film based screens as well.

The lot of five will ship in Japan later this month.

• SyncMaster 15-inch 633NW (18,800 yen ~$187)
• SyncMaster 18.5-imch 933SN (20,000 yen ~$208)
• SyncMaster 20-inch 2033SW (25,000 yen ~$260 )
• SyncMaster 21-imch 2233SW (30,000 yen ~$312)
• SyncMaster 23-inch 2333SW (35,000 yen ~365)