Poor image quality, but usable.

I bought the Samsung 915N as a replacement for a 12-year old CRT monitor and I have found its image quality to be disappointing compared to CRT monitors or more expensive LCD monitors. In fact, despite its age, my old CRT provides a much better image quality.

The main problems with this monitor's image quality are poor color saturation and hue. Light colors get washed out to white. Large areas of black show up in gray. Text looks like it was written in pencil. Slightly different shades of gray are poorly distinguished. Part of these problems stem from excessive brightness, but using a custom brightness set to zero does not mode. Custom setting "Gamma mode 3" does help - but not much.

In Visual C++, dialog boxes that are supposed to be a battleship gray show in a pale silvery gray that almost blends in with the white text boxes they contain. Fine details like unshadowed button and slider borders are lost.

In Yahoo! Mail, the gray shading used to indicate old mail items disappears, making old and new mail items indistinguishable.

In the standard W2K screen saver, the inky black background shows up as a shade of gray actually lighter than the black bezel that surrounds the monitor's screen.

The claimed 8MS response probably makes this a good LCD monitor for gamers since most games feature cartoonish exaggerated colors or fantasy worlds where colors and fine details can be arbitrarily defined.

The 915N is also usable for light office work, but it would be a poor choice for work that involves photo editing or intense desktop publishing.