Just got a Samsung XL30 - 30" LED

visualguy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 7, 2007
Messages
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I just received my Samsung XL30. This is a 30" 2560x1600 LCD monitor with an LED backlight.

I also have a Dell 3008WFP.

My initial impressions of the XL30:

1) Excellent colors - finally they look like they should. I think the 3008WFP has the potential to do it right (wide-enough gamut), but it's not calibrated properly - reds are too saturated, for example. My XL30 is calibrated correctly.

2) Very clear image - very little "sparkle". I'm talking about the sparkle or graininess that the LG panels are known for. The 3008WFP suffers from this. The XL30 is much better - almost as good as my old Samsung 243T in this regard, but not quite.

3) No flicker. White backgrounds are rock-solid. On CCFL LCDs such as the 3008WFP, I can detect a slight flicker on white - it doesn't bother me, but I notice it. The XL30 doesn't have this slight flicker - LED technology certainly delivers here.

4) Brightness goes significantly lower than on the 3008WFP (thank goodness!), but I find the XL30 to be still somewhat too bright even at minimum setting. I wish the brightness could go even lower. Maybe there's a way to make it happen - I haven't had a chance to look at the manual and the software that came with the monitor yet - I just used the brightness control on the monitor.

5) Normal brightness level achieved quickly after turning on the monitor. The 3008WFP, on the other hand, goes through a long warm-up period where the brightness gradually increases.

6) Runs much cooler than the 3008WFP - almost no heat. The 3008WFP radiates heat in all directions...

7) No bad pixels. My 3008WFP doesn't have bad pixels either.

8) No backlight bleed. My 3008WFP has some at the top left.

9) Better viewing angles than the 3008WFP. Colors look fine on the XL30 when viewed at an angle. The 3008WFP, on the other hand, seems to let a lot of light through when viewed at an angle, so everything (including blacks) looks weird at an angle.

Bottom line: A fabulous monitor! I like it, and I'm very very picky! It's not perfect - the minimum brightness is a little too high - but I'm very happy so far with this purchase.
 
On top of backlight control, there might be a power saving mode to reduce illumination further...(but I have no idea....)
 
wtf i looked at the specs and this monitor is only 4:3?!?! seems kinda a waste.
 
Glad you like it, but at a price of well over $4000, that thing oughtta give you a handjob every time you sit in front of it!! :p
 
wow a 30 inch LED. thats the ultimate LCD monitor. glad you like it. i heard LED is gonna have no dead pixels.
 
I just compared the XL30 to an old 243T that I have. In terms of clarity (lack of "sparkle" or graininess) it's actually about the same, which is great. I've been waiting a long time for a monitor that's as clear as the 243T. In other respects (such as color) the XL30 is far superior to the 243T, of course. By the way, now that I've used the XL30 for a few hours, the flicker of the CCFL tubes on the 243T is even more noticeable...

The white color on the XL30 is amazing for an LCD. Even better than the 3008WFP which also has a nice white. Other colors are reproduced very nicely as well, but I've noticed in particular the quality of the white and the accuracy of the reds as being superior to the 3008WFP.

Now that it's night, the brightness bothers me more. It's tolerable, and certainly less blinding than the 3008WFP, but I really wish it would go lower.

One thing I didn't mention in my short review is brightness uniformity. It's great - the brightness is very uniform across the screen - top to bottom, and left to right. My 3008WFP has very good uniformity as well.

Sometimes I just stare at the vivid, crystal clear, flicker-free image of the XL30 - it really stands out. It reminds me of the old days many years ago when I first bought a Sony Trinitron CRT...
 
You make a thread about a monitor nobody has and you don't post pics?!!?? We need some pics!!!!
 
Sometimes I just stare at the vivid, crystal clear, flicker-free image of the XL30 - it really stands out. It reminds me of the old days many years ago when I first bought a Sony Trinitron CRT...

Man; you did not have to say that. Nnow you have me wanting one.

I am glad to hear from someone that actually has one.

Best of luck

Dave
 
You make a thread about a monitor nobody has and you don't post pics?!!?? We need some pics!!!!

Here's a quick one that I just took...

XL30.jpg
 
Wow. The specs of this really changed since its original pictures were posted on sites like Engadget. It's now indeed a 16:10 display.

It has been 16:10 from the start. The pictures you saw where it looked like 4:3 were distorted, and this caused people to get the wrong impression.
 
Actually it wasn't distorted.

The bezel says XL20. Its just the wrong model pictured.
 
If you could provide input lag numbers that would be awesome.
 
How does it handle non-native resolutions? Including 16:10, 16:9, and 4:3 aspect ratios. Any different scanning/aspect ratio/zoom modes? For $4.5K you'd think they'd include more than one input. looks beautiful though. you should take tons and tons of pics, some close up down to the visible pixels, some at odd angles, different colored backgrounds, in games, Blu-Ray videos, etc. I think its safe to say you will be one of the only people on [H] to own one of these for a long time.
 
I thought the speed of this guy is either 18 ms or 28 ms, in which anything more than 16 ms is less than 60 frames/sec and as such, ghosting on moving object.
 
it doesn't work like that... such numbers are just an average measured response time and different manufacturers have different ways of measuring and reporting response times. there is not a hard and fast number at which point there is "no ghosting", well except for zero. but even CRTs ghost slightly especially with whites. the spec sheet @ newegg says 6ms gray to gray. which is pretty darn fast for an LCD of this size.
 
wow a 30 inch LED. thats the ultimate LCD monitor. glad you like it. i heard LED is gonna have no dead pixels.

That's simply not true, by the way. LED is just a way to LIGHT up the pixels. Doesn't change the way the pixels are "created." LED has just as much chance for dead pixels as CCFL.
 
Now that it's night, the brightness bothers me more. It's tolerable, and certainly less blinding than the 3008WFP, but I really wish it would go lower.
Why don't you adjust that in software? There's numerous hardware and software calibrators/adjusters out there, and even my nvidia control panel lets you adjust brightness, contrast, and gamma. At night just switch to the darker profile.
 
what about input lag ?
I like this monitor , but I am leaning slightly to its little brother the XL24 , it is a little cheaper
 
That is just speculation. The only real way to find out is to do a an actual test. I doubt there will be many reviews out there on such an expensive monitor so I am not getting my hopes up.
 
Why don't you adjust that in software? There's numerous hardware and software calibrators/adjusters out there, and even my nvidia control panel lets you adjust brightness, contrast, and gamma. At night just switch to the darker profile.

The only good way to lower the brightness is by lowering the intensity of the backlight. The other ways that you mentioned degrade the quality of the image too much.
 
I've had the XL30 for a few days now. It's not perfect, which is frustrating considering the price. The problem I noticed is that when the monitor is set to minimum brightness, color becomes a little unstable. Whites change their appearance slightly every few seconds in a repeating pattern. My guess is that the LED brightness control circuit can't maintain a stable brightness level for the different color LEDs (RGB). In particular, it seems that sometimes red is stronger than green, and sometimes green is stronger than red, and this keeps changing the appearance of the whites.

The problem goes away when the brightness is set even just one level above minimum. It's just minimum that's unstable.

I don't know if it's a general problem with the XL30, or limited to some units like mine, but my guess is that it is a design flaw in the LED brightness control circuit. Being an early adopter of a new technology has its downsides...
 
Love to see an input-lag test!
until oled/fed great colors and a low input-lag is a must!
 
That is just speculation. The only real way to find out is to do a an actual test. I doubt there will be many reviews out there on such an expensive monitor so I am not getting my hopes up.

Fact LUT's require a minimum of 1-2 frames, you have to buffer frames in order to process them.

The best average input lag of the XL30 will not be less than 45ms, assuming its the same generation S-PVA panel with LED backlights.
 
I've had the XL30 for a few days now. It's not perfect, which is frustrating considering the price. The problem I noticed is that when the monitor is set to minimum brightness, color becomes a little unstable. Whites change their appearance slightly every few seconds in a repeating pattern. My guess is that the LED brightness control circuit can't maintain a stable brightness level for the different color LEDs (RGB). In particular, it seems that sometimes red is stronger than green, and sometimes green is stronger than red, and this keeps changing the appearance of the whites.

This is the result of using individual RGB LED's to produce white, the red green blue LED's arnt individualy matched to acheive a pure white. I dont see a reason why samsung didnt use very high quality white LED's?
 
This is the result of using individual RGB LED's to produce white, the red green blue LED's arnt individualy matched to acheive a pure white. I dont see a reason why samsung didnt use very high quality white LED's?

I read that RGB LEDs provide better colors than white LEDs. That must be the reason they're used in this monitor.
 
I read that RGB LEDs provide better colors than white LEDs. That must be the reason they're used in this monitor.

Probably but the implementation would be so much more difficult, It looks like samsung has'nt managed it, the overall colour of the backlight will tend towards either red, green or blue.
 
Probably but the implementation would be so much more difficult, It looks like samsung has'nt managed it, the overall colour of the backlight will tend towards either red, green or blue.

They managed it fine other than at the lowest brightness level - there's some instability at that point at least on my unit.

It's certainly not an easy feat to get the right intensity on all primary colors to achieve a pure white, and maintain cosistency as the temperatures of the devices change. They got it to work very nicely for most brightness levels - the whites are the purest I've ever seen on any display (and I've seen many, including CRTs.) There's just the problem with the lowest brightness level, and I think that's an electrical problem with not driving the LEDs quite right at low intensity.
 
To visualguy

Yes, so far you are the only owner of this monitor here and your information will be very helpful.
Could you please take a photo of two test pictures from different angles?

The first picture is for the XL30 only.

http://img182.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tortillax3xl30cm0.jpg

The second one is for two monitors (the XL30 and the Dell 3008) standing side by side, if you still have both.

http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=desperadoxl30hl2.jpg

This simple test will tell us MUCH about what the XL30 really is.
Thank you in advance.
 
Disclaimer: I work for CDW.

I can sell this to you [H] guys for $4399.99.....pm if interested.
 
Does the monitor produce any noise now that it doesn't have a fluorescent backlight? Also, does this one have any fans like older & smaller led back-lit monitors?
 
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