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The 2232GW’s glossy black cabinet sports subtle curves and a thin bezel, giving it a sleek, modern look likely to jazz up even the drabbest of desktops. The 1,680-by-1,050 glossy panel (shine courtesy of Samsung’s MagicClear coating) attaches to its oval base via a snap-in hinge that provides tilt maneuverability, but I found the mechanism to be a bit too stiff for one-handed adjustments. Height, pivot, and swivel adjustability are not available on this model.
A circular blue LED power switch on the lower right-hand corner of the bezel is the only button visible on the front of the panel. Five well-marked function buttons located underneath the lower bezel are used to navigate the on-screen display menus and act as hot keys for adjusting the brightness, enabling the Auto Adjust function, and accessing the MagicBright menu. Similar to the Eco Mode function found on the Envision G416, MagicBright offers a choice of seven different viewing modes that are optimized for popular applications: Text, Sports, Internet, Game, Movie, Custom (user defined), and Dynamic Contrast, which ups the contrast ratio from 1,000:1 to 3,000:1. Enabling the Dynamic Contrast makes for a very bright picture with much darker black levels, but there is a noticeable loss of highlight detail with the contrast cranked up. While you wouldn’t want to use it for photo-editing purposes, this setting works best for watching movies, as the colors appear much bolder and the overall screen image is crisper. Other on-screen functions include gamma and color tone level controls, coarse and fine image adjustment, and MagicColor, which uses preset color temperature and RGB settings to accentuate skin tones.
Input connections include one DVI and one analog port. While I’m pleased that the digital port is HDCP compliant, I think a monitor in this price range should offer something more in the way of multimedia connectivity, such as an HDMI port or a card reader. Cables for both available connections (DVI and VGA) are included in the box, along with a CD containing a comprehensive user manual and Samsung’s MagicTune software, which lets you make image adjustments using your keyboard and mouse rather than the on-screen display buttons. It also includes a color calibration tool to help you choose the best color and gamma settings for your lighting environment.
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