Samsung S27A850D doesn't disappoint!

Having recieved some helpful assistance from Tom's community regarding the decision over a new 1440p monitor I thought it only fair to report back with my findings of the Samsung S27A850D...

Now I can only be an authority on the unit that I bought so it's possible that I won the samsung "lottery", but I can confirm that there is very little to none of the backlight bleed that some have experienced with early batches of this model. I think it more likely that Samsung got their arses into gear and fixed the problem with QC.

The first thing I noticed about the display was the clarity. Unlike the grainy or smeared look some have reported with the Dell U2711, I found it actually alot easier to read the somewhat smaller text (in comparison to my old 1080 LCD) on a white background.

Next thing was the colour, or lack of it. Now don't jump to conclusions because all it really took to achieve a VERY good balance of brightness, RGB's and contrast was a quick stop at TFT Central and a look at their calibration profiles for this particular display. Calibrating your monitor really is worth the time (which in my case was a matter of minutes) so fight the urge to throw it out the nearest window in the event that the palette looks washed out and oversaturated!

The first real test of image quality was playing Avatar on bluray. While it seemed subtle at first, after a short while you start to notice all of the wonderful vibrance and smooth gradients characteristic of a True 8 bit display. Having seen the movie a few times already I was actually surprised at how immersive and intense the experience became.

Finally getting to my justification for the expense of the thing, my 3D apps now appear clearer and far more spacious than with 1080p. I could go on but most of the people on Tom's would be more interested with in-game performance...

I have only tested on Skyrim so far, but I can tell you it looks glorious in 1440p. I was pleased with how my GTX 580 handled the job of rendering all the extra pixels on screen and I think the 1.4 patch helps in this respect also. I really expected a second GPU would be necessary for a smooth experience, but for now I can probably get away with overclocking my CPU.

3D photos taken with my old fujifilm look particularly sharp and deep when viewed with NVIDIA 3D Vision photo viewer, even though it's just using the cheap anaglyph glasses.

So while this is technically called a "professional" monitor I can say that it's functionality is dynamic and can be used for anything that requires high res and great colour.

I had done a heap of research before buying and I ran the risk of getting a screen with horrible backlight bleed but I couldn't be happier with the result. Worth every penny.

Thanks to everyone who helped me decide on one of the best upgrades I have made to my system since my first solid state drive.