Samsung LS32D850T 32-Inch WQHD PLS LED Monitor (2560 x 1440, 300 cd/m2, 16:9)

Product Information

Samsung makes a big play about the environmental credentials of this screen. When running at factory settings the screen consumed 56W, but it’s possible to load up a couple of eco-friendly modes to reduce that figure. These options had little effect on image quality other than reducing the brightness, and they dropped the power consumption dramatically: the first ran the screen at 170 nits with a consumption figure of 45W, while the second hit 123 nits and 41W. Samsung’s trio of Magic Bright options returned mixed results. Its Standard mode dropped the brightness to 155 nits while maintaining colour temperature and accuracy, so it’s a worthwhile choice if the Samsung’s factory settings are too much. Dynamic Contrast mode made little difference aside from worsening Delta E, and the Cinema mode had a similar effect.

32” Professional Business Monitor S32D850T with WQHD 32” Professional Business Monitor S32D850T with WQHD

Samsung’s latest screen excels in several important areas. It looks smart, its stand has versatility that virtually matches the ViewSonic – save for a little less height adjustment – and it’s easy to set up thanks to sensible design and a good menu system. The Samsung proved more consistent in other uniformity tests. Across most of the screen its colour temperature deviated by less than 1%, with a slide up to nearer 2% across the right-hand side. That’s not enough to be noticeable. The business focus of this screen means that its design is entirely function over form. It’s got one of the most versatile stands we’ve seen, with 130mm of tool-free height adjustment, plenty of horizontal swivelling and the ability to swing round into portrait mode. It’s a similar amount of versatility to the ViewSonic VP2772, which only just outreaches the Samsung with 150mm of height adjustment. This Samsung sets its stall out as a large, affordable screen for the office, and it hits the mark in several key areas. It’s sturdy and versatile, and image quality is good – it’s got impressive results in the right areas, only lagging behind in departments where excellence is least required. It’s a better option than the rival ViewSonic when it comes to large, impressive work panels.It’s simple to switch the Samsung into a different position because of the smoothness and ease of its mechanisms, and it’s a little easier to use than the Viewsonic VP2772 – that particular monitor required a pin to fasten its height-adjustment system.

Samsung S32D850T review | Expert Reviews

We’ve seen plenty of large monitors offering picture-in-picture (PIP) and picture-by-picture (PBP) modes, but none of them have worked particularly well. These modes are handy because it means you can have the output of two devices onscreen at the same time, with PIP providing an inset image, and PBP placing the inputs side by side. Typically, we end up with two squashed images because the monitor we’ve tested hasn’t told the PC what’s happening so that it can adjust the resolution accordingly. Samsung’s does, which means as soon as you enable PBP, both your connected devices will change their output resolution to create images at the correct aspect ratio and resolution. This means the Samsung S32D850Tis a screen you can share between two computers simultaneously. In the Faster mode, which is the factory default, the Samsung sat at a middling 34.3ms. In Standard mode that result dropped to 41.8ms, and it improved to 31.3ms with Fastest mode chosen. None of those results will set the world alight but, equally, they’re not poor enough to be noticeable during the working day – or during most games, for that matter. The monitor has a high-speed USB3 hub with four connectors, so you’ll be able to connect all your desktop peripherals in addition to high-speed storage. These can be neatly routed via a removable cable tidy panel at the bottom of the stand. Samsung’s obsession with good design means that the ports are at the rear of the monitor rather than on the side, which does make them a little harder to access than on the current Best Buy-winning BenQ BL3200PT, which places its USB ports and an SD card reader on the edge of the frame. If this is important to you, you should spend a little more and buy the BenQ BL3200PT. The Samsung is larger, cheaper and with better image quality than the ViewSonic. If you want a large office monitor without making the step up to 4K, then this is worth a punt. Verdict

We were able to further improve the Samsung’s results by calibrating the screen with our colorimeter. With the RGB levels tweaked, the colour temperature rose slightly to 6966K but the Delta E improved to a stonking 0.89. That’s great but, obviously, it’s of niche interest – you’ll need your own colorimeter to hit these numbers. There’s a gaming mode, although it seems somewhat redundant on an office screen. This mode simply ramped the average Delta E up to 9.83 and, to our eyes, made every colour look oversaturated. We wouldn’t use it, even for gaming. The “Cool” colour options served up improved Delta E levels but colour temperatures that hit 8084K and 9427K respectively, with brightness that dropped by around a quarter. This screen’s pair of Warm options were no better: colour temperatures were a long way below the 6500K ideal. While it’s true that those results are on the cool and warm side of the colour temperature scale, everything else is so hampered that we can’t imagine using them.