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Samsung
- Thread starter ng4ever
- Start date
xDiVolatilX
2[H]4U
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- Jul 24, 2021
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My QN90A and QN90B are both perfect. Have never had any issue with either of them. Very happy.
MistaSparkul
2[H]4U
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- Jul 5, 2012
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Every monitor maker has subpar QC. You tend to hear more about Samsung than other brands probably because they sell more monitors than those other brands. What's really baffling is that other than QC problems, Samsung tends to have crappy firmware that almost looks like it was never even tested at all before shipping out. Same can be said about Asus/Acer/etc though.
I mean I would assume you'd hear about Dell the most as they are, by far, the biggest monitor seller.
A bit tricky though as I would imagine many of those are to companies for offices and such and to "general consumers" which tends to be less picky and also buy much simpler/cheaper monitors where it is kind of a "if it works its fine".
Agreed. What amazes me about Samsung is that it quite often feels like they have never actually tested their new products before they decide to build and ship a few million of them. Would seem like bad business to me, but maybe Samsung knows more than I about being in the monitor/TV business
Bigmonitorguy
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
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- 277
Buggy firmware? Dead pixels galore? Dirt under the screen? Flickering madness? Just ship it and be happy. The customer may have better luck next time, or maybe the time after that, so don't worry 
MistaSparkul
2[H]4U
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Yeah Dell may be the biggest monitor seller but if 90% of what they sell just end up in office spaces then of course nobody is really going to be complaining about things that gamers/enthusiasts complain about.
I suppose. I mean I do feel gamers can be way overly picky, some seem to expect absolute perfection and throw a fit over anything less.
I will say that we buy a TON of Dell monitors at work and we (IT) rarely see anything wrong with them. Dead pixels are extremely rare, screen uniformity is good, etc. Every once and a while there will be one with issues and we'll send it back to our vendors but it is rare. Now we don't sit there are go pixel peeping and do a bunch of photos with slow shutters in dark rooms... but I'd argue nobody should. Don't go looking for small defects in your stuff, you'll find them and then be unhappy. Really if you don't notice an issue during normal use, it doesn't matter, so don't go looking. Use the thing, see if you like it. If you do, good keep it, if you don't, then send it back.
We don't get enough Samsung monitors for me to say anything about them.
GotNoRice
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2001
- Messages
- 12,017
I was a diehard Samsung fan for 15+ years but in retrospect I think that I gave them a free-pass on too many things.
Samsung 245BW- 24" 1920x1200 60Hz. This was my first "big" LCD that I got in ~2005 or so as my main monitor after milking my 21" Trinitron for as long as I could. The monitor was pretty flawless for me. The issue occurred after I replaced it and handed it down to my mother. She had a company-issued laptop that was super locked-down to the point where you couldn't change even simple windows settings. I set the monitor up as her main monitor with the laptop off to the side acting as a small secondary monitor. The problem is, her laptop was setup so that instead of the monitors turning off after a period of time, it would instead display a 1990's-era screensaver with their company logo bouncing around the screen and the monitors would never turn off... She would try to remember to manually turn-off the monitor but she would usually forget. After about a year the backlight died. While I place the blame for this mostly on her company for locking-down stupid settings that should not have been locked down, in the 12+ years since that monitor died, I've seen a LOT of monitors from that same era that are still working just fine. I have a few Dell Monitors from that same era that were used so much that the screen has a permanent brown-hue from all of the burn-in, yet the backlight never failed. So in retrospect maybe Samsung QC does share a bit of the blame.
Samsung S27A950D- 27" 1920x1080 120Hz. This was my first panel that did more than 60Hz, and I got it in 2011-2012 or so. I had a pretty good experience with it overall. I mainly used it via Dual-Link DVI. The only other way to get 120Hz was via Displayport. It had HDMI but it was limited to 60Hz. When using Displayport the monitor would randomly lose sync, and I would have to press the source button to force it to wake up and pick up the input again. VERY annoying when it happened in-game. It didn't happen when using Dual-Link DVI thankfully, but when I upgraded to my RTX 2080, the card didn't have DVI... But the monitor was dated at that point and I replaced it not long after. I still use this monitor on a secondary system today, and it's also now developed some extremely annoying coil whine which makes me wonder how much longer it will last.
At this point, I still considerd the issues I had with the previous two monitors to be minor so I went with Samsung again.
Samsung C32HG70- 32" 2560x1440 144Hz. This was my first curved monitor, my first monitor that could do HDR, and my first monitor with Freesync / "G-Sync Compatible" support. Bought it in ~2018 or so. This monitor wasn't completely terrible, but had quite a few annoying issues. My first big disapointment was that everything looked absolutly terrible and washed out when HDR was enabled. No amount of calibration or playing around with settings seemed to fix this. I read about a lot of people having similar experiences and assumed that it was simply "normal" to have to constantly toggle HDR on or off depending on the content you were viewing. But even in the games that supported HDR, it was very underwhelming and they looked no better than with HDR disabled. Movies with HDR enabled just seemed too dark... Again I tried endlessly to fix this via calibration, etc, until I finally just gave up and basically just left HDR disabled perminantly. There were also multiple issues related to G-Sync. The first is that G-Sync would randomly stop working for no real reason, and this would happen disturbingly often. The 2nd was that even when it was working, it had bad backlight issues. It had two modes, "Standard", and "Ultimate". "Standard" only worked 120Hz-144Hz so it was basically useless. "Ultimate" worked between 48Hz-144Hz and had LFC (Low Frequency Compensation) which pretty much covered the entier range, but "Ultimate" also resulted in extremely annoying backlight behavior at lower FPS where it would get brighter and darker in a quick, unpredictible manner that almost looked like slow flickering. It really ruined the "smoothness" that G-Sync is supposed to provide. The only good thing about the backlight "flickering" is that at least it let me know that G-Sync was still working... Finally, multiple people on this forum and elsewhere warned of a common defect where there would be corruption on screen, which looked terrible, almost like what you would expect from a broken monitor after dropping it on concrete. Thankfully I never experienced this while I used it as my primary monitor. But soon after replacing it, after it had been unplugged for about a week, I plugged it back in and boom there it was, corruptuon all over the screen, that gradually faded away as the monitor warmed up over the course of about 10-15 minutes. I guess I replaced it just in time.
Just a few months ago I finally got my first non-Samsung monitor in a long time. I got a Dell/Alienware AW3821DW, which uses an LG panel. I really like it. In addition to the increased resolution and wide viewing area, it's really nice to not have any blacklight issues with G-Sync, and have G-Sync work flawlessly all the way down to 1Hz courtesy of the hardware G-Sync Module. HDR is amazing, works perfect, and I can leave it on all the time. Nothing ever looks washed-out due to HDR unlike my previous Samsung.
As a bonus, regarding Samsung Quality Control. About a year ago the 60" Samsung TV in my home theater started developing big purple spots all over the screen that just got progressively worse and worse until they were too bad to ignore. The TV was probably about ~6 years old, so it wasn't brand-new, but I still expect more life out of it than that. Still went with another Samsung this time and got a good deal on a Samsung 75" Q60A to replace it. It works well and HDR is great even with my HTPC using a GTX 1060, but if I was buying a TV today I'd probably go with an LG over a Samsung. I can only hope that this Samsung TV lasts longer than the last one...
Samsung 245BW- 24" 1920x1200 60Hz. This was my first "big" LCD that I got in ~2005 or so as my main monitor after milking my 21" Trinitron for as long as I could. The monitor was pretty flawless for me. The issue occurred after I replaced it and handed it down to my mother. She had a company-issued laptop that was super locked-down to the point where you couldn't change even simple windows settings. I set the monitor up as her main monitor with the laptop off to the side acting as a small secondary monitor. The problem is, her laptop was setup so that instead of the monitors turning off after a period of time, it would instead display a 1990's-era screensaver with their company logo bouncing around the screen and the monitors would never turn off... She would try to remember to manually turn-off the monitor but she would usually forget. After about a year the backlight died. While I place the blame for this mostly on her company for locking-down stupid settings that should not have been locked down, in the 12+ years since that monitor died, I've seen a LOT of monitors from that same era that are still working just fine. I have a few Dell Monitors from that same era that were used so much that the screen has a permanent brown-hue from all of the burn-in, yet the backlight never failed. So in retrospect maybe Samsung QC does share a bit of the blame.
Samsung S27A950D- 27" 1920x1080 120Hz. This was my first panel that did more than 60Hz, and I got it in 2011-2012 or so. I had a pretty good experience with it overall. I mainly used it via Dual-Link DVI. The only other way to get 120Hz was via Displayport. It had HDMI but it was limited to 60Hz. When using Displayport the monitor would randomly lose sync, and I would have to press the source button to force it to wake up and pick up the input again. VERY annoying when it happened in-game. It didn't happen when using Dual-Link DVI thankfully, but when I upgraded to my RTX 2080, the card didn't have DVI... But the monitor was dated at that point and I replaced it not long after. I still use this monitor on a secondary system today, and it's also now developed some extremely annoying coil whine which makes me wonder how much longer it will last.
At this point, I still considerd the issues I had with the previous two monitors to be minor so I went with Samsung again.
Samsung C32HG70- 32" 2560x1440 144Hz. This was my first curved monitor, my first monitor that could do HDR, and my first monitor with Freesync / "G-Sync Compatible" support. Bought it in ~2018 or so. This monitor wasn't completely terrible, but had quite a few annoying issues. My first big disapointment was that everything looked absolutly terrible and washed out when HDR was enabled. No amount of calibration or playing around with settings seemed to fix this. I read about a lot of people having similar experiences and assumed that it was simply "normal" to have to constantly toggle HDR on or off depending on the content you were viewing. But even in the games that supported HDR, it was very underwhelming and they looked no better than with HDR disabled. Movies with HDR enabled just seemed too dark... Again I tried endlessly to fix this via calibration, etc, until I finally just gave up and basically just left HDR disabled perminantly. There were also multiple issues related to G-Sync. The first is that G-Sync would randomly stop working for no real reason, and this would happen disturbingly often. The 2nd was that even when it was working, it had bad backlight issues. It had two modes, "Standard", and "Ultimate". "Standard" only worked 120Hz-144Hz so it was basically useless. "Ultimate" worked between 48Hz-144Hz and had LFC (Low Frequency Compensation) which pretty much covered the entier range, but "Ultimate" also resulted in extremely annoying backlight behavior at lower FPS where it would get brighter and darker in a quick, unpredictible manner that almost looked like slow flickering. It really ruined the "smoothness" that G-Sync is supposed to provide. The only good thing about the backlight "flickering" is that at least it let me know that G-Sync was still working... Finally, multiple people on this forum and elsewhere warned of a common defect where there would be corruption on screen, which looked terrible, almost like what you would expect from a broken monitor after dropping it on concrete. Thankfully I never experienced this while I used it as my primary monitor. But soon after replacing it, after it had been unplugged for about a week, I plugged it back in and boom there it was, corruptuon all over the screen, that gradually faded away as the monitor warmed up over the course of about 10-15 minutes. I guess I replaced it just in time.
Just a few months ago I finally got my first non-Samsung monitor in a long time. I got a Dell/Alienware AW3821DW, which uses an LG panel. I really like it. In addition to the increased resolution and wide viewing area, it's really nice to not have any blacklight issues with G-Sync, and have G-Sync work flawlessly all the way down to 1Hz courtesy of the hardware G-Sync Module. HDR is amazing, works perfect, and I can leave it on all the time. Nothing ever looks washed-out due to HDR unlike my previous Samsung.
As a bonus, regarding Samsung Quality Control. About a year ago the 60" Samsung TV in my home theater started developing big purple spots all over the screen that just got progressively worse and worse until they were too bad to ignore. The TV was probably about ~6 years old, so it wasn't brand-new, but I still expect more life out of it than that. Still went with another Samsung this time and got a good deal on a Samsung 75" Q60A to replace it. It works well and HDR is great even with my HTPC using a GTX 1060, but if I was buying a TV today I'd probably go with an LG over a Samsung. I can only hope that this Samsung TV lasts longer than the last one...
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