A quality curved panel on the cheap
Low priced and versatile, the Samsung 24-Inch CF396 Curved LED Monitor ($149.99) would be at home in an office, a study, a living room, or a game room. It provides some convenience features that are usually limited to costlier monitors. And our testing showed the panel to be bright, with excellent color coverage for a monitor of its price. The CF396 offers enough value to make it a strong PCMag Editors’ Choice award winner for budget curved monitors. A Prince Among Budget Panels The glossy black CF396 is lightweight and fairly compact, measuring 16.7 by 21.6 by 8.6 inches (HWD) and weighing 6.8 pounds. All four bezels are chunky, nearly half an inch thick. The monitor rests on a V-shaped base that connects to the cabinet by a shaft that angles upward from the back. The CF396’s 23.5-inch vertical alignment (VA) screen supports a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (1080p), at a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. VA panels offer high contrast ratios, thanks to their ability to render deep blacks, as well as wide viewing angles. The CF396 is rated at 178 degrees for both vertical and horizontal angles, meaning that you can view the screen from off to the side, or from above and below, with minimal color shift or distortion. The pixel density for a panel of this size and resolution is 94 pixels per inch (ppi), typical of a budget monitor. This pixel density is fine for everyday use but less than you would want for exacting visual tasks such as professional photo editing, though it’ll do fine for casual tweaking. (All else being equal, the higher the pixel density, the sharper that the text and other fine detail in an image should show up.) The CF396 has a peak 60Hz refresh rate. It is equipped with AMD FreeSync, which can provide an experience free of screen tearing on compatible systems with AMD Radeon graphics. As a curved monitor, the screen is slightly concave from a user’s perspective. The CF396 has what is known as 1800R curvature, which means that if enough of these monitors were placed side by side to form a circle, it would have a radius of 1800mm, or 1.
