EleanorSp
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Samsung's new 27-inch monitor competes with Apple's Studio Display at half the price
I bought a 32inch M8 a couple of weeks ago... here's my review of it.I have bought a few Samsung devices in the past (though it was over 10 years ago) and I’ve been disappointed by them all in some way or another to the point vowing never going to buy Samsung again. However, given the great reviews of the Samsung M8 monitor I thought perhaps Samsung has finally improved their products to a point I thought this would be different. It even looks like an oversized iMac which was very appealing.
First the good points, the Samsung M8 32in Monitor has lots of features and functionality including many of its own apps including a lot of remote network capable TV apps like Apple TV+, BBC and Amazon.
Sound though wasn’t great (this is a thin monitor after all ) and I could not find a way to connect to an AirPlay capable device and have the picture and sound work in sync.
Brightness is okay but not as vibrant as an LG Ultrafine 5K, the backlighting is also not consistent around the edges showing patches of light and dark in certain conditions.
The camera worked for about 30mins, then I could not get it working either on any MacBook Pro nor a Windows 11 HP laptop. I could also hear a faint high pitched noise coming from the camera too. One would assume the device was broken, but I still was able to make it work with the builtin monitor App!
Resolution is just 4K and since the monitor is 32in, a decent character size makes the text look a little blurry. If you don’t have a retina display this probably won’t be very noticeable after a while but I did find it annoying!
Tech support was standard going through the basic fixes though was eventually unhelpful. At one point they claimed it was their provided USB C cable was not capable of supporting the monitor and camera and I should get a better, faster USB C standard cable. Err… why didn’t they supply one then?
After all the trouble, returning the monitor was simple and easy.
In conclusion, my impression of Samsung products remains the same. The offer of lots of features, great price and the feeling of an Applely product were appealing but once again they are let down by both software and hardware quality. It’s like they can implement an 80% product but are let down big time in the final stretch. Perhaps they think adding all the extra features you probably won’t eventually use can make up for it. But not for me.
One final thing, the monitor actually does not work on 2017 MacBook Pros. I tried various USB C cables to hand but none worked. Looking at the Apple’s tech specs for the MBP , it appears ‘earlier’ MBP do not automatically support later USB C monitors but only LG Ultrafine ones. A 2019 and M1 MBP worked without issue. Another case of USB C doesn’t mean compatible, be aware...
