Samsung Touch of Color T260HD 26-Inch LCD HDTV Monitor

The T260HD features a built-in full HD 1080p digital HDTV tuner, so you can watch both TV and enjoy the benefits of high-definition entertainment at your computer desk. Two High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connections make your monitor a multimedia centerpiece and let you easily and conveniently connect your other digital devices. Viewing Angle (Horizontal / Vertical) – 170 / 150 Sync. Signal – separate H/V, composite Connector – 15pin D-sub, DVI-D, 2HDMI, component, DTV Tuner, optical out Multimedia Speakers – 3 W x 2 Ch (Dolby DIgital) Unit Dimensions 19.78 Height x 24.02 Width x 9.65 Depth – With Stand; 17.13 Height x 24.02 Width x 3.41 Depth – Without Stand Samsung 3-Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty

Specifications

• Screen size: 26 inches
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200 pixels
• Brightness: 300 cd/m² (candela per square meter
• Response time: 5 milliseconds (ms)
• Viewing angle: 170 degrees horizontal, 150 degrees vertical
• HDMI audio/video input: 2 (1 on back, 1 on side)
• DVI video input: 1
• VGA video input: 1
• Component video input: 1 set
• Antenna input: 1 RF
• Audio input: 1 left/right analog
• Audio output: 1 SPDIF digital audio

Customer Reviews

Best monitor I have ever owned

The Samsung T260HD is the best monitor I’ve ever owned. I was using dual 19 inchers (Samsung 940BX and Samsung 971P) and this blows both of them away. I’m an amateur photographer and my photos look amazing on this monitor — big screen, high resolution, clear bright colors. The images are very sharp and detailed. There is so much detail in the images, it’s almost like being there. Photos have more detail in both the highlights and shadows than any other monitor I have used. I love this monitor.

With the default settings, the monitor was a little too bright, so I turned the brightness down to 50 and then profiled the monitor with my Monico Optix XR color puck. Now the monitor produces less bright and more natural colors. The photos show more detail in both highlight and shadow areas than any previous monitor. The built-in 1080P HDTV works great too. It automatically found all of my DTV stations without a cable box — in fact it found even more than my cable box shows. Standard DVDs look very good on it too. The monitor was easy to setup and use both as a monitor and as a TV. The remote is just the right size, with all the essential buttons and enough space between them for even my large fingers. The remote lets you switch between TV mode and monitor mode with a single button push.

Initially I couldn’t play Blu-ray movies on this monitor and the Cyberlink Blu-ray advisor reported a digital connection that didn’t support HDCP. The problem turned out to be lack on HDCP support in the GeForce 7600GT video card. I upgraded the video card to a GeForce 9800GT and now Blu-ray movies play just fine. Blu-ray movies have a little more detail, but standard DVDs look great too.

The screen seems to have an anti-glare feature — light coming in my window that used to cause glare on my other monitors, is not a problem on this monitor. I haven’t verified this in the specs, but it just seems to have less of a glare problem than other monitors.

Now that I have this large widescreen monitor, I’ve started watching DVDs and instant Netflix movies on it. Both look great. With a high speed connection, the instant view movies look almost as good as DVDs.

I still have a 19inch monitor to the side of this one for games that don’t display well at this resolution. It also adds as an overflow monitor when I get lots of stuff running.

This monitor is a little slow to wake up after being asleep (Windows power management). I discovered that it wakes up better when detecting a mouse click than just moving the mouse.

I tried using the monitor from both the HDMI and DVI connectors and found no noticeable difference in display quality.

The sound quality from the built-in speakers is okay for watching standard TV, but I normally use my Logitech THX-certified Z-2300 speakers which are much better. When using the T260HD as a TV I let the sound come out of its own speakers, but when using it as a monitor, the sound routes through the Logitech Z-2300 speakers. They have excellent sound for both movies and gaming and are only $83 on Amazon.

If you are thinking of getting one of these monitors, just do it. You will love it.

Nice Large Monitor with digital tuner, a few issues

I evaluate technology, including monitors and lately I’ve been using either 19″ CRT, dual 19″ LCD or a high end 24″ Sun LCD, with a variety of cards and onboard video.

I wanted something nice for home and after looking around this sounded great for the price and features. IMO, 1080P is about all you really need unless you do engineering or CAD work. I produce digital photography, video and documents and this is fantastic for those jobs, having a photo or videoconference window side by side with a text document window all in large size makes my work a lot easier.

When I first got it I was amazed at the brightness and screen size, and although I don’t watch a lot of TV (stream video from a well known vendor and play DVD’s mostly), when I hooked up the TV and let it find channels it turns out I’m getting a lot of 720i and 1080i from my location that is coming in fine when the analog signal off the antenna on the old tv was pretty bad. So that is nice and the picture is amazing if you are used to the old analog TV broadcast (ok, I’m an outlier here, no cable).

In any case, the picture is nice, very bright, and setting it up is easy, turning off the running lights and startup/shutdown sounds was easy and the custom video setting (brightness, contrast) was good for me at night as they seem to want you to run it bright in most settings.

There is an issue for me with viewable angle in the vertical plane that may affect your viewing experience. I do a lot of work in a zero gravity chair with the monitor on a hospital stand (because this monitor has no standard VESA mounting as has been noted before), and because of this I noticed that the viewing angle is such that your eye level should be higher than the unit for best brightness and clarity across the height of the screen. It says so in the manual – “Look at the screen from a slightly higher location than the height of the screen.”

I look at the monitor from about even with the bottom of the screen as it is above my knees when the chair is tilted back and this really detracts and darkens the top of the screen a lot. The base will let the screen tilt up but not down so I will need to fabricate something to tilt it down a little (add a VESA mount guys!)

The monitor developed a bright green vertical line along the right side after a few hours of use, across vga-analog/dvi/tv inputs and it only went away for a short time if you power cycled it. It became apparent this was not the left-right or whatever adjustment and the monitor was defective. Amazon was really amazing with a replacement arriving the next day with no hassle and they picked up the broken unit the day after. Great job Amazon, this was my first return and I was really impressed.

The replacement monitor shows even more loss at the same low viewing level, such that watching video is annoying. I was expecting it to be about the same.

This is a great monitor. I’d buy it again.

It would be nice if:

It had a USB port multiplier, I just ordered a separate one.

It needs a VESA mount, I saw a review that said they make a mount for it but if you look closely, it seems to be a VESA mount so I think that is wrong.

The connecting wires could face down instead of out, but that doesn’t bother me much.

If the viewing angle was little wider in the vertical plane.

All in all this is great for the price

Related posts:

1. Brightness sells this LCD – Samsung LN52A650 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color Brightness sells this LCD - Samsung LN52A650 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color Some background:...
2. Samsung PN63A650 63-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV with Red Touch of Color Samsung PN63A650 63-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV with Red Touch of Color Samsung’s 650 Series has the Touch of Color™...
3. Splendid TV, Long Review – Samsung LN52A750 52-Inch 1080p DLNA LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color Splendid TV, Long Review - Samsung LN52A750 52-Inch 1080p DLNA LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color Pros: -...
4. Samsung LN52A650 52-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color Samsung LN52A650 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color Samsung LN52A650 52″ widescreen HDTV (16:9 aspect...
5. Samsung LN40A650 40-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color Samsung LN40A650 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Colorproducts by Samsung (95 customer reviews) | More...