Samsung Brings Style, HD Tuners to Monitors

The company's latest desktop monitors borrow the "touch of color" theme from its full-size HDTVs and shrink it down to size, along with adding built-in HD tuners.

While flat-panel TVs bound for the living room get scrutinized from every angle, reworked bezels from famous designers, and expensive materials to make them look like they belong in a furniture catalog, your basic desktop monitor still probably has the same matte black plastic as the face of your toaster oven. Not so any more. Samsung has brought the same elegant “touch of color” design from its HDTVs down to a new line of monitors for the style-conscious.

The T220, T240 and T260 (22-, 24- and 26-inches, respectively) not only provide the same translucent ruby bezels as their big brothers, they also have the same HDTV capabilities. Each monitor has a built-in ATSC/QAM tuner, rear HDMI connections, and the T240 and T260 offer full 1080p resolution.

Samsung hasn’t skimped on the LCD panel specs, either. Each boasts a 10,000: contrast ratio for crisp image quality and 5ms response time for reduced blur in applications like gaming or action movies.

The smallest model, the T220, sells for $429, while the bigger T240 and T260 hit $549 and $599, respectively. All are available immediately.