New monitor / washed out blacks Samsung 27" LED S27A550H

traxxxton

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2008
12
0
0
New monitor / washed out blacks Samsung 27" LED S27A550H

I got a new Samsung 27" Led Monitor S27A550H and the blacks are really washed out. Settings out of the box were really bad and I adjusted them so make color, brightness, ect... perfect during regular stuff, but when it comes to blacks its so bad I feel I cant use it-espically during night levels with games. Its just so washed out. I have the brightness set to 60 but its still bad going even lower.

Im wondering if its light leakage. I took a pic, with manual setting with camera to make sure its a picture of what im seeing, of a black picture. Is that much normal?

Any suggestions of what I should do/check.
 

traxxxton

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2008
12
0
0
2r5xr2p.jpg
 

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
136
Which video card are you using? Did you try to adjust thru the video card controll panel?

That does look pretty crappy to me if it looks like your image in real life.

Did you try installing the Samsung driver for the monitor? Not sure what it does but it may help out.

You gotta click driver....It won't let me link the driver page.

http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/consume...e=series-5-led
 
Last edited:

traxxxton

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2008
12
0
0
I tried the monitortune software which didnt help get the color settings right. I also tried the driver as well. Im using 7 ultimate 64bit with a GTX580 5ft dvi to hdmi cable. The nvidia control panel helps a little
 

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
136
Things you could try and see.

Other DVI on your video card.

Mini-HDMI to HDMI and use a HDMI cable....Card came with this adapter didn't it?

DVI to VGA/D-sub adaper and standard monitor cable....Card came with this adapter?

Looking at the manual it shows a HDMI Black level setting....Did you try adjusting it?
 
Last edited:

zebrax2

Senior member
Nov 18, 2007
974
66
91
That thing looks pretty bad. Can't you ask for a replacement or exchange it for a different model?
 

Spicedaddy

Platinum Member
Apr 18, 2002
2,305
77
91
Backlight bleeding at the bottom...

That looks bad enough to warrant an exchange.
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,907
1,392
136
please stop judging monitors by these uncalibrated random exposure cellphone/PnS/disposable camera pics. The sensors on any consumer level camera are so small the only way to get a black lcd screen to show up on the automatic exposure settings is for the camera to blast the fstop and shutter to timbuktu.

I can take a picture of a black field on beautifully calibrated lcd, and with auto exposure will get something worse looking than the op's. It would take a HDRI multi exposure and custom balancing to replicate what the human eye actually sees, and no one ever does that.

every time you tell someone to ship it back because of these backlight bleed flaws, you are costing them time and money for what will likely be another unit with the same effect.
Unless someone has access to a colorimeter, they are just chasing their own tails. If the user hasnt even done basic gamma correction, the brightness, contrast, and color settings are just going to tweek each other out of balance.
 
Last edited:

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,907
1,392
136
OP
go to lagom.nl and go through the basic sequence. when you are done report the results. you dont need to do the response time or real contrast ratio parts, just the gamma and contrast/brightness tuning.
 

zebrax2

Senior member
Nov 18, 2007
974
66
91
please stop judging monitors by these uncalibrated random exposure cellphone/PnS/disposable camera pics. The sensors on any consumer level camera are so small the only way to get a black lcd screen to show up on the automatic exposure settings is for the camera to blast the fstop and shutter to timbuktu.

I can take a picture of a black field on beautifully calibrated lcd, and with auto exposure will get something worse looking than the op's. It would take a HDRI multi exposure and custom balancing to replicate what the human eye actually sees, and no one ever does that.

every time you tell someone to ship it back because of these backlight bleed flaws, you are costing them time and money for what will likely be another unit with the same effect.
Unless someone has access to a colorimeter, they are just chasing their own tails. If the user hasnt even done basic gamma correction, the brightness, contrast, and color settings are just going to tweek each other out of balance.

From the OP:

I took a pic, with manual setting with camera to make sure its a picture of what im seeing, of a black picture. Is that much normal?

It looks the OP actually tried to make the picture as close as possible to what he is seeing
 

Spicedaddy

Platinum Member
Apr 18, 2002
2,305
77
91
Pictures might not be accurate and a black screen in a dark room will never be completely black on any LCD, but you can see the uniformity on that monitor looks horrible. Anyways, the OP felt it was bad enough to make a thread about it, so I doubt calibrating it will fix the problem.

Monitor quality varies... I ordered 3 Dell U2311H last week. One is flawless, one is decent and just has slight backlight bleed but not enough to worry, the third one has so much backlight bleed that blacks look blue, and shows a weird vertical line when displaying a green background. It looks like crap when put besides the other 2, but someone ordering just one monitor might not even notice.
 

hawtdawg

Golden Member
Jun 4, 2005
1,223
7
81
I have a 23 inch LED samsung, and ive never been very impressed by the blacks tbh.
 

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
9,517
2
81
www.hammiestudios.com
How much did the monitor cost you ? That thing must have been near 1000 dollars. ?

Also I believe your LED is 5ms ... daz no good for gaming .. My mon feels like my old Sony 24" CRT ,,, soo fast soo smooth....but bad part about samsung is their tv and pc and other stuff the color changes at different angles. If you stand up its bright and nice,, you sit down it gets all dark... anyhow..
 
Last edited:

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
14,539
428
136
How much did the monitor cost you ? That thing must have been near 1000 dollars. ?

Also I believe your LED is 5ms ... daz no good for gaming .. My mon feels like my old Sony 24" CRT ,,, soo fast soo smooth....but bad part about samsung is their tv and pc and other stuff the color changes at different angles. If you stand up its bright and nice,, you sit down it gets all dark... anyhow..

Not sure if troll or just stupid...
 

traxxxton

Junior Member
Nov 5, 2008
12
0
0
After more adjustments and using it this weekend I find that im ok with this monitor. The blacks still are not great, but at this point im good with it. Im going to keep it.

BTW, I got this at BB for $399.

Also, in response to gorobei, I tried the included program and online sites to calibrate the monitor. The camera is Sony's new DSC-HX9V with manual settings. I took about 15 pics and used the one that looks closest to what my eyes saw.
 
Last edited:

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,509
12
0
dennilfloss.blogspot.com
I have a bit of backlight bleed at the bottom of my monitor too but it's only noticeable when the room is darkened and I look at a full black screen. I've finally decided that it's near impossible to get a monitor that is flawless and I can easily ignore this little flaw. Stuck pixels, on the other hand, would be killer for me.
 
Last edited:

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
561
126
Hey, OP - I was in the same boat as you. Bought that monitor after reading tons of reviews of monitors in my price range for that size.

Out of the box the black were ATROCIOUS to the point I almost didn't want to keep the monitor.

The MagicTune software is literally garbage and Samsung should be ashamed for even using it, and I found that I had to download the specific Win 7 64bit version off the internet, and after a week it would just throw "MagicTune Doesn't work with your Operating System" errors so I said screw it.

I used my ATI's control panel to adjust the monintor. Make sure you turn on full range 4:4:4 in the options, limited and TV (or whatever the third option was) produced bad blacks too. Also, try the HDMI black levels option as osmeone said here if you are using HDMI (chance is you are since the monitor only has HDMI/VGA inputs - another bad move haha.)

Don't give up tinkering with the options. My blacks now are as black as I can get and compared to day 1, it is night and day difference (pun intended :p)
 

xslavic

Junior Member
Mar 4, 2013
2
0
0
HTPC colours washed out unsharp for AMD APU Nvidia Hdmi 1.3 1.4 1.4a output Mini ITX or whatever

For colours to be accurate you have to set
1. Hdmi input of tv label to pc
2. Choose tv colour spacing bt. 709
3. set gamma on tv at maximum ,at least 2.35 for THX certification
4. Use YCbCr 4:4:4 on hdmi out
5. Calibrate all

Also madAVR settings has advanced calibration feature for TV's but dont touch colour profiles use BT 709