The growing interest for widescreen monitor with 16:9 ratio is rising steadily as the PC and home electronics markets are moving closer together. The reason is mainly that the narrower 16:9 format fits better with video and how high definition formats are displayed. HD formats 720p/1080p use a width and height ratio of 16:9, which means that a monitor with 16:10 either has to cut the horizontal edges or leave black sorrow borders on top and below the video.
With a native 16:9 panel you can play high definition video at the right image ratio. Now that Samsung has launched a widescreen monitor with 16:9 ratio things are a bit different. The monitor uses a rather uncommon size panel, 23″, and the even more uncommon resolution of 2048×1152 pixels. This is hardly optimal when watching HD material since the resolution of the 1080p format is 1920×1080 pixels, but this is something Samsung has thought of.
Samsung has presented 2343BWX as an office monitor and says that it can display two A4 documents (1024 pixels wide) next to each other. I certainly wouldn’t mind being able to hold two documents at the same time on the monitor, but I guess a 1920×1200 monitor handles this quite well too.
In either case, Samsung has not sacrificed any of the other specifications just to find a niche on the office market. The image ratio and its suitability for HD material, 20 000:1 contrast ratio along with 5ms response time are further emphasized by Samsung to broaden the appeal of 2343BWX.
