 Welcome to a very exciting unboxing. This is the Samsung Syncmaster something or other S27A850D. So Samsung's not real great at naming their monitors in a way that is like, you know, dresses it up. You know, it's like a numeric numbering scheme. However, if they were going to call this something, they would call it the Samsung display that might actually get Linus to change his monitor. That's right. So I actually have a 305T Plus that I bought way back in the day, so 30 inch monitor. So I'm not going to be getting a resolution upgrade. I'm not going to be getting a size upgrade. This is a 27 inch display with a 2560 by 1440 resolution. So yes, for you purists out there, this is a 16 by 9 monitor. It is not 16 by 10. However, I would argue that once you get up to this kind of a size at this kind of a resolution, it starts to matter a lot less because you have that outstanding vertical space to work with, regardless of whether you're using 16 by 9 or 16 by 10. Just going to pull all the accessories out here and we're going to proceed with the unboxing. Very slim, very low profile stand. I'm already impressed with that. So why am I so excited about this when I already have a 305T? And the answer is that this monitor uses a new display technology called PLS. So you guys are probably familiar with MVA, PVA, IPS, and TN. IPS until now, certain kinds of IPS, have been the highest quality displays in terms of color reproduction, in terms of vibrancy, in terms of viewing angles. So whether you look at it from here or from here or from here, IPS has delivered the best experience. Now VA is sort of a second but not that far away alternative to IPS with the advantage of being less expensive. And finally, TN is fast. TN is fine for gamers who don't care about the color accuracy and are more concerned with less motion blur, which is often referred to as ghosting, but that's a misnomer. They're actually different things. So less motion blur, but it does not deliver a very satisfying experience for professionals who are doing video or photo editing or who are concerned about color accuracy in any way at all. Honestly, I'm not a big TN advocate. My monitor is a VA panel. Some of the high end 30 inch monitors are IPS panels. So whatever. That's all neither here nor there at this point in time. Why am I excited about PLS? The reason for that is the first time I saw a PLS display was on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Now, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, if you watched my tablet round up, was what I declared to be hands down the best screen on any tablet. Yes, that includes the IPS displays on tablets like the Asus Transformer. It includes the IPS display on the iPad 2, which is widely regarded to be an excellent display, fantastic display in terms of color. Oh man, this is hard to assemble in midair like this. Okay, got it. In terms of color, in terms of viewing angle, just brightness, everything, just gorgeous, great display. And the Galaxy Tab 10.1 blew it out of the water, in my opinion. So let's have a look at this monitor and see sort of the aesthetic here that I think is, of what I think is going to be one of the most interesting monitors that I have ever unboxed or ever seen in action. So here we go. Pretty standard, pretty professional look. This is a business class monitor, so you're not going to find any sort of hint of color like designs or any of that consumer stuff. You got a black bezel, you got your on-screen display, navigation buttons here, there's your menu, there's your down, your up, your sensor, which is cool, okay, so it does have that sensor on it. So hold on, I'm not sure if on this particular monitor it senses whether you're in front of it or not. Give me a second, I'm going to find out. So yes, that's what I thought it was. That's the Ecomotion sensor, which will actually turn the monitor on when you sit in front of it and turn it off when you go away. Here we have the source selection and we've got our power, so there's not a whole lot of intrigue there. This has a nice finish to it though. So you can see this actually has like kind of a brushed look, although it's not made of aluminum, which is good because as soon as you touch it, it would put irremovable fingerprints all over it and then it would look horrible forever. Alright, let's turn it around and let's have a look at the thinness of the panel. So it is LED backlit, which is going to improve your power economy as well as improve the profile of it. So it's not super thick, but this is not sort of a repeat of their 3D monitor, which I have out there. That's okay, you can't really see it from here, which is almost as thin as an iPhone. Now, Samsung has not skimped on the I.O. for this particular panel. We have audio in, headphones out, a USB 3 hub, yeah, yeah, three USB 3 ports, there's your USB 3 in. So I'm very excited to see that included. Very much a next generation feature. Here we have our power in, our DVI in 2, DVI in 1, so you have dual DVI in, display port in. Having these kinds of input options is outstanding because remember this is a very high resolution panel, 2560 by 1440. That means that it requires a significant amount of processing in order to process those images on the fly. So, let's go ahead and turn it this way so you can see it has portrait mode, it has landscape mode, it's, I don't know if it, yeah, okay, so it turns this much and it turns this much, okay. And we've also got a height adjustable stand up to here and down to there. Let me just see if there's anything that I'm missing here in terms of what Samsung has to say for themselves. I haven't gone over the included accessories yet so I'm going to go ahead and, oh, it says it comes with four USB 3 ports. Well where's the last one then? Hold on, just a minute. I don't see another one. Okay, well we're going to say three for the time being and then perhaps it's four. It does come with a dual link DVI cable. Remember you will need a dual link compatible cable and dual link compatible video card because this is, once again, a very high resolution panel. It comes with the USB 3 A to B connector that you will need in order to hook up the monitor. And let me just have a look at what else we've got. So PLS technology, yes, PLS. Like I said, I can't emphasize this enough. Better than anything else out there in my limited experience so far, which is limited only because I was only able to see it in a tablet form factor. This is going to be the true acid test for me because this is a full size monitor with a nice matte screen because remember all those tablets are using glossy screens so I can truly evaluate it with a matte screen and I can compare it to IPS monitors and VA monitors that I have used in the past. So Samsung's claim for this particular display, which I did write down because I thought it pretty much summarized it, was that the new PLS technology delivers picture perfect and natural looking images for more accurate photo editing and more spectacular gaming. So yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I want you guys to stay tuned on my NCIXcom channel so that you can have a look at this thing in action because we are going to fire it up. Right now I don't really have the time but I'm going to actually use the thing, give you my impressions and let you know what I think of this PLS monitor. It is available in a couple of different sizes. We have the 27 inch here but it is also available in 24 inch and if you are interested in the specs so the 1000 to 1 dynamic contrast ratio, although I have to tell you guys that's very meaningless because something with a 30,000 to 1 contrast ratio can often not look as good as something with a legitimate 1000 to 1 contrast ratio. It just depends on how it's being rated. 5 millisecond grey to grey response time which is also completely meaningless. I will play some games on it. I'll let you guys know how it goes and that's pretty much it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos, especially of exciting stuff like this guy right here.