LED illumination for both TVs and monitors has been gathering pace recently, with Samsung's XL2370 the latest we've seen to make use of the advantages LEDs offer over traditional cathode backlights. Firstly, they're dimmable, which means you get good contrast and secondly, they use much lower power, which means you won't make the polar bears sad.
At 23 inches, the XL2370 is a good size for a PC monitor, and its 16:9 ratio and 1080p resolution mean it's likely to appeal to people who work with video, or those who watch loads of movies.
LED illumination also means the monitor can be incredibly thin and light -- which not only looks glorious, but might be an advantage for people wanting to wall-mount it or use an articulated arm. The only downside is that the stand provided feels rather flimsy, and the mounting socket can wobble quite a bit. Still, as long as it's just sitting on your desk, it's unlikely stability will be a problem. The stand also features quite a basic tilt mechanism, but it does work, and it's not uncommon for some monitors to omit this crucial feature.
Samsung claims the XL2370 has a response time of 2ms, which is excellent if you're a gamer. Our computer, being from the age of Noah and his Ark, won't play games, so we didn't have a chance to fire up an FPS to test it out -- but we have watched 1080p video on it, and it's truly beautiful. If you do want to watch video, there are both HDMI and DVI connections, which mean you could connect a Blu-ray player and a PC at the same time.
We've used the XL2370 every day now for more than a week, and we have to say, we're in love. It's easy on the eyes and out-performs pretty much any other monitor we've seen recently. At £300 or so, it's a little more expensive than we'd like, but even so, we're actually tempted to cough up our own moolah to buy one of these.
A full review of the Samsung SyncMaster XL2370 is available now in our monitor reviews channel, but click through for some more hands-on photos showing just how skeletally thin it is.