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Throwing DisplayMate at the 305T did nothing to diminish my high opinion of this monitor. I’ve seen very few displays that have put in a better performance than this one. Both colour and greyscale gradations were smooth as silk, while the Colour Bars test showed no signs of compression at the high intensity end, but still managed a completely uniform tail off at the low intensity end. But where the 305T really excelled was in the Scaled Fonts test, where even 6.8 point text was clearly readable, with every letter perfectly formed and every curve smooth and well resolved.

Video is also surprisingly good on the 305T, considering that there’s a massive amount of scaling going on. Even 1080p high definition content comes nowhere near the native resolution of this screen, so the fact that video still looks pretty damn impressive is testament to the electronics driving this huge panel.

There’s also very little in the way of motion smearing in evidence when watching video. This is testament to the quoted 6ms grey-to-grey response time, which is quite low for a screen of this size. Also impressive is the 1000:1 contrast ratio, which is well above the average LCD monitor and higher than some LCD high definition TVs. Of course the latest generation of LCD TVs have started quoting dynamic contrast ratios, due to the use of dynamic backlight technology, but it’s worth remembering that this is primarily a data monitor, not a video display.

But even general Windows work on the 305T is an absolute joy. You can just have so many windows open concurrently, without needing to overlap everything. If, like me, you constantly have loads of active windows on your desktop, a screen with this kind of resolution gives productivity a real boost, and doesn’t leave you wishing that you were working on a Mac with its Exposé function.

When I reviewed the Apple 30in Cinema Display I complained about the total lack of adjustment, with the screen sitting too high for comfortable viewing. Thankfully Samsung has equipped the 305T with height adjustment, allowing me to drop the panel as low as it will go in order to achieve a pretty much perfect viewing angle. There’s also a pivot-pad built into the stand, so the screen will pan left and right with minimum effort. The panel will also tilt forwards and backwards, again helping the end user to achieve that all important ideal viewing angle.

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