172x Deja Vu Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

A couple months back we took a look at the Samsung 172x and today we take a look at the Samsung 172x again. Contrary to a some other reviews, we were unimpressed by Samsung's flagship 17" LCD. One of our main concerns was the premium price- in November the going rate was $580 USD and the average selling price is still around that range, which makes it one of the most expensive 17" LCDs on the market.

The price premium on the 172x was due to its claimed response time of 12ms and that was the area with which we had the harshest criticism of the 172x. During the review of the original 172x, Andy, one of our writers and long term LCD users commented that the 172x's refresh rate was "not a whole lot better than my current 151s", a pretty damning statement since the 151 had a 25 ms refresh rate. Of particular note was the amount of ghosting present in first person shooter games. As for me, being from a CRT background, the lack of crispness in the previous 172x during fast movement was something that was extremely distracting and made me slightly nauseous.

Today we take a look at the 172x again; not the original one that we had a few months ago, but a new one that is a significant improvement over our original sample of this product. We will examine what went wrong with the original sample, how it is subsequently remedied in the new model that we received, how this affects our original review and most importantly, how it affects you, the consumer.