14 DAY TRIAL // If you remember CEBIT 2007 then you probably also remember the fact that Samsung's booth was one of the best places to be due to the fact that the display manufacturer decided to show off the first USB displays. At the moment the displays produced quite a stir but in time people forgot about the whole deal and came back to more traditional ways of fueling their displays.
However, as it turns out, the UX series is not dead but actually it is ready for mass release. What that means is pretty simple. In a matter of months you will have the possibility of buying your own USB monitor. And the best part is that you won't need any display adapters.
The guys at Xbitlabs were the first to review this particular panel and what they found out about it was at the same time interesting but also different from the announced capabilities of the device. And the most important change was the fact that aside from the USB support the monitor also comes with full VGA and DVI support.
The 940UX uses a lossless compression chip in order to send all that data through an USB 2.0 connection (480Mbps would be enough for 640x480 @ 60fps in uncompressed mode so a compression method has to be used in order to achieve higher resolutions and frame rates). The DL-120 (Display Link) used on the 940UX works like a charm in office environment but the lack of video acceleration can be a problem in some cases.
The TN panel is rather slow (16ms to 34ms in typical tests, 5ms rated) and the color gamut is also modest for a 1280x1024 panel. However the contrast is pretty high for an inexpensive monitor and the color temperature is also very accurate. If you plan to use this very monitor for office tasks it will work perfectly but that's where the story stops. Multimedia tasks such as movies in full screed up load of a decent CPU (low end AMD dual core such as the 3800+ X2) by about 10-15%.
And if you also take into account the fact that the Display Link is purely a 2D solution you will understand that performance under Windows Vista is even poorer. Evidently the lack of 3D support will translate into no Aero or 3D games that can't be emulated in Direct Draw (and even those that can be will look like slide shows). Price wise, the 940UX will be available for about $600.
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