The Galaxy View is Samsung's new Movable Display, a category of devices that is somewhat experimental. Let's see what quality of screen you will get on a device that is priced at Euro 699. One can expect a great display for enjoying media, and we will find out if this is the case with the Galaxy View. (If you want to know how we measure our screens check here.)
The Galaxy View sports an 18.4-inch TFT LCD Full HD display (1920×1080 pixels) and a pixel density of around 120 ppi. It rocks a standard RGB pixel layout that you can see in the picture below; the size of the pixels is striking, as they are really big.
(We apologize for the unclear picture but the screen lies very deep in the device which makes it hard to get a clear photo of the pixels.)
Its Full HD resolution is something you could debate on. Samsung markets this as a movable display instead of a tablet, so it isn't meant for users to have the screen up close and personal. Still, if you are doing something like playing games, you will be doing this probably when the tablet is lying down, which is when you will notice the pixelation (see the picture below.) When looking at the display from a distance, it looks okay.
This screen has an automatic brightness setting, unlike many of the low-cost smartphones Samsung is making these days. So how does the screen perform in terms of brightness (measured in Nits)?
First of all, the screen has a maximum brightness of around 446 cd/m2 (nits) in manual brightness setting, and 500 cd/m2 in auto brightness. At the most dim setting, the screen can go as low as 25 cd/m2 in auto brightness mode, and as low as 5 cd/m2 in manual brightness.
What this means is that the screen isn't bad at all in terms of brightness, and you can read the display easily even in bright sunlight and not strain your eyes in dark conditions (of course, you are unlikely to use the Galaxy View under the sun as it would be too big to carry around outside.)
The screen lacks any screen modes since this is an LCD unit and not an AMOLED display. So what you see is what you get. But what exactly are you getting?
Let's find out in the graphs.
When we look at its color gamut and the colors in the sRGB color space, we can conclude that almost every color is off its target point. Especially with the whites and the greens, the color reproduction is really, really bad. That is what we see at the color error of the primary and secondary colors with a Delta E of 5.0 which isn't that great. The biggest errors of 9.x and 7.x are made in the white color range. That is why the white point is so much off target which you can see in the graph on the right lower side.
On the grayscale, we see that when the screen gets whiter it will lack more and more green; red and blue take the upper hand which results in a very cold feeling screen. The Grayscale color error is bad with a Delta E of 7.0. Its contrast ratio isn’t that great either, with a contrast ratio of 827.4:1 being very low. With a color temperature of almost 7,000 the screen is too cold, with 6509 being the sweet spot. The same rule applies here, with Samsung boosting blue in the whiter colors to make the screen more white.
Conclusion
One might expect a screen made solely for consuming media would be awesome. Yet the contrary is true here, both color errors are high and the screen lacks a lot of contract. The reason why Samsung opted for a Full HD display is beyong us. Pixelation is a real problem when you are up close to the screen. From a distance the screen looks good, at least in terms of sharpness. The same is true for Full HD displays as big as even 50 inches – they look good from a distance, yet when you up close you can spot all the pixels.
Samsung has explained to use that they have opted for such a display because of pricing, and that the Galaxy View would be too expensive if it had a Super AMOLED display. But we really hope they make the next movable display with at least a Quad HD AMOLED display; if corners need to be cut for pricing, the display shouldn't be the aspect that gets affected.
Here's hoping Samsung is reading this.
