The “coming soon” Samsung S27E370DS (or SE370 if you prefer brevity) will make history by being the first ever 27-inch monitor, or monitor period, to provide wireless mobile charging using Qi wireless charging tech.
Samsung S27E370DS – a Fresh Approach
The monitor game these days is all about who can add the coolest features and provide the clearest picture. In this department the Samsung S27E370 doesn’t look like it will disappoint. Though the resolution isn’t as high as it should be there are enough features in this bad boy to make it worth considering.
So if you’re in the market for a new 27 inch PC monitor, read our breakdown of this monitor below and see if it might just be the right one for you.
Mobile Wireless Charging
Before we get into specs let’s talk about wireless mobile charging
Qi tech is really the go-to tech for wireless charging these days. As long as your phone is 1.6 inches or closer it’ll charge. The SE370 has Qi tech built right into the monitor stand. It’s simply a matter of laying your phone on the wireless charging pad and letting it do its thing.
Now of course the fairly new Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are QI-enabled making it a perfect match for the Samsung monitor. Unfortunately, the iPhone isn’t Qi-enabled though there have been rumors that Apple has been toying around with the idea.
But don’t fret, there are plenty of other mobile phones that can take advantage of this great feature. Phones such as the LG Spectrum 2, HTC Droid DNA, Google Nexus 7 and the newly announced Lumia 950 and 950 XL by Microsoft.
Let’s take a look at the specs to see how it holds up in other areas.
Specs
- 27-inch screen from corner to corner
- Resolution is 1,920 x 1,080
- The screen display is backlit by LED
- Response time is 4ms which is superb
- Refresh Rate is 60 Hz
It’s a PLS panel which stands for Plane-to-Line Switching. Basically this is Samsung’s IPS panel. They can’t call it IPS because LG has that trademarked. The PLS panel offers great viewing angles which comes in handy if you have several people huddled around the monitor.
The connectivity on the back looks like this:
- 1 Display port 1.2
- 1 HDMI 1.4
- 1 VGA port
So the connectivity isn’t fantastic but it’ll get you where you need to go. It’s missing at least one more HDMI port and a USB port would be nice as we definitely haven’t outgrown that technology yet. But this seems to be typical with Samsung monitors.
Let’s talk about FreeSync
Gamers have a particularly big problem on their hands when it comes to refresh rate (first world problems, I know). Basically they are faced with the tough choice of choosing to allow image frames to be sent to their monitors the second they are rendered resulting in tearing when the monitor hasn’t refreshed yet or waiting for everything to be ready resulting in input lag.
It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. What AMD FreeSync tech does is get rid of screen tearing without causing input lag. I won’t bore you with the details of how this works technically but since monitors started shipping with FreeSync back in March 2015 they’ve been very popular, especially with gamers.
What’s the SE370 going to be good for?
While the Samsung SE370 hasn’t been released yet it’s safe to isolate the types of things it’ll work well with based off the specs that have been announced.
First the PLS is a great feature and so will allow for a rich color experience as well as good viewing angles. As we mentioned FreeSync makes it a gamer’s dream.
Here’s what it will work well with:
- Gaming
- Video editing
- Photo editing
- Video watching
- General office or home use
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- FreeSync for a fluid gaming experience
- Qi wireless charging pad for ease of charging your phone with one less wire
Cons:
- 1080p resolution? It just doesn’t make sense why in 2015 anyone would go for the absolute minimum acceptable quality in such a competitive market.
- The wireless charging pad doesn’t work with the iPhone but that’s more a knock on Apple than on Samsung.
Price
There’s no news on price or release date just yet. Though the S24E370DL, which is the 24-inch version, will be released on November 13th. It’ll fetch for $249.99 so don’t expect the S27E370DS to go for too much more.
Summary
While the SE370 isn’t available yet to be scrutinized and raked over the coals, we have enough information to make an educated guess at its quality. It looks like it’ll work pretty well for gaming despite the low resolution. But hey that Qi wireless charging pad ain’t nothing to shake a stick at, offering something unique that no other monitor has.
