Samsung 19in Lapfit LD190 LCD

Product: LD190G 19in LCD Lapfit Display
Provided By: Samsung Canada
Price: Find Lowest Price Online

Introduction:

Samsung is no stranger to the LCD market, and they've had some great products and well as some that were not very impressive and even a few that were pretty controversial.  Today we are looking at a new display from them that breaks the mold in terms of standard features.  We have the 19" LD190G "Lapfit Display" on our bench today.  This display brings one main interesting features - it can be connected to your PC either by standard VGA or a USB2.0 connection.  Keep that in mind as we jump in.

Front

Back

First Impressions:

When Samsung offered us a chance to look at the LD190, I made sure not to look to deeply into reviews so that I would be unbiased when this little display showed up.  My first impressions were that the LCD was certainly very glossy - both the screen and the plastic housing.  The buttons on the front are all touch sensitive and the only button you can actually see is the power button.  This button is recessed while the other buttons appear "as if by magic" when you run your finger over the lower right side of the bezel.

Bundle

The LD190 came bundled with a power cord, USB cable and a standard VGA cable as well as a quick install guide and a software CD for driver installation.  If you plan on using the standard VGA only, you won't need the driver CD, but if you plan to run the unit off the USB cable, the latest (non-beta) drivers are on the CD.  I installed the LD190 on my laptop which is currently running Windows 7 and the installer stated that my OS was not supported.  It suggested that I check over at DisplayLink and find a beta driver.  Indeed, a Windows 7 driver was available and I was up and running within minutes.

In terms of other operating systems, the Samsung LD190 works under Apple's OSX and there is a community project for Linux support as well.

Closer Look:

As stated previously the main focus of this display is for connecting to a laptop, and there are really not many exciting physical features on this unit.  A couple things worth noting are the video ports as well as the menu buttons however.

Video Ports

Menu Buttons

The overall look and feel of this LCD is very slick and the only thing that may be a drawback is the lack of a height adjustable stand.  As you could see at the top of this page, the stand mimics a desktop picture frame.

On the next page we'll take a look at the specifications before we dive into testing.