The base is extremely spartan and does not have any of the things we have seen on Samsung's larger products, like a roller ring for spinning it in place or guides for cable routing. Given the size and weight of this display these are not sorely missed, but once you start seeing features like this on Samsung's higher end gear, you want to see on the rest. Some features eventually trickle down, but not all of them, and certainly not all at once.
The connections on the rear of the monitor include DVI, VGA, and a standard power plug. The 931BF's no frills approach follow through to this area of the display though a removable back panel can hide the connections and wiring. Installing the 931BF is an easy task, it is just a matter of making the DVI or VGA connection and then plugging in a power cable. Due the the lack of room around the DVI/VGA connections a screwdriver might be needed to tighten them, but that should be the only impediment.
Once the monitor was connected to the computer's DVI port the 931BF was fired up. The silver metal button has a great feel to it and it looks even cooler when the blue semi-circle from the LED shines through under it. Since a monitor's power button does not get used very often, this piece is really just eye candy but I don't think Samsung will be getting any complaints about it. Once the monitor was turned on and warmed up, the image did not disappoint. On paper the 931BF does not really excel in any area, but Samsung knows how to make a nice 19" LCD and it shows.
The image is crisp from the high contrast ratio and the color is not perfect, but it is very satisfying. At times the color looks a bit washed out but this is something that can be adjusted using a MagicTune, the integrated software for managing the monitor, as well as MagicColor. This display also support MagicBright, a system of preset brightness settings that can be changed very quickly in order to adjust to a different task, such as reading text vs. watching a movie. This has a new dynamic setting which adjusts according to what is on the screen- this seemed effective but the change was sometimes too noticeable and it could be annoying if you are overly sensitive to that sort of thing.
As far as other aspects, the display performed nicely. The 2ms response time means that ghosting/blurring were not and issue and the 160/160 viewing angles are not industry-leading, but they are enough for a monitor of this size. No backlight bleeding was detected which is very good because a Samsung monitor I used recently had an issue with this (though it was a widescreen model).
