Sampo ST9MI

The ST9MI is a 19in TFT screen from Sampo, a Taiwan-based electronics company. Our first impressions of the screen were rather mixed. It has a fairly attractive silver colour scheme but its curved outer bezel is far thicker than most modern displays, making it unsuitable for use in a multi-monitor arrangement.

Its base also lets it down. The screen can swivel and tilt but there is no pivot option for twisting it into a portrait orientation. It has a set of integrated speakers but this is the case with most monitors and these are rather poor - certainly no replacement for a set of desktop speakers.

The ST9MI's picture quality is very disappointing. Colours looked washed out thanks to some unusually high colour saturation. Images with light colours (white in particular) tended to lose a lot of detail, so if you plan on doing any image editing or website design we'd recommend you look elsewhere.

DVD playback was more satisfactory but, because of the high saturation, blacks looked slightly faded and scenes with a lot of light looked rather harsh. The monitor has both analogue and digital inputs but only an analogue cable is supplied, which rather negates the point.

When using the analogue connection, users may have to use the auto-adjust feature to restore the picture to normal, as it can lose synchronisation and become slightly distorted over long periods of use.

To its credit, the on-screen menu is very easy to use. Changing the display options in many flat-panel monitors can be a tiresome experience but the ST9MI has a logical four-button layout that users can get to grips with in seconds.

Judging by its lacklustre performance, we expected this monitor to be inexpensive. However, at £420 it is very pricey in comparison with other 19in monitors. The CTX P972L costs almost £100 less and offers far superior performance. Even less expensive are 17in displays and they provide the same amount of screen area (1,280 x 1,024 pixels) as the ST9MI.

With all this taken into account, we would find it very difficult to recommend the Sampo ST9MI.

Contact:
Sampo (no UK number)
www.sampotech.com