The Samsung M8 monitor is a 32” monitor that’s been designed to actually look
nice in a home office, plus it has a detachable webcam, and most importantly,
this monitor doubles as a smart TV. But for $700, is it actually worth the price? First,
let's take a look at that smart TV feature, This functionality after 6 months of owning this
display is what has stood out to me the most and it’s a feature that makes a ton of sense if you
have a desk in your bedroom and don’t also have a TV. It supports HDR10 though not Dolby Vision,
supports all the major TV streaming apps you’d expect and even has Samsung TV Plus
which offers live free content with no downloads or sign-ups, pretty cool.
Now, if this monitor didn't come with a remote, the TV viewing experience would
suck. But thankfully Samsung did include a remote and it's actually pretty great. And
the remote also makes navigating the monitor’s menus to set it up very easy. The monitor also
has Alexa built in, so you can control your smart home, or get weather information,
right from the display and because it has Amazon’s assistant built in,
you can also use the Assistant to turn on and off the display as well.
The other thing i really like about this monitor is it's overall design, it comes in different
colors to match your room’s aesthetic, and looks like someone actually put some thought into the
aesthetics where most monitors just typically look either cheap or ugly. The height adjustment
with the monitor stand works well although the tilt mechanism feels a bit janky, but overall,
I’m a fan of this design, especially the removable webcam that even comes with its own removable cap.
So that's what I like about the display. But now,
let's talk about why that display is not the one currently sitting on my desk and
that's because over the past six months, I just ran into too many downsides with the
M8 for it to be the main display that I use for my everyday computing tasks.
The first downside I found is speaker quality, its OK but not great like my Studio Display’s
speakers. So if you want to do a lot of TV watching on it, you might be tempted to buy
better speakers to help improve the sound quality, which is what I would do in this scenario.
Unfortunately, this is a bit more challenging because Samsung did not
put an audio out jack on this monitor, which limits the type of speakers you
could potentially set up with it. Now, I've seen some people have tried to use
wi-fi speakers cast audio somehow from the M8 to those or bluetooth.
I've seen a lot of people try to do this but also report back problems with going
the Bluetooth route, which makes sense. Because in my experience almost always,
when you try to get audio from a display to bluetooth speakers, something inevitably goes
wrong. So I almost always think it is not worth the purchase going the Bluetooth speaker route.
The second downside I found with this display is the camera quality. The
resolution of the camera looks OK, but the color processing just looks bad,
which really sucks because the hardware design of the camera overall is actually pretty great.
I think Apple's continuity camera idea for webcams is actually a much better solution.
If you have an iphone, you get a larger megapixel sensor from the
iPhone’s rear camera system paired with best-in-class image processing for video.
Also, the mic quality, it's just okay. Another downside to be aware of with this monitor is
how Samsung designed the ports in the back, if you’re often unplugging chords to switch
USB-C inputs, it can be a real pain, unlike on other monitors like my Studio Display.
Also the included usb c cable is going to be too short if you plan to use this monitor, with a
desktop sitting on the floor or with your desk or if you plan to use it with a standing desk.
The next downside I found with this monitor, and this is a big one, is actually picture
quality and color accuracy. Color accuracy out of the box just isn't great. I could
never feel like I could get this monitor to look as good as some other monitors that I've used.
And this is the predominant reason why I purchased a Studio Display which out of the
box has great color, accuracy, white balance, and plus it's a 5k display. So it's going to look way
more crisp than the samsung m8 monitor, which is a larger display, but only 4k resolution.
The last two downsides I found with the M8 are one, if you put it on a standing desk,
I found the display can wobble more than the desk itself, which can be a bit annoying and lastly,
the M8 like a lot of monitors in this price range, comes with a power brick. This isn't
a big deal if your desk is stationary, but if it's a standing desk, like mine,
it's just going to be one more thing you have to cable manage and it weighs a good bit too.
Also, one last thing to keep in mind with the M8 that isn’t a true dealbreaker is
the setup experience can actually take a bit longer than a traditional monitor
and is a bit more involved because of some of it’s included smart TV features. For example,
if you want to set it up with your phone, you’ll need to download the
Samsung SmartThings app. But thankfully you can just use the included remote to
do this as well. So those are all of the downsides I found with the M8 monitor.
Now let's talk about who I think this monitor is for. The Samsung M8 monitor I think would be a
good monitor for somebody that really prioritizes the aesthetic of how their monitor looks in their
room and isn't very picky when it comes to display quality, mic quality, or especially speaker
quality. You want a big screened monitor with nice atheistic, plus it can double as a smart TV.
Where the M8 falls down for me, of course, is with display quality out of the box. It's
just not as good as some competing monitors from other brands like Dell and LG. Plus the
sound output options should be better given how central the Smart TV functionality is to
the value proposition of the M8. If you only need a computer monitor and you don't care at
all about the smart TV features, I think you can definitely skip out on the samsung M8 monitor,
especially if you're like me and you need to do a lot of photo and video editing on
a Mac. even though its more than double the price, the Studio Display in my experience
has been a great display for that scenario and we just recently reviewed it, link down below.
If you’d like to purchase a Samsung M8 or one of the other monitors I’ve mentioned,
I've left purchase links here in this video and in the description below so you can see
up-to-date pricing information for the M8 and the other monitors mentioned. Hit that thumbs
up button if you like this video and subscribe to the channel to see more long-term reviews
like this one. And if you're looking for what to watch next, check out some of our other reviews
by clicking on the playlist to the right. For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.