We did however notice that there was a dead pixel on our 204T, located in the middle right-half section of the screen. This is disappointing as we have never reviewed a display from Samsung with a dead pixel on it until now. Perhaps we were just fortunate or lucky. Either way, when a buyer forks over $550 for a monitor they should be confident that it will be free of dead pixels. Samsung does have a 3 year warranty on their products though so getting this pixel fixed is definitely an option for anyone annoyed enough by it to do so.

Overall, despite the first-time-ever dead pixel incident, the 204T is a great LCD display. The stand and hinge system for the screen allow perfect physical adjustment to users at any height. The included MagicRotation software performs its purpose well for those in need of a 'tall' display. VESA mount capability is also a feature very worthy of looking at for consumers or businesses looking for a on-the-wall display. At the time of writing the 204T can be found online for around $560.

Performance wise, honestly we were a little disappointed in the Barracuda 7200.9, considering the cache size has been doubled and the interface improved, the 7200.9 only puts up marginally better numbers in comparison to its predecessor. The 7200.9 is certainly competitive in today's 7200 RPM hard disk market, although other manufactures can deliver better overall performance in comparison to Seagate. This will likely be more of a factor once Western Digital starts delivering more of their SE16 drives to market and Maxtor starts shipments of their DiamondMax 11.

We should put the speed in perspective though. While competitors may have faster overall products in terms of disk read/write speeds, Seagate is shipping their drives at capacities up to half a terabyte, which these "faster" drives can't touch yet. Western Digital is still topping out at 400 GB, and as of writing this, Maxtor is peaking at 300 GB (although their upcoming DiamondMax 11 drives will hit 500 GB). Hitachi has a 500 GB drive with similar specs, but the design of Hitachi's' drive is less efficient, due to the use of less dense platters. The huge capacity of the drive doesn't make up for the drive's unremarkable performance, but it should be taken into account.