I have so much to say about this monitor. This is the Samsung Smart Monitor M7 in black color and it is 43-inches in size – but the size is a personal preference so that’s not my concern for today.
What I want to highlight is the term “smart monitor”. It’s a combination of a conventional monitor with “smartness” from your smart TV. Think of this as a desktop monitor with an Android TV stick plugged into the HDMI port.
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I’ve been using this as my work monitor for the past 2-3 weeks or so and today, I’m going to share my user experience with you today.
So, this monitor can be viewed from three different perspectives – either as a monitor for my computer, another as a TV, and lastly as a “smart TV”. In my opinion, it’s first and foremost a smart TV that has some special features to make it play nice with other devices and peripherals.
As a smart TV, this TV runs your basic Samsung Tizen smart TV operating system and it has all the features you expect. I’m only going to briefly show you the features available because there are a lot of them and we’ve talked about them in other videos – so check them out here.
But, the M7 also has an updated interface. It now uses the same interface as the Samsung Freestyle projector – and all of the same issues are present here as well. Adding app shortcuts to the home screen is still annoying, though.
What makes the Smart Monitor M7 “smart” – I think – is the addition of web services. It’s… essentially a bookmark shortcut that leads you directly to Office 365’s website. You log in and start doing work.
I also plugged in my keyboard and mouse to the TV directly to do my work as well – and they work as intended. To test how feasible this setup really is, I decided to upload our entire battery charging graph Excel sheet into Office 365 and tried to do some editing via the Smart Monitor M7.
And the performance is just too laggy. I mean, sure, I can modify the graph but it’s just super slow. It’s so slow that even my phone is faster in processing those graphs.
So, I decided to then plug in my laptop to the monitor and use it as a monitor instead. Since this Smart Monitor M7 comes with a USB-C port, I plugged that into the laptop and voila, it immediately picked up and charged the laptop too. Plus, the keyboard and mouse that were connected to the monitor also work for my laptop too. That means this monitor has an included KVM and that’s great!
As a monitor, it’s a 4K monitor with a VA panel with a maximum of 60Hz refresh rate. Pretty standard in terms of a desktop monitor, actually. Its overall color and whatnot are good so I got no complaints about the visual quality.
However, I have complaints about the audio experience. You see, this Smart Monitor M7 has integrated speakers and they don’t sound particularly good. To have a listen at the audio quality of this Samsung Smart Monitor M7 43-inch, watch our video at the top of this review.
And we’re also stuck with these speakers too. The Smart Monitor M7 doesn’t have any ports for external speakers like a basic audio jack or RCA or optical audio ports. What we can use, are Bluetooth speakers. And that is horrible in terms of audio latency.
So if I want to do something like video editing using this Smart Monitor M7, it’s either that I have to deal with the horrible audio latency that Bluetooth devices bring forth, or I am forced to use the horrible built-in speakers.
Essentially, the Samsung Smart Monitor M7 43-inch only has these ports:
- 2x HDMI 2.0 ports
- 3x USB 2.0 Type-A
- 1x USB Type-C that I have no idea what’s the speed but it does carry keyboard, mouse, and display data while also charges the laptop as well.
Samsung also included a USB Type-C to Type-C cable in the box, by the way.
Then, Mr. John said why not use the monitor by segmentizing the display? Use the top half for Netflix through the smart TV, and the bottom half is to be used for my laptop?
That, unfortunately, is impossible. The Tizen OS only allows us to split the monitor in this way. And yet, the most I can do is to use it in picture-in-picture mode. But that is also limited by the fact that I can’t use Netflix in PiP mode.
So okay, I can select YouTube but whoops I can’t use the HDMI output alongside YouTube in PiP mode together. This makes me question the purpose of the “smart” aspect. Wouldn’t it be better to just buy a basic TV and plug in a laptop or desktop then?
Technically, yes. I would personally prefer to get a desktop monitor and plug in whatever devices I want instead. Granted, this Smart Monitor M7 does come with an extra fancy feature called “ultrawide game view” that changes the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 21:9 by adding black bars to the top and bottom. Not sure if anyone will actually want that since movies and games can already add black bars for you anyway.
And that also brings up the concern regarding cost. If I am to get this 43-inch Samsung Smart Monitor M7 only, it is priced at RM2,888. As a holistic experience, it is actually self-sufficient. You can watch Netflix, YouTube, listen to music on Spotify, and even do some Microsoft office work, even if it is laggy.
If I bring back the argument of attaching a phone or a desktop or a laptop to some other monitor, then the price is going to balloon up. So, I think there are some people who will benefit from getting Samsung Smart Monitor M7.
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