Features:
With it's compact 18.5" screen size, fold-out stand and fairly inexpensive price tag, Samsung is marketing this display towards notebook users. At the same time, I think this display could also be heavily marketed towards netbook users and especially net-top users as well. It does boast both USB and regular VGA inputs, which is why I also suggest is as a perfect mate for a net-top because a USB display can not be the primary display on a system (because it requires driver installation before it will operate).

Rather than having an elevated stand, which would situate the display far higher than your laptop, Samsung has opted to set the monitor flat your desk and have a rear fold-out support to keep it upright at a slight angle. This kept it on perfect level to use fluidly with my laptop without feeling like I was moving my eyes between two different heights when switching between the two. When paired up with a net-top and wireless keyboard/mouse on a desk, the look is clean and minimalist - sure to fit great into any style of room or dorm where a huge monitor is simply not needed.

The entire body of this display is gloss piano black - a fairly common trend we're starting to see from Samsung. To my surprise, the screen was also covered in a non-reflective gloss coating. Those that read my reviews enough will know that I am a huge fan of gloss-coated screens because of the extra intensity the gloss adds to the colours.

The back of the monitor only has the fold out stand, there's no wall mounting for this monitor. The connections include VGA, USB and a standard power connector. As I mentioned earlier, even though it's marketed as a USB display, it will also run as a regular VGA display too.

The patent for the USB display interface is owned and maintained by a company called DisplayLink. I was blown away to see that they have drivers and support for Windows, Mac OS and even Linux! The upcoming Windows 7 has also been supported since it's early Beta stage - now that's good customer support! Samsung does not carry the DisplayLink drivers on their own website so I had to go straight to the DisplayLink site for updated versions.

For primarily targeting laptop users as the buyers of choice for this display, I was quite surprised to see that Samsung still spec'd it pretty nicely. A static contrast ratio of 1000:1 is fairly standard, but switch it into dynamic mode and you get up to 50000:1. Pair that up with a 5ms response time and 1360x768 resolution and you've got a nice little multimedia display on your hands!

Two other features worth pointing out about the LD190 are that it has a programmable off timer (I find it hard to find a serious use for this though - maybe if you're watching a movie before bed?) and it has an intelligent image size function that, if enabled, will always display images/videos in their proper aspect ratios to avoid stretching.