Samsung Smart Monitor M8 S32BM80 Monitor Review

The Samsung M8 is rather simplistic and it's available in four different color variants, but only the stand and front bezels change color as the back remains white. It shares many design similarities with the Apple Studio Display, like the shape of the stand. It has speakers on the back, a sensor for the remote on the lower right side of the screen, and a detachable webcam on top.

The build quality is decent. While it has a stylish design, it looks nicer than it feels. The screen can bend slightly when you try to tilt it and you aren't holding onto the sides, and the stand makes a creaking sound when you try to adjust it. The bezels are uneven throughout, and the plastic housing doesn't line up perfectly to the screen in some spots. Although these are minor issues and won't affect your daily usage, they can be noticeable if these things bother you easily.

The Samsung M8 Monitor has mediocre ergonomics. It's hard to put the screen in an ideal position, and you can't remove the stand to use a mounting arm, either. If you want a similar monitor that has a removable stand, you can look into the newer Samsung Smart Monitor M8/M80C S32CM80.

The back of this monitor is fairly plain with textured plastic, and you can see what the back looks like without the detachable camera here. There's a cutout in the stand for cable management.

The stand is basic and has a flat base so you can still put stuff on top of it, and it doesn't take up too much space on the desk.

This monitor comes with a remote to control the settings and navigate through the smart interface. It's a bit different from the remote that comes with Samsung TVs as it doesn't have a Multi View button, but it still has shortcut buttons to popular streaming services. There's a mic that allows you to search for content, and it supports both Alexa and Bixby voice assistants, but not Google Assistant. Also, the remote only comes in white, even if you get the pink, green, or blue variants. There's a joystick on the back to navigate the menu, but it's easier to use the remote.

• Webcam, privacy cover, and attachment
• USB-C cable
• Micro HDMI to HDMI cable
• Remote
• Power cable and brick
• User guides and manuals

The contrast ratio is excellent. It displays deep blacks, but it doesn't have a local dimming feature to further improve the contrast.

This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so that you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming.

The SDR peak brightness is great. It gets bright enough to fight glare in well-lit rooms, and the brightness is very consistent across different scenes. Sadly, the minimum brightness is a bit high, which can be annoying when using the monitor in a dark room if you're sensitive to bright lights.

These results are from after calibration in the 'Custom' Game Picture Mode with the input label set to 'PC', Game Mode enabled, and the Brightness at its max.

The Samsung M80B has just okay HDR peak brightness. It isn't bright enough to deliver a satisfying HDR experience as most small highlights don't pop against the rest of the image. It displays most scenes at their correct brightness, but there's a sharp roll-off at the peak brightness, causing a loss of fine details with bright objects.

These results are from the Game HDR mode with the input labelled as 'PC'. Even if you use other Picture Modes and label the input as 'Blu-ray', the peak brightness doesn't change much, and you don't get the same low input lag and clear text as you do in Game HDR with the input labeled as 'PC'. You can reach 390 cd/m² in Game HDR with the input labeled as 'Blu-ray', but it doesn't display chroma 4:4:4 in 'Blu-ray' mode, so it's best to keep it as 'PC' for the best monitor experience.

This monitor has a narrow horizontal viewing angle, meaning the image looks washed out from the sides. It isn't ideal if you want to watch something with someone sitting next to you.

This monitor's vertical viewing angle is poor, but this isn't much of a problem unless you're standing up and looking down at the screen.

The Samsung M80B has good gray uniformity. The edges of the screen are a bit darker than the rest, which is noticeable with web pages and documents open in full-screen mode. There's a bit of dirty screen effect in the center too, but it's minor.

This monitor has good black uniformity. Blooming is minimal around the center cross, but it doesn't have a local dimming feature to improve it.

The Samsung M8 has mediocre accuracy before calibration. Unlike other monitors, it doesn't have an sRGB mode, but you can instead adjust the Color Space Settings to 'Auto' to limit the colors to the sRGB color space in the 'Custom' Game Picture Mode. The 'Standard' Game Picture Mode performs similarly to 'Custom', while the 'FPS', 'RTS', and 'RPG' modes all have oversaturated colors.

The color temperature is close to the 6500K target with the Color Tone set to 'Standard', but setting it to 'Warm' or 'Cool' makes the image too warm or too cold. Sadly, most colors and the white balance are very off, and gamma doesn't follow the target sRGB curve at all, as most scenes are too bright. The Contrast, Sharpness, Color, and Tint were at their default settings during testing.

The accuracy after calibration is excellent, but it doesn't fix all issues. The monitor still doesn't cover all of the sRGB color space as the Color Space Settings was left on 'Auto', so some primary colors aren't as saturated as they should be, but the overall color accuracy and white balance are better than before calibration. You can see the 2-point white balance settings here.

The Samsung M8 Monitor has an excellent SDR color gamut. It has excellent coverage of the sRGB color gamut used in most web content, but it doesn't fill up the space entirely. It also has good coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing, but greens and reds are inaccurate.

This monitor has an incredible SDR color volume. It displays colors at a wide range of luminance levels well, but it doesn't display dark colors perfectly.

The HDR color gamut is very good. It has excellent DCI-P3 coverage, which is important as most HDR content uses that color space, but the tone mapping with pure white is off. Also, it isn't future-proof because it has limited Rec. 2020 coverage, and more content will start to use that color space.

This monitor's HDR color volume is great. It displays dark and bright colors well, but it's limited by the incomplete color gamut.

The Samsung M8 has decent reflection handling. There aren't any strong mirror-like reflections thanks to the matte finish, but it still struggles with strong light sources, like if you were to place it opposite a bright window.

The text clarity is incredible. Enabling Windows ClearType (top photo) makes letters appear bolder, but it isn't necessary. You need to make sure you set the input label to 'PC' for it to display proper chroma 4:4:4 for the clearest text possible.

The Samsung M80B has fantastic gradient handling. There's a bit of banding with darker shades, but otherwise, you won't see much banding. You can only achieve a 10-bit signal over the Micro HDMI input, as you can't get 10-bit via the USB-C input.

This monitor has a basic 60Hz refresh rate. You can only get 10-bit color depth via the Micro HDMI input. The USB-C port has an 8-bit color depth limit, even if you lower the resolution and refresh rate.

The Samsung M8 doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies.

The response time at the max refresh rate isn't bad, but motion still looks blurry with fast-moving objects. You can adjust the Response Time setting, and even though the three settings are all similar, leaving it on 'Standard' results in the least amount of overshoot.

This monitor doesn't support 120Hz signals.

As this monitor has a max refresh rate of 60Hz, these results are the same as at the max refresh rate.

The Samsung M8 Monitor doesn't have a backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

The backlight is completely flicker-free at all brightness levels, which helps reduce eye strain.

This monitor has low enough input lag for a responsive desktop experience as long as you're in Game Mode or have the input labeled as 'PC'. You get the same low input lag if you're in Game Mode with the input labeled as 'Blu-ray', or if you're outside of Game Mode with the input labeled as 'PC'. However, the input lag increases once you're out of Game Mode with the input labeled as anything but 'PC', causing noticeable delay.

This monitor works well with the PS5 for games up to 60 fps. It automatically switches into Game Mode when you start playing a game.

The Samsung Monitor M8 works as expected with the Xbox Series X|S. Like with the PS5, it has an Auto Low Latency Mode that automatically switches the monitor into Game Mode for low input lag.

The Samsung M8 comes with a Micro HDMI to HDMI cable, so you don't have to worry about getting an adapter if your device uses HDMI.

One of the USB-C inputs supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, which allows you to display an image from a compatible device and charge at the same time. The other USB-C input is for data transfers only. There's a USB-C Preference setting with 'High Resolution' and 'High Data Speed' options, which allows you to choose the USB bandwidth for a higher resolution or faster data transfer. It doesn't have any USB-A ports, and if you want a smart monitor that does, you can consider the Samsung Smart Monitor M7/M70C S32CM70.

The Samsung M8 works with macOS, but it doesn't support HDR. Other than that, everything works, and if you're using a MacBook windows return to their correct positions when waking up from sleep.

The Samsung M8 has a lot more features than most monitors. It comes with the Tizen smart platform like on Samsung TVs, which is user-friendly and has a ton of apps available to download. This means that you don't even need to connect a PC to stream your favorite content and the monitor is essentially a small TV, but without a tuner. You can even connect your mouse and keyboard directly to the monitor and use the built-in web browser or Microsoft 365 apps. You can choose between the Alexa and Bixby voice assistant features, and you can use them to control other Samsung smart products in your household. You can learn more about all of Samsung's extra features in the Samsung QN90B QLED TV review.

It has an option called Multi View but it isn't for two external sources, so it isn't a real Picture-by-Picture mode. You can only display one image from an external source and one image from an internal app. It isn't that convenient either because if you want to change anything on the native apps you need to open them in full-screen mode then go back to Multi View.

It has a detachable webcam that connects to the monitor with the proprietary connection. The video quality isn't bad, but the microphone sounds terrible. You can see an example here. The webcam has a few extra features too, like auto-zoom that centers you in the frame when you move around, but that only works with certain apps.

The speakers aren't anything special, which is what you expect for built-in monitor speakers. They don't produce any bass, and they don't get loud, though they're fine for listening to dialogue. You can see the results using the laptop speaker methodology below:

• Max Volume: 77 dB SPL
• Standard Error @ Normal Vol. (65 dB): 3.5 dB
• Slope @ Normal Vol. (65 dB): 0.2
• Bass Extension (Low-Frequency Ext.): 217 Hz
• Treble Extension (High-Frequency Extension): 11 kHz
• Dynamic Range Compression @Max Vol.: 1.5 dB
• Final Score: 8.4

The Samsung M8 has many of the same settings found on Samsung TVs. You can learn more about the settings with the Samsung QN90B QLED settings page.