Samsung 226BW - the 'A' VS the 'S'

[guitarxe]

I am about to buy the Samsung Syncmaster 226BW 22" monitor, but i've heard that there are two variants to it, one being the 'S' and the other being the 'A'. from what i've heard, the 'S' has higher quality, and that the 'A' sometimes has very noisy image dithering.

Can somebody confirm if this is true?

I've called a bunch of different stores around my location, and they can't tell me the version unless I buy the box and open it up, but that would be too late then.

 

[steffato]

Take a look at this first:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/667-1/samsung-226bw-a-and-s-series-the-verdict.html

Read the whole article carefully. It seems that now there are 3 different panels.
At the end it doesn't matter so much which one you'll get as long as it's not the 'C' one. Both 'A' and 'S' types require calibration in order to achieve reasonably good color reproduction. Without calibration the 'S' is definitely better. I bought the one with the 'A' panel and at first I thought I was unlucky. But in the site above, you will find a calibration profile for the 'A' panel. With that applied the A panel is almost perfect and of course ages ahead of an uncalibrated 'S'. After this, I think that you will be unlucky if you get the 'S' panel, because there is no proper calibration for this one around the net. Googling for it you will find a calibration profile for the S but it has been created using Spyder calibrator, a very cheap one.
The A may be slightly worse than the S, but using the good calibration profile you 'll have the best possible result, something that you cannot achieve with the S panel, unless of course you go out and spend big amount of cash for a decent calibrator.
The chances are that you will get an A one, as the S is not used anymore.
Just avoid the C if you can.

I hope this helps and sorry for my english.

 

[guitarxe]

thanks a lot for pointing out that article for me, steffato. did you also buy the 226BW 'A'? did the colours work good for you after you used that calibration file?

 

[Annisman]

I have the dreaded C panel, calibrated colors, and it is wonderful

 

[guitarxe]

you just used that file and that's it? you didn't have to do any other manual calibration?

 

[steffato]

I just used that file in Windows Vista with a eVGA 8800GTX through DVI connection and I have the monitor set at:
Brightness: 40
Contrast: 75
MagicColor: Off
Color Tone : Normal
Color Control : Red/Green/Blue at 50
Gamma : Mode1
RTA: On

However the profile will not load on its own as it should. I believe it has something to do with nVidia drivers (I'm using 163.71 but I had this issue since 100.65). I had to use a little utility called XCalib, which you can find here:

http://www.etg.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de/web/doe/xcalib/

Just place a shortcut in your startup folder, so that it runs each time you boot into windows.
However, it may work for seconds and revert back to noncalibrated, because of nVidia drivers (for sure this time...). The fix is simple:
Run regedit and at
HKLM\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak you have to change DisableApplyColorsAtStartup from 0 to 1, so that the driver doesn't use its own settings which cancel your calibration.
This is only if you use nVidia video card.

I have set my monitor this way and it is absolutely fantastic. This is a really good calibration profile and I'm glad they have it online and available for download. The calibration also works in Direct3D games and apps. It's is handy though to make a shortcut to XCalib on your desktop because when fiddling around with forceware settings some times it reverts to noncalibrated. You just click your shortcut and your ok.
Generally every monitor can achieve very good color performance when calibrated correctly, but the A panel with this calibration file is trully fantastic.

Good luck

 

[silentfoot]

you cant tell anymore as far as i know. i got a 226bw, there is nothing on the back to indicate the panel, and samsung got rid of indication in the 'secret' menu u access from the main menu.

to be honest, i'm very happy with it. no problems whatsoever, considering i came from a 4yr old 17crt. others talk about bleeding and calibration and so on. to me unless ur some kinda expert on this stuff there's no way you'll notice anything 'wrong' unless someone points it out. just get the monitor, u wont regret it!

 

[steffato]

silentfoot, you are partly right. That is what I thought when I first turned this monitor on. I thought it was amazing, but having seen it calibrated the difference is night and day. When you turn off the calibration at first you will think that the monitor is bad and has some defect. It is so blue-ish as it is set from factory. But, you have to see it properly calibrated first in order to believe what I'm saying. You don't have to be a DTP expert or a photographer to appreciate the difference a good calibration makes. Even web browsing is a lot better when the monitor is calibrated properly (and I don't mean calibration using your eyes as it usually ends up worse...)

 

[eric54]

I never thought it would be such a big deal between the panels. I'm glad I paid an extra 50 bucks before the price cut to get an s panel. As far as me buying samsung again in the future it'll only happen if i am guaranteed to get a SAMSUNG panel. This is devious marketing and as a business student unethical, samsung already got caught for price-fixing in the RAM market, their tasteless and questionable ethics have now infected their LCD SBU's now. I know this is off topic, but the reality is, other brands haven't been caught doing this, and samsung is abusing its highly regarded brand name in lcd's to deceive and manipulate people and sales. In the end, wouldn't you pay a little extra for quality? I doubt anyone here would be unwilling to spend 50 bucks more to get an S panel.

 

[jaguarskx]

I had a discussion with someone regarding the the Samsung 226BW monitor.

Nowhere on Samsung's site does it say people will be getting a panel made by Samsung. The specs Samsung lists for this particular monitor does not specify that you will get a TN panel made by Samsung. In fact, those specs that they list applies to any TN panel whether it is made by Samsung themselves, AU Optronics, CheMei, CPT or LG/Philips (actually, I'm not sure LG/P makes 22" TN panels).

While it make suck that you may not be getting a "S" panel, there is nothing illegal or immoral with what Samsung is doing. In a global economy Samsung simply does not have the manufacturing capacity to build enough panels to fulfill their supply contracts while trying to build it's own monitors. Therefore, they contract out for panels made by other companies to fill their own LCD monitor manufacturing quotas.

As an analogy, a Toyota Camary is a Toyotas Camary whether the engine is made in Japan, Mexico or the US.

 

[guitarxe]

well i just bought it, and i guess i got the A panel, because the white colours seemed to be very blue. i used the calibration file and now that dominance is gone and it looks how it should, but i have a question. they keep saying in the link to use the "internet" profile, but can i still adjust like brightness and contrast after i used the calibration file?

 

[MagicPants]

While I am a big Samsung fan and the very first lcd monitor I bought was their 213t, I will never buy another Samsung for three reasons:

226BW- bait and switch- they just found some panels that fit in the case and called them the same monitor

245BW- a bad panel with a glossy finish and a high price tag (tn at mva price)

244T- too much image processing equals horrid lag

It seems like that they built a good brand and are now trying to increase profits by selling budget displays at premium prices. They're just going to hurt their brand in the long run.

 

[bfg72]

Just out ... The Samsung 226CW - 22" LCD (for the same price).
(Available from Best Buy)

It looks great and no problems so far, and as far as I am aware, it's made by Samsung, so no worries about lesser quailty displays from Mexico ('A' Version etc etc)

 

[cruiseoveride]

If you want anything with better than bestbuy quality you want one with a little "T" at the end.

 

[guitarxe]

i got the monitor but i have no way of knowing if its A or C or even S. i doubt its S, because there is that dreadful blue dominance, and if you claim that the C has high quality, then its not C either, so i probably have the A. i used the calibration file, but the colours aren't that much better. they revert back when i reboot (even if i do the fix in registry), and after some time of usage, it seems that they kind of 'fade' back to original even without rebooting.

good thing though, is that if i use the "video" auto-setting, the colour seems to be good. overall, you get used to it quickly and don't notice it, so i'm not complaining about that.
what i AM concerned about though, is the colour uniformity. at the top of the screen, the blue colour seems to be darker than at the bottom, and at the bottom left, the blue colour isn't even blue at all. its kind of purple. is this something i should contact my vendor about and get it replaced? or perhaps contact the manufacturer? i know the article mentioned above did say that colour uniformity was a problem, but i didn't know that it would be so noticeable

 

[jwhyrock]

I just swapped my 204B Syncmaster out (20.1 in) for the 22 in 226BW that everyone is talking about. I went through the same uncertainty trying to figure out what is so bad about the "bad" ones and what is so good with the "S" panels. I was dreading picking it up (it was a direct swap from Samsung at their suggestion which I agreed to after research). Well I got it hooked up and the first thing my friend and I thought was hmmm.... a bit what's the word? washed out. But it didn't look bad, just "off" somehow. I figured it was just the colors and would have to fiddle with it.

I am typing to you 10+ hours later after fiddling with it to get it the way I want or should have it. First thing is I am running 2 x GT KO 7900 Geforce cards SLI setup. I don't know if that's relevant to MagicTune working (or in my case not working) or not. I installed/uninstalled every single download they had of MagicTune. No luck with MagicTune. I read the posts that suggested turning off background processes and start up programs. I did that, but I may have neglected one final try at that. I digress. I gave up on MagicTune. At this point I had hosed my contrast/brightness all to hell with my Nvidia Control Panel messing around (I did not see the restore default link at the top right... doh). So with terrible black desktop and distorted colors at this point I was feeling discouraged.

I was actually trying to pull up the hidden status menu that tells you what monitor you're dealing with. I don't know what any of you experienced, but my manual monitor controls would not allow me to change brightness/contrast and some color calibrations. I am assuming this would be due to MagicTune somehow, but I'm not sure. I was getting somewhat freaked out thinking that if I can't change it on the monitor and I can't calibrate it with software I'm f*xx0red. I think after I hosed everything up and uninstalled MagicTune for the umpteenth time I managed to be able to change brightness/contrast which you need to bring up hidden menu.

I found out later I had an A panel if I am to believe a post from someone who claims to know the difference between the last digits of CLA vs. CAA. Anyhow, after reading a very lengthy article (one of many) someone broke down an in depth analysis of how MagicTune works and how NATURAL COLOR works and they mentioned OSD as well. The reason Natural Color is in caps is because the article said it was possibly better than MagicTune albeit somewhat comparable. When MagicTune doesn't work you don't have too many options aside from (in my case Nvidia) and your monitor manually (if it works). That for someone like me is very hard. Knowing where to stop with color changes all manually is a bit daunting.

After all my messing around I used a combination of only Natural Color (which has you squint your eyes and get red, green & blue to a very specific contrast) & the manual monitor functions. I also read up on some of the features of the monitor like MagicColor which can add various kinds of vibrancy to the monitor. I believe although i could make changes with Nvidia Control Panel in my case I didn't use it because I switched back to defaults after hosing it up.

You're probably wondering what the end result of all this crap is.. It's gorgeous! The black is black as the abyss and the colors are yummy. One guy was describing the different "MagicColor" on board OSD settings None, Demo, Full & Intelligent. You have to play with them to see for yourself. The guy who posted about it said Full was too intense and made colors seem to bleed and that intelligent was less intense, but ultimately if you wanted everything set up in a very specific way to not use them. BS. There are differences between them, but in my case I find Full to be my setting of choice. Colors just pop at you crisply but no bleed whatsoever. Clarity is there in full.

I didn't follow someone else's guide on how to calibrate a certain way I just figured it out. I believe I have it where I want it. I suppose someone could come along and show me how much clearer I could make it, but I'd be surprised. It's very very nice. And if the post I read about which panel is which is correct I have A. I love it. Just food for thought in rambling I stayed up all night fashion.

My new 226Bw is also refurbished and my warranty is up in about 2-3 months. I can't complain though I had my Syncmaster 204B for nearly 3 years and just got a tiny row of dead pixels but otherwise the monitor was working great. This is an awesome exchange as long as it holds up. I absolutely love it. Just get your hands dirty and figure it out. I'm sure there may be bad monitors, but I imagine most of these can just be calibrated like mine was. Good luck!

 

[samuraiblade]

i got mine on first release , i was lucky and got an 'S' panel .

 

[jwhyrock]

My point in all it's length was that the whole S vs A vs C is not entirely accurate. After all the digging and research I did, it turns out the S Panels out of the box look better, but in the end (after proper calibration) can actually be less visually impressive. This is only after a lot of work and from what I read not a vast difference, but based on the extensive testing other panels can actually outperform the S.

My post is mainly for those that don't have the S. The S will give you less of a headache, however, in the end if set up properly you will at least have as good a monitor so don't sweat it. Not counting actual hardware probs, etc. Just pointing out that most of the "probs" people mention are simply due to configuration.