Today we’re taking a look at the Samsung SM226BW 22 inch widescreen monitor.
This is a very nice and professional looking 22 inch widescreen monitor. It has both DVI and VGA connections, so it’ll work with any graphics card (although to watch DRM movies in Vista you may need to connect it using DVI - but almost ALL modern computers have a DVI port - just do a search on Google for your graphics card name, or look to see if the port on the back of your computer looks like a DVI one…). We ordered our Samsung SM226BW from Play.com the other day, it came a couple of days later and the first thing noticed was just how lovely and wide the Samsung SM226BW looks.
It has a fantastic response time of 2ms and a dynamic contrast ratio of 3000:1. This should technically make it almost perfect for gaming and watching films (as well as surfing the web, photoshop etc as well). So we tested it.
There were no artifacts of “ghosting” on the Samsung SM226BW which often appear with low quality LCDs. The colours were all very bright and the picture quality was near perfect and very sharp.
The ports at the back of the monitor go in “upside down” in a vertical manor, like most modern LCDs - this enables a really thin monitor. The resolution for the SM226BW is 1,680 x 1,050 (which is MASSIVE, especially compared to my 17″ I was used to…), which is the standard for 22″ monitors, however it is a little smaller than the official “full HD” resolution however it scales near perfectly.
Main Specifications for the SM226BW:
- Product Description: Samsung Syncmaster SM226BW 22″ LCD Monitor
- Device Type: Flat panel display / TFT active matrix
- Colour: Black
- Dimensions: (WxDxH) 51.5 cm x 6.3 cm x 35.3 cm
- Weight: 7.4 kg
- Diagonal Size: 22″ - widescreen
- Viewable Size: 22″
- Dot Pitch / Pixel Pitch: 0.282 mm
- Max Resolution: 1680 x 1050 / 60 Hz
- Colour support: 24-bit (16.7 million colours)
- Response Time: 2 ms
- Image Brightness: 300 cd/m2
- Image Contrast Ratio: 1000:1 (3000:1 Dynamic)
- Interface: DVI, Analogue VGA D-Sub (HD-15)
- Power: AC 120/230 V ( 50/60 Hz )
- Power Consumption: Operational 55 Watt
- HDCP compliant connection
Overall? The Samsung SyncMaster SM226BW is by far one of the best monitors I’ve seen in this price range. The extra desktop room in Windows that it gives you is so big - its like having two monitors in one. I am so happy with the quality of this monitor I am planning on buying another one of these to run a really nice 2*22″ dual monitor setup.
Prices for SM226BW:
(prices may change so check them all out first)
UK: Play.com - £239.99 delivered and including VAT
UK: Amazon.co.uk - £224.80 delivered and including VAT
US: Amazon.com - $299 after rebate