I'd actually like to counter this one. I recently purchased a 226bw and was unhappy to discover the whole "bait and switch" controversy afterward. Samsung originally made the entire monitor, including the LCD panel, and all was well. After a successful run of monitors and good reviews, they proceeded to split production among themselves and at least two other LCD panel manufacturers, both of whom make displays whose performance is sub-par compared to the native Samsung displays.
What results is a "luck of the draw" when purchasing one: you don't know if you'll get a genuine Samsung, or one of the lame knock-offs. I was one of the unlucky folks, and my panel has poor color accuracy (even after repeated attempts to calibrate it manually and with a Spider2 puck). It also has a posterization effect whenever gradients move across the screen, possibly due to the monitor attempting to improve its response times, I suppose. I has been difficult for me to use the monitor for editing photos with any accuracy, both in color and in brightness.
Is this monitor worth the money I spent? It's not very expensive, so it's probably a bad deal. But be wary of the rave reviews you'll read online. Many are either a) old (posted during the initial run of genuine Samsung panels), b) have been posted by people who are now lucky enough to get a genuine panel, or c) have been posted by people who read the good reviews and are convinced that the display is great, but they can't tell the difference.
Unfortunately, Newegg is smart enough to know not to accept returns on LCD displays, so I was stuck with this crappy version. If you can purchase a 226bw from a dealer who accepts returns, go for it. Some intertube searching should help you reveal who actually made your panel. Hopefully this will allow others to make an informed decision. Good luck!
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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I'd actually like to counter this one. I recently purchased a 226bw and was unhappy to discover the whole "bait and switch" controversy afterward. Samsung originally made the entire monitor, including the LCD panel, and all was well. After a successful run of monitors and good reviews, they proceeded to split production among themselves and at least two other LCD panel manufacturers, both of whom make displays whose performance is sub-par compared to the native Samsung displays.
What results is a "luck of the draw" when purchasing one: you don't know if you'll get a genuine Samsung, or one of the lame knock-offs. I was one of the unlucky folks, and my panel has poor color accuracy (even after repeated attempts to calibrate it manually and with a Spider2 puck). It also has a posterization effect whenever gradients move across the screen, possibly due to the monitor attempting to improve its response times, I suppose. I has been difficult for me to use the monitor for editing photos with any accuracy, both in color and in brightness.
Is this monitor worth the money I spent? It's not very expensive, so it's probably a bad deal. But be wary of the rave reviews you'll read online. Many are either a) old (posted during the initial run of genuine Samsung panels), b) have been posted by people who are now lucky enough to get a genuine panel, or c) have been posted by people who read the good reviews and are convinced that the display is great, but they can't tell the difference.
Unfortunately, Newegg is smart enough to know not to accept returns on LCD displays, so I was stuck with this crappy version. If you can purchase a 226bw from a dealer who accepts returns, go for it. Some intertube searching should help you reveal who actually made your panel. Hopefully this will allow others to make an informed decision. Good luck!