I was about to buy samsung's 226bw when I realized the different two panels in the market. As most of you knew the reviewers got the S-panel hence I can no longer buy that LCD by looking at those reviews.

This is a big dishonesty of samsung. How can such a big firm allow that to happen? No matter how small the difference(I think contrast and bleeding are serious problems though).

I'm planning to buy an 22" lcd from newegg now, most of the customers buying the 226bw lately got the S panel. But It's still a gamble moreover they don't accept returns on LCD. Should I gamble buying it from newegg?

Is 226bw the best 22" LCD right now? Can smbdy say even if I got the A panel it would be superior from its competitors?

Finally what other models, brands can you suggest on an 22"...

I bought the 226BW from newegg about a month ago and received an S panel. It has some backlight bleed but isn't really that noticeable. I think that's the only con. From what I've read, subjective reviews of the A panel say that it's worse than the S panel. It may just be bitter reviewers who expected $800 LCD quality from a 22" panel. I imagine that they're roughly the same.

Another thing of note is that both panels should be calibrated before judgment is passed. Some surmise that the S panel has better calibration out of the box than the A panel. This may represent some of the complaints about the A panel.

I'd say take the gamble. The screen is beautiful imo. Going from a 19" LCD to a 22" LCD makes a world of difference, especially if your game natively supports widescreen.

There have been lots of reports about the A panel being inferior, but a lot of this was incorrect and seems to be that out of the box the S panel looks stunning whereas the A panel needs to have the settings tweaked, backlight bleed occurs on both panels.

I got mine last month( not from newegg, im in europe ), anyway its the S panel, and what can i say only its truely stunning, gaming and watching movies look amazing, i dont notice the backlight bleed( slight bit at the top ) when the lights are of, but i dont game or watch movies on it with the lights off anyway and it doesnt distort colour in normal lighting conditions

I had a HP v19 beforehand, and the difference in colour,resolution and refresh is just amazing, ohh and you can configure all the settings in XP by downloading MagixTune Premium which i thought was cool, best screen ive used in a long time

As for Samsungs dishonesty, not really, a lot of panel manufacturers do this when they dont have enough panels to satisfy demand

i wrote this in another forum just after getting it as there were a few interested in the panel:
"Good points:
great resolution( 1680 x 1050 obviously makes a big change in surfing etc. )
games that support widescreen look amazing
Absolutely no ghosting, 2ms rockin
Default setup for the screen is spot on( A version requires a bit of tinkering to get it setup correctly )
Colour is extremely vibrant

Bad points:
Slight light bleed or whatever you call it at the top of the screen, really only noticable on black screens/darker images and in the dark, its similar to e.g. 19" TFT showing being off center, right or left is brighter
DVD's scaled up look like crap by default in media player 11, had to change to VLC and they look great now
Not completely black when a black image is being shown( i.e. turning the lights off you can see the glare, unless you play in the dark its not an issue )

Overall:
Spot on to be honest, the negatives are neglible unless you play in the dark and expect full black, if thats the case then this isint the screen, otherwise great screen"

As for other brands to consider check the LG20 or LG22, although reading around the interweb its generally considered that the samsung is better, but check it out yourself

I aggree that lots of manufacturers use this method and there is nothing wrong with it. The problem is there are significant differences between the products under the label 226bw and this is not acceptable. The firm has to check the quality of the products no matter what factory it is made in. Moreover the reviewers got the S panels.

here are 2 pictures posted on some other forum:

The S panel:

http://img412.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 798wz0.jpg


The A panel:

http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php [...] 797kt3.jpg


Yes S panel is not a great performer in terms of backlight bleeding but it is much better compared to the A panel. Especially the bleeding on the edges are annoying. I wonder if the reviewers give 226bw same points if the sample was an A panel...

I just bought the LG L226wt for $339.00 and I love the monitor. 2 ms responce 3000:1 contrast ratio, 300 nits. I was very impressed with it.

I have not use the Samsung so I can not coment on it. I hope this helps with alternative options.

I am about to buy the samsung, and I have seen both the s models and the a models by checking out best buy and circuit city, and the people at newegg are seriously overdoing it on the issue, so some people got a bad a panel, big deal, the majority of the a panel users didn't, it's like a 4:200 chance you'll get a bad panel by how the newegg reviews are going 8)

Sceprte just released a 1080p 2ms 22", but I don't trust sceptre's 22"(s) because their previous one worked like a charm for the first 2 months, then would die, which makes it a complete waste of money. Viewsonic has a nice 22" 5ms one that looks better (exterior) than the samsung imo, but it has lower delay time, which is something I don't want to downgrade to myself, I'm in the same predicament as you are. Though I think I'm just going to order it from newegg today and get it done with

i was in the exact same boat as you guys, so its kinda a lottery( but A hasnt been proven to be drastically inferrior ), i read reviews of the LG20 & 22" also and the slow refresh of the viewsonic didnt convince me all i can say is im very impressed with the S i got and enjoy a lot of BF2 on it but its killing my old x850 pro lol, hopefully ill get my new build with my 7800GTX up and running soon , not tyring to sway any decisions out there, just giving my impression, go with whichever suits your needs for your price, widescreen rox though

Well guys I bought 2 samsung 206BW's the 20" model from Circuit city Monday after the Superbowl I did not hear about the A/S panel stuff until last week. I looked and found out I had 2 A panels. BUT I can't complain cause I got them at $239 each. Seems someone in corporate entered the price wrong. Mine worked fine out of the box with no overbleed. Not a 22" which are georgeous but my next ones will be 24"

FYI - I did some research into these new widescreen monitors and came up with this

The 19" WS are basically the old 17" stretched from 1024x768 to 1440x800
The 20" WS are basically the old 19" stretched from 1280x1024 to 1680x1050 fine pixel
The 22" WS are basically the old 20" stretched from 1600x1200 to 1680x1050/medium pixels
The 24" WS are basically the old 21" stretched from 1600x1200 to 1920 x1200


20" great for viewing photos 22" better if text are involved same as the 4:3 panels.. I use my 20" for financials charts so they do the job. Next logical step is 24" or 27" for me.

i dont know if im understanding what you mean, but the 22" is the same height as a 19" but obvoiusly wider, 20" have a higher DPI than 22 inch panels due to the fact that they are smaller but res id the same( horizontal ) but obviously they gain also in vertical resolution, however as hardly any 19" ers are 1600x1200 it means that the 20" will be largre in size vertically

If I were to buy a 22" LCD, I would probably get the Dell E228WFP. I don't believe there is any "panel lottery" yet with this monitor.

The reason why I would consider the Dell is because it is a fast TN panel without the need to use overdrive technology. All other 22" LCD monitors uses overdrive to lower response times which is generally bad for color accuracy. TN panels naturally are bad for color accuracy, overdrive just makes them worse.

Here's a review of the Dell:

http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/rev [...] 28wfp.html

I have the "S" panel and its not hard to see why its the worlds best 22".

The pictures are stunning and no matter how fast you move the cursor, even ragging it side to side, there's not a hint of blur. I don't know about 2ms being equal to CRT, this things faster than my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro ever was!!!!

The whole "S" / "A" panel thing sucks. Best thing is get down to a shop and where you can see before you buy and ask them for an "S" panel and check the box. Get the "S" and you won't regret it.

That seems nice, but in comparison to the "s" samsung 226bw, which is better, because I can get an s from circuit city :?

Or how about this panel, it's supposed to be amazing too, but it's $50 more expensive, which can be a lot for people like me to make the difference for
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824005088

Is it guaranteed to get an S if I buy from circuitcity ?

BTW I see that people who are very happy with 226BW all have S panels.

Maybe I should gamble, it is a high probability that I get an S. Still scary...

No, it's not, I suggest going to a few local stores and seeing what they have over the counter or ask them to open up a box to find out, that's what I would do

But I wouldn't worry too much about it, people are claiming the a panels are improving, look at the latest reviews, people with a panels are comparing them to their s and aren't seeing much of a difference

I am talking about pixel count not inches or centimeters. The dotpitch can be changed. As with the 20" 206BW & 22" 226BW Samsungs, the resolution is the same (1680*1050)but the dotpitch is different making the 20" a smaller thus tighter screen.

Yes I also measured the height and width of the different sizes these are in inches to the nearest 1/8 inch

Normal 4:3
17 - 13.25*10.625
19 - 14.75*11.875
21 - 16.25*12.125

What struck me odd here was the small difference between the height of the 21" and 19 inch panels

Wide screen
20 - 17.125*10.75
22 - 18.50*12.00
24 - 20.25*13.00

ALSO concerning the ability to determine is a box holds an A panel or an S panel - I was told that it was NOT on the outside of the box ONLY on the tag located on the back of the monitor.

Do any of you think they are going to open each box for you to determine if it is an A or S panel? you will probably have to buy it first then take it back. Each store may have a different polocy concerning the samsung's now.

WAY too much time on my hands last week

I don't know if they will at all stores, but people claim they have before, so it's worth a shot to ask

I'd like to believe that the A panels are improving. So far the ones I've seen had the same swere bleeding on the upper and lower sides.

I would appreciate if someone with an A panel can post the screen with a blank screen saver for observing backlight bleeding...


BTW I asked newegg whether their panels are S or A and get the obvious answer "They don't know".

I saw an a panel at bestbuy as the display model, and it didn't look any different from the s model at cc, but the s model purposely had a ton of black background space at cc so cutomers could see if there was any bleeding or not, while the best buy monitors used a light background, so I can't tell for sure how much bleeding there actual was