Review: Samsung 226BW LCD, "C" Panel

Posted May 26, 2007 | 180 Comments
tags: hardware, reviews

Introduction

I just bought a Samsung 226BW to replace my aging 191T, which has served me well for 5 years. The price of quality widescreen LCDs with fast response times finally fell to my breaking point. While my 19" 191T cost almost $800 when I got it in 2002 (from a sketchy retailer with the lowest price I could find), I just got this 22" widescreen 226BW from NewEgg for under $300.

The Samsung 191T is still a great monitor; even today, it holds its own compared to a lot of modern LCDs, with its great color, classic design, screen homogeneity, and very wide viewing angle. Pretty much everything about it is great except the response time. Rated at 25ms, the monitor that was once "the best 19" LCD on the market" has been killed in terms of response time over the years by the advent of "gaming LCDs" with TN panels. The 226BW, Samsung's latest refinement of such an LCD, has a quoted 2ms response time, making for streak-free FPS gaming. The only downside is that I'll be out of excuses for sucking at Counterstrike other than my lack of skills.

Controversy

This popular model has, however, come under scrutiny because Samsung has used LCD panels from at least three different manufacturers since its release. The monitor is sold with the same model name and no indication of a change on the packaging. You have to look at a tag on the back of the monitor or view a hidden service menu in the on-screen setup interface to find out what panel it has inside.

The use of different panels is particularly disturbing because most of the reviews of the 226BW are based on the original, and by all accounts superior, "S" panel, which is made by Samsung. The respected monitor review site Behardware praised this "S" version, specifically for its exceptional color out of the box. Then, Samsung began silently shipping the same model with a panel made by AU Optronics, the "A" version. It was found to have bad color compared to the "S", and people who ended up with one felt victimized by Samsung's bait-and-switch.

Behardware recently published an in-depth comparison of the "S" and "A" panels, along with a color profile for the "A" panel that improves its colors to being as good as the "S" panel. After reading this, I was ready to buy the monitor, even if I got an "A" version, knowing I could use the ICC profile they provided if that was the case.

Soon after that, I find that there is a third panel made by Chi Mei (CMO), called the "C" panel, which has come to inhabit most of the retail supply of 226BW's. I was already in impulse-buy mode, so I went ahead and ordered it along with a Colorvision Spyder2 for the calibration, crossing my fingers that I would be able to bring the color fidelity up to at least the level of my 5 year old 191T.

Calibration

When I first fired up the 226BW, I got nervous. The color had such an awful blue-shift that I wondered if it would ever be acceptable, even after calibration. I immediately broke out my Spyder2 and started the calibration. One thing owners of the "A" or "C" versions can be thankful for is that you do get a lot of manual display controls, which can complement the calibration. Specifically, RGB slider controls allow you dial in a fine-tuned white point, using the Spyder2 as a guide, prior to doing the full calibration. Besides that, there are Color Temperature and Gamma presets as well as MagicBright modes, all of which can be used to tweak the image to individual preference.

In setting my white-point, I tweaked the RGB sliders as little as possible so that the color difference was less than 0.50 Dab according to the Spyder2. This resulted in the values R51 G47 B50. For the automated portion of the calibration, the Spyder2 goes on for about 5 minutes or so displaying and sensing an array of reds, greens, blues, and grays. It uses the data it collects to generate a custom ICC profile that modifies the color look-up table for the entire gamma spectrum. This is what makes a calibrator like the Spyder2 so much more powerful than simple gamma controls like Adobe Gamma.

Post-Calibration

When the Spyder2 was finished, the color quality had dramatically improved. Having lived with it for a few days, I am more than satisfied with my 226BW "C", which I think now has better color accuracy than my old 191T, but only when viewed at or close to the perpendicular angle - more on that below. The Spyder2 reports a white-point Delta E of 0.7, and for that I should be ecstatic. This is taken from the Spyder2 Help file:

"A Delta E of less than 3 is good. Less than 2 is quite good. Less than 1 is excellent but not often achieved in practice (if you get Delta E less than 1, consider taking a trip to Vegas)."

This monitor does have some minor deficiencies in common with most "gaming" LCDs. The brightness is not totally uniform, and even when you face the monitor straight on, the top portion tends to be a bit darker, and the bottom portion somewhat washed out. When you move you head so that your line of sight is perpendicular with the top or bottom, that portion is corrected, but then you have an accentuated problem on the portion you moved away from. When I first started using the monitor, it bothered me a bit, but now after a couple days I'm already used to it. It's just easy to spot changes when you've used the same LCD for 5 years.

Reaction Time

If you look up the specs on the panels that are put into the 226BW, they are rated at 5ms, but Samsung increases their performance to 2ms using "RTA" overdrive, which is turned on by default. Behardware explains this well in their "A" vs. "S" comparison article. In my limited gaming thus far with Counterstrike: Source, I have absolutely no complaints. I cannot see any smearing or streaking whatsoever. Movies also look great, there is no ghosting at all that I can tell.

For a more objective measurement, I went ahead and ran the popular LCD benchmarking program PixPerAn and took 50 photos at 1/1000 second exposure. Below are representative examples of the best and worst afterglow I saw in the 50 shots:

I think the results are pretty close to the those found by Behardware when they tested the "S" version.

Improving the Color of Your "C" Panel

I hope that in following the three steps below, those who have bought a "C" version like me will be able to improve its color as dramatically as I have. I made color profiles using both 100% and 75% Brightness for anality's sake, although switching back and forth between them I can't even tell a difference.

1. Go into the setup menu of the 226BW, and choose Reset Image and Reset Color. Among other things, this will set the Brightness at 100%, which may bother some people. If you like a dimmer display, use one of the ICC profiles below that were made using 75%, 50%, and 25% Brightness.

2. Using my RGB values may or may not improve the white point on your 226BW, because of many factors that could play into things, such as different video cards. Still you could use them as a rough guide, assuming all "C" panels could benefit from the slight adjustments I made. To make the changes, navigate to Color Control in the setup menu, and set the RGB sliders to the values I mentioned above: R51 G47 B50. If nothing else, you can try them out and then revert back if you think it's worse.

3. Download an ICC profile below:

And paste it here:

C:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color\

XP users:

Download Microsoft's WinColor, install it, and now Color will appear in your Control Panel. Open Color, select the Profiles tab, and load one of the profiles above. Next, go to the Devices tab, choose Displays, and click Add.... Now select the profile you want to use with the 226BW, hit OK, and choose Set as Default.

To get the profile to load with Windows XP, right-click the Start button » Open All Users, navigate into Programs » Startup folder. Put a shortcut to WinColor.exe here. Right-click the shortcut, click Properties, and add /L to the end of the Target field, so it looks something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Pro Imaging Powertoys\Microsoft Color Control Panel
Applet for Windows XP\WinColor.exe" /L

Don't copy and paste the above line into your Target field, since you may have installed the program to a different location. Just add a space, forward slash, and an L to the end so it looks like the above example. Also be sure you don't have any other gamma loaders in your Startup folder or otherwise set to start with Windows, such as Adobe Gamma or Powerstrip.

Vista Users:

You do not need Wincolor to use the profiles. Right click anywhere on the desktop, and from the personalize menu, select display parameters » advanced parameters » color management tab. Check Use my parameters for this peripheral. Click Add and select the ICC profile you want for the monitor, and set it to default. Click on the Advanced tab in the peripheral profile, select the desired ICC profile, and click OK. You should see the change instantly at that point.

Following these steps should improve things for anyone with a "C" version 226BW. Again, due to people using different video cards and even differences between monitors, you may not see quite the improvement that you would if you used a calibrator on your own setup. I would highly recommend the Spyder2 if you are not satisfied with the profiles I've provided.

Conclusion

I am very happy with the 226BW "C" version after calibration. If I had to use it the way it came out of the box, I would have sent it back or sold it on eBay in a heartbeat; the color was that bad. I imagine a lot of people wouldn't have a problem with it, but coming from a great monitor like the 191T, I had high expectations. Fortunately, the Spyder2 allowed my expectations to be met. There is little to complain about with this beautifully designed monitor, and I would encourage anyone on the fence to go ahead and make the purchase.

I hope this review was helpful for those who are wary of the mystery surrounding the "C" version of the 226BW, which has seemingly supplanted almost all of the stock available these days. I took some more shots of the monitor that are in my photo gallery tagged with 226BW. If you have any special tests you would like to see done, just let me know. As long as they are relatively easy to do, I'm happy to oblige.

Pros

• Extremely good response time for smear-free gaming and movies
• Great color possible with a custom ICC profile
• Beautiful housing design looks a lot better than typical computer equipment

Cons

• Color out of the box is pretty awful, with a strong blue shift
• Poor viewing angle, typical of gaming LCDs with TN panels, results in a lack of display homogeneity
• Lack of inputs other than DVI and VGA

Update 5/29/07:
I've added new color profiles made at 50% and 25% Brightness. Switching back and forth between the two of them, they are slightly different, but they are both significantly different than the 75% and 100% profiles. I still can't tell the 75% and 100% profiles apart for the life of me. If you like low brightness, you should try one of these new profiles.

This is how I feel about the different brightness settings: 25% is great for night surfing, 50% is probably "just right" for a lot of people, 75% shows off the monitor's luminance without hurting my eyes and is my choice for gaming, and 100% is really intense but may be preferable for gaming for some people. Still, if you feel like you need it this high you might want to get your eyes checked.