SAMSUNG 21.6" WSXGA+ LCD Monitor 5 ms D-Sub, DVI-D 216BW

Pros: Good contrast & black level, *if* you're careful to sit directly in front of the monitor.

Backlight bleed unnoticeable on anything but fully black screen.

Setting "Color Tone" to "Warm" makes images and movies look more natural. Very dark scenes are still look a bit washed-out.

Decent scaling of non-native resolutions.

Very lower power consumption for its size, especially at reduced brightness. A benefit of TN panels rarely discussed is that they use less power, compared to MVA, PVA, or IPS.

Some measurements from a Kill-a-Watt meter:

bright. wattage
0% : 18 W
7% : 22 W ("Text" default)
25% : 29 W
33% : 31 W
50% : 34 W
100%: 41 W

100% is painfully bright. I run mine at 0%(!) most of the time, plenty for text work, browsing etc, in a dimly-lit room. For movies, 5-10% looks best.

Under bright overhead lights in an office, some might want to go as high as 50%. Extra brightness headroom does allow for tube aging.

Price is hard to beat!

Cons: Vertical viewing angle should be within 30deg of dead-center for best results (typical TN); sitting too close can be a problem.

No support for 1:1 pixel mapping, and no way to force 4:3 aspect. Resolutions like 1024x768, 800x600, or 640x480 will be "stretched" to fill the screen; can be bad if you like older games, or need to run other legacy app. needing a particular res.

Dynamic-Contrast mode is mostly useless. It should adjust brightness based on picture content, but is too slow to react to changes, and also forces brightness to 100% (no manual adjustment).

In other MagicBright modes, any change (even brt/contrast) will shift to Custom mode, overwriting any previous Custom parameters. Best to just leave it on Custom.

Mine sometimes emits a soft hum from its backlight inverter. Thumping or squeezing the case can make this go away for a while. Most people wouldn't be bothered, as it probably can't be heard over the noise of a typical PC, fan, AC, etc. but SPCR folks m

Overall Review: Switching from a 22" Mitsubish 2040u CRT, I lost ~ 1/2" of screen height, but gained ~ 3" of width. Sharpness, linearity, geometry are near perfect, contrast only slightly worse (CRT was ~ 2000:1).

Decided on 216BW vs. 226BW because of improved contrast ratio.

I run this via DVI from a Linux machine, using a Matrox G550 card. Analog is nearly as good, but DVI gives a slightly better black level.

Here are some X.org modes that work well for me:

# Native @ 59Hz; 112 MHz dotclock limit via DVI on G550

ModeLine "1680x1050" 112 1680 1696 1704 1800 1050 1051 1053 1059 +hsync -vsync

# some lower-res 16:10 modes for old games (MAME, etc)
# 372 lines is the lowest non-Doublescan vertical resolution a 216BW
# will upscale to full-screen in DVI

ModeLine "768x480" 30.21 768 784 896 960 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync
ModeLine "640x400" 25.17 640 656 752 800 400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync
ModeLine "592x372" 22.20 592 608 696 744 372 376 378 415 -hsync +vsync

Pros: great monitor for the money.

Cons: DOA. 2 of 3 purchased from new egg(1 by me, 2 by my roommate) were DOA. my roommate paid the $20 shipping to RMA through newegg and it was quick and painless. I decided to RMA through samsung. The RMA request was submitted october 1st. The ups store received my monitor on the 25th. I exchanged my DOA monitor at the ups store on the 26th. i was told multiple times it was shipped as well as they were waiting to ship it. samsung's customer service representatives weren't helpful at all.

Overall Review: Great monitor if it works
2 of 3 were DOA
newegg RMA process = good
samsung RMA process = awful

both monitors received from the RMA did work.