Pros: I replaced my 9 year old secondary monitor, which was an aperture grill 21” Iiyama CRT. My ‘Huey’ color managed primary, which is a one year old aperture grill 22” Iiyama CRT, is pretty much spot on. The transition to LCD didn't go well and I had the added advantage... or disadvantage... of having a known good image to compare to. I bought and brought back a Viewsonic and Dell 22” low end consumer LCD. This 24 bit Samsung is a big improvement over the other monitors as it is eminently adjustable with great blacks, contrast and LCD hyper-real sharpness. The typical LCD has a brightness Nit rating of 300 (cd/m2) and for photographic purposes, and to match printed material, it should be approx. 100. That can be problematic but is easy with this unit and still have decent contrast. The point might not be how good this LCD is for photo manipulation, but how bad almost everything else is. ...SUPERB Newegg service.

Cons: The TN light band is noticeable at the top and bottom of screen. The red runs a little too hot/saturated. Everything runs too hot, color wise, but it’s adjustable...mostly. I turned off all "auto" everything, especially Dynamic Contrast. The DC of 8000:1 makes it impossible to adjust properly; its actual native contrast of 1000:1 is much more realistic. The pre-selected color temp settings don't cut it. Overall I'm pleased but my experiences reinforce the problems people are having with modestly priced consumer LCDs. There is a feature called Magic Bright with settings for Text, Internet, Movies, Sports etc. Conspicuously absent is "Photo". The 3 setting gamma adjustment is much too crude but MUCH better than nothing. After updating my NVIDIA drivers, adjustment at the video card level made everything reasonably accurate.

Overall Review: It’s obvious that consumer TN (twisted nematic) LCDs are NOT designed for photographic manipulation. There are plenty of excellent pro LCD units in this size for $1000-$2000. Contrary to what anyone will tell you, these consumer units are designed for web and office apps. Even getting this latest and quite acceptable 2253BW does not insure any sort of accuracy color management-wise as even low end calibration and profiling equipment is suspect. The stock monitor settings are laughable and more suitable to 60’s psychedelic art than photographic adjustment. We need at least another generation of monitors to get this right at a consumer price point. But the bottom line is that right now I would recommend this monitor to anyone. If I didn't have a decent primary CRT next to it to A&B, I might initially think this $300 LCD was the best thing ever.