9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Good for the price (in spite of quality variances)
Date of Review: Oct 9, 2007
The Bottom Line: Whether it's a Samsung screen or not they still back it well. If you can handle any potential issues and experiment with adjustments, you might like it too.
RMA Update: After 10 days Samsung sent a replacement, IT WAS DEFECTIVE! There were two vertical white lines were on the right of the screen and the backlight bleed was bad too. After 1 hour on the phone with dim whits and then waiting in the cue for a WHOLE HOUR the "Executive Customer Relations" (even worse than regular CSRs) had finally picked up the phone and arranged for another replacement to be shipped to my local UPS store for a swap. That avoids putting another $500 deposit down. If it's not all done in 30 days you pay $500. They said they would extend the 30 days and expidite the shipping but then couldn't confirm that it would be expidited. I've decided not to take a look at the 2nd replacement and called the whole thing off. I am returning both the Samsung monitors back to the store and buying a couple of *ony's.
I think Samsung gave it a reasonably good effort trying to get me a replacement but I really don't want good support as much as I want a top quality product to start with. That being said, at least their support people could speak English and tried to be helpful with is better than I can say for the brand I purchased as a replacement.
----original review
All manufactures sell rebranded products or parts as their own. Samsung does it too. This may or may not be a Samsung screen, but read on before you get caught up in the hype you've seen elsewhere.
I bought two of these last weekend. I fired them up next to one another and noticed that they were quite different. One was had less backlight bleed, wasn't as washed out, had cleaner text, brighter colors, more range in the brightness controls and different information in the hidden "service menu" screen. I thought, OMG! Samsung did me dirty!
NOTE: Just looking at them I'd bet both my screens are of the same exact origin, just different runs at the factory.
Well, guess what?
After many, many, adjustments over several days, I have the inferior one looking pretty damn sweet too.
They are both still a bit too bright and there's nothing you can do about the moderate backlight bleed, except try to ignore it. As a consolation, it only effects letterbox movies and most people could get used to that too.
I'd have to use a half a page to give you the exact specs on my config (for the inferior one) but I am glad I kept on trying. There was one point where I hit that "Auto" (adjust) button, after having done so several times over the previous days, and the text shifted around a bit and whalla right in front of my eyes, became super clean. Now they both have super sharp text (cleartype disabled). NICE!
The worse one is still being RMA'd because, overall, it was inferior in every way to the other one and the amount of backlight bleed and un-adjustability was unacceptable for my needs. I overcame all the other objections to it by painstakingly veering far away from the default display settings.
If I had to keep it, I'd still say it was money well spent. They've been LAGGING ON PROCESSING THE RMA and claim it takes up to 5 DAYS to process, even though it can be done all over their web site. HURRY UP. You got your money, I want my stuff straight, now.
Go read some reviews on other 22" in this price range you'll find some real horror stories. At least I didn't have any dead pixels (I would have flipped out!) and after some messing with the controls it looks very nice for regular computer use.
A lot of people just returned these things. I'm glad I resisted the knee jerk reaction. I think that if you are willing to spend a bit of time they are very good looking monitors and are backed by pretty good support.
