The monitor’s color gamut is really different from typical, especially in greens. There is also an improvement in reds. If you place the 226CW next to a monitor with ordinary backlight lamps, you can see it right away that the latter doesn’t yield a pure green but a yellowish green. Well, I’ve written about the pros and cons of the enhanced color gamut in my reviews already.

The average uniformity of white brightness is 5.1% with a maximum deflection of 19.0%. On black, the numbers are 5.1% and 18.0%, respectively. The average values are good while the maximums are due to the four symmetrical dark spots at the sides of the screen.

The gamma curves are acceptable at the default settings but deflect from the theoretical curve.

The curves improve at the reduced settings: they now go close to each other and to the theoretical curve.

The response time average is 3.5 milliseconds (GtG) but one transition took as long as 14 milliseconds.

Of course, if there is response time compensation, there should also be RTC-provoked artifacts. This monitor could not match the record-breaking result of the ASUS VW222u – its average RTC error is 9.9%. Black-to-gray transitions are performed almost without errors but there are big errors accompanying transitions from dark-grays into light-grays – that’s going to be visible in games.

This monitor doesn’t have color temperature modes at all, so I performed the measurements in the manual setup mode at the default settings. The results are very good: the temperatures of grays are within a 100K range. The only downside is that the image is too warm, but this can be easily corrected with the manual settings.

The monitor’s max brightness is quite ordinary while the contrast ratio is low. It doesn’t even make it to 300:1.

Like other monitors from Samsung, the SyncMaster 226CW offers MagicBright technology for switching quickly between preset image modes.

The MagicBright modes are very accurate and appropriate to the intended applications. Well, if you are using your monitor at home under mild ambient lighting, you may want to set it up manually for text applications and switch into the MagicBright modes when you need more brightness, i.e. during the day and for watching movies and playing games.

Besides the five mentioned modes, the MagicBright menu offers a Dynamic Contrast mode (automatic adjustment of backlight brightness depending on the displayed image). This mode can be valuable for watching movies, but provides no advantages for office applications.

Highs:

• Appealing exterior design
• Appropriate setup of MagicBright modes
• Enhanced color gamut
• Fast matrix
• Good color reproduction setup

Lows:

• Poor vertical viewing angles even for a TN matrix
• Low contrast ratio
• No color temperature modes

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
• Movies and games (including those that require a fast matrix)