I just swapped my 204B Syncmaster out (20.1 in) for the 22 in 226BW that everyone is talking about. I went through the same uncertainty trying to figure out what is so bad about the "bad" ones and what is so good with the "S" panels. I was dreading picking it up (it was a direct swap from Samsung at their suggestion which I agreed to after research). Well I got it hooked up and the first thing my friend and I thought was hmmm.... a bit what's the word? washed out. But it didn't look bad, just "off" somehow. I figured it was just the colors and would have to fiddle with it.
I am typing to you 10+ hours later after fiddling with it to get it the way I want or should have it. First thing is I am running 2 x GT KO 7900 Geforce cards SLI setup. I don't know if that's relevant to MagicTune working (or in my case not working) or not. I installed/uninstalled every single download they had of MagicTune. No luck with MagicTune. I read the posts that suggested turning off background processes and start up programs. I did that, but I may have neglected one final try at that. I digress. I gave up on MagicTune. At this point I had hosed my contrast/brightness all to hell with my Nvidia Control Panel messing around (I did not see the restore default link at the top right... doh). So with terrible black desktop and distorted colors at this point I was feeling discouraged.
I was actually trying to pull up the hidden status menu that tells you what monitor you're dealing with. I don't know what any of you experienced, but my manual monitor controls would not allow me to change brightness/contrast and some color calibrations. I am assuming this would be due to MagicTune somehow, but I'm not sure. I was getting somewhat freaked out thinking that if I can't change it on the monitor and I can't calibrate it with software I'm f*xx0red. I think after I hosed everything up and uninstalled MagicTune for the umpteenth time I managed to be able to change brightness/contrast which you need to bring up hidden menu.
I found out later I had an A panel if I am to believe a post from someone who claims to know the difference between the last digits of CLA vs. CAA. Anyhow, after reading a very lengthy article (one of many) someone broke down an in depth analysis of how MagicTune works and how NATURAL COLOR works and they mentioned OSD as well. The reason Natural Color is in caps is because the article said it was possibly better than MagicTune albeit somewhat comparable. When MagicTune doesn't work you don't have too many options aside from (in my case Nvidia) and your monitor manually (if it works). That for someone like me is very hard. Knowing where to stop with color changes all manually is a bit daunting.
After all my messing around I used a combination of only Natural Color (which has you squint your eyes and get red, green & blue to a very specific contrast) & the manual monitor functions. I also read up on some of the features of the monitor like MagicColor which can add various kinds of vibrancy to the monitor. I believe although i could make changes with Nvidia Control Panel in my case I didn't use it because I switched back to defaults after hosing it up.
You're probably wondering what the end result of all this crap is.. It's gorgeous! The black is black as the abyss and the colors are yummy. One guy was describing the different "MagicColor" on board OSD settings None, Demo, Full & Intelligent. You have to play with them to see for yourself. The guy who posted about it said Full was too intense and made colors seem to bleed and that intelligent was less intense, but ultimately if you wanted everything set up in a very specific way to not use them. BS. There are differences between them, but in my case I find Full to be my setting of choice. Colors just pop at you crisply but no bleed whatsoever. Clarity is there in full.
I didn't follow someone else's guide on how to calibrate a certain way I just figured it out. I believe I have it where I want it. I suppose someone could come along and show me how much clearer I could make it, but I'd be surprised. It's very very nice. And if the post I read about which panel is which is correct I have A. I love it. Just food for thought in rambling I stayed up all night fashion.
My new 226Bw is also refurbished and my warranty is up in about 2-3 months. I can't complain though I had my Syncmaster 204B for nearly 3 years and just got a tiny row of dead pixels but otherwise the monitor was working great. This is an awesome exchange as long as it holds up. I absolutely love it. Just get your hands dirty and figure it out. I'm sure there may be bad monitors, but I imagine most of these can just be calibrated like mine was. Good luck!
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