From everything I have heard, they sell all of them under the designation 226BW and the only difference is when you take it apart slightly.
I just got one at the end of the summer and have a few friends that got the same and had no issues at all. I believe that they fixed much of what was wrong (or all of us were incredibly lucky), plus I heard the fix is minor if you have some pixel problems.
I don't think you should have to worry about it much. I have never seen an issue at all.
The main reason I want the 226CW is because the screen in made by Samsung, whereas the screen on the 226BW is made my Samsung plus two other outsourced companies. They have 3 versions of the 226bw (S, A, C) with very different qualitys. The S version is made my Samsung.
personally i got the 206bw and the picture and everything on it is great. i've had it for a few months now and no dead pixels, games and movies are crystal clear and great
On the product code line on the backside of the monitor, there will be an 'A' for Mexico, 'C' for China, and 'S' for Samsung. I purchased an 'A' .. was really terrible, returned it and went to Best Buy to buy the 226CW. Very happy I did that. There are some good sales going on for the BW as they are trying to rid their inventory.
I did some reading. As I initially thought there are A C S versions of the 206BW as well and they have similar properties to the matching versions of the 226BW. Of note there is a 4th version of the 206BW... a "W" version which is the version I have. The panel seems to be a CPT 201WA04. I haven't noticed any problems with it, but I haven't had the opportunity to see any of the other versions either.
I also read somewhere that the S and A versions are sometimes mislabeled and that the only way to really verify without disassembly is with the built in (hidden) Service Function which can be accessed by setting contrast and brightness to 0, going back to the root menu, then holding down the Source button for 5 seconds. It will have the panel model towards the bottom next to "Panel Info. :" To get rid of it you have to cycle the power. Also, I have no idea what the Auto Auto feature is so I wouldn't mess with it.
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