Product Reviews

With its glossy black surround, the 22in widescreen SyncMaster 226bw looks gorgeous. It has a 2ms (grey-to-grey) response time, although in our experience there's little noticeable difference between monitors with 25ms or faster response times. It did well in our games test, with no ghosting no matter how fast the action.

The 226bw has both an HDCP-compliant DVI, for protected HD content when available, and D-sub connectors. It did well in our colour tests, producing vibrant, natural colours. Screen illumination is even, and viewing angles are very good, so there's no loss in quality even at extreme angles. All our test patterns were displayed well and the picture was generally very sharp and finely detailed. Its native resolution of 1,680x1,050 means there's plenty of room for all your applications.

The SyncMaster 226bw is a great monitor, but Samsung's 215TW (see below) is better. Although smaller, it has the same native resolution and costs the same, but has S-video, composite and component inputs, so it can be used for home entertainment as well as with your PC.