Brief review of my new monitor - Samsung B2230H

greymack

greymack

greymack

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Recently i visited these forums looking for an idea of which 22" monitor would best suit me.
My initials thoughts had been to go for the Samsung P2270 a very stylish looking panel. However after speaking with 'PCM2' it was pointed out that this model was actually quite old and he recommended the B2230H (Monitor of the month on his website)
I was a bit dubious at first as the B2230H was only about £130 while the P2270 was £170. After many questions and answers with PCM2 I took onboard the advice and purchased the B2230H and it arrived on Tuesday, sadly it had a couple of dead pixels smack in the middle of the screen so i returned it but was issued a replacement which arrived yesterday and is dead pixel free:)

Have to say out the box it puts my old samsung 2032bw to shame the colours are way more vivid and bright and text seems so much clearer. I had to lower the brightness slightly as the factory preset was a little bit too much :)
I tried the dynamic contrast and bizarrely it looked really good but people have always said never to use this feature, not sure why but i may have a tinker with it over the weekend.
Styling is typical samsung and very similar to my old 2032bw. The stand tilts nicely and isn't too stiff as some can be. Oh and the blue glow from the lower front glass bezel area is a nice touch :)
There's only no low level hum you get from some panels.
The only downsides i can find with this monitor is the touch screen control buttons are a bit hit and miss but i suppose once it's set up you never really need to touch them again and the viewing angles aren't the best but it's a TN panel and that's typical plus my old one was the same and i very rarely use my pc while standing up staring straight down :)

So in summary i think this is a cracking monitor for the price as i said earlier i was actually put off by the low price but i needn't have worried. The colours are amazing and it's brought new life to some of my games.

So a big thank you to PCM2 who answered all my boring and obvious questions, you were right bud cracking monitor :)
 
Haha yey! I'm very pleased that you're pleased. I would have hated to have recommended a monitor to you and indeed others and for it to turn out to be a load of rubbish. :D I also find the touch sensitive buttons on any Samsung panel a bit tricky to use and not always doing what you want them to do. But as you said it's only really the power button and perhaps the MagicBright preset button that you will be using for a bit so it's not a big issue.
 
Not really.. It's nice for adjusting the OSD from the software but it doesn't seem to work on modern GPUs anyway. Aside from that if you can find a utility on the disc called "Natural Color Pro" this has a very good 'contrast adjustment' test to help you optimise that aspect of the screen. Other than for contrast adjustments Windows 7's built in calibration software is better for most things.
 
That is far too subjective for me to answer. Personally I dislike dynamic contrast because you get a rapid and distracting shifting in the backlight brightness. On a game, for example, this affects the HUD but also subtle elements within the scene. Some scenes have a very mixed variety of shades, too, and dynamic contrast can sometimes make part of the scene look as you'd desire whilst the other part looks frankly wrong. On movies or games with rapid 'scene changes' it becomes even more noticeable. If you like the overall result (in certain applications it can be good) then that's not a problem. I have found it to be quite nice in some slow-paced movies for example. In games if you prefer overall lower brightness but still like explosions etc. to be bright it can work well sometimes.
 
I think it's probably best to leave well alone then :)

Samsung seem to include magic this and magic that but i never used any of them on my previous monitor and i doubt i will on this.
 
OOOps found something i don't like and i'm not sure if i can do anything about it.
Whenever i reboot the pc or start with a cold boot and even after coming out of screensaver mode the monitor takes ages to come alive....and i mean ages, like an extra 30 seconds.
What it seems to do is check every cable connection with dvi (digital) last.

So you shake mouse to switch of screensaver, monitor stays black and u get hdmi in top corner, then about 15 seconds later it changes to analogue then anouther 10 or seconds later it changes to digital and i finally get a picture. As i said earlier it's as if it's looking for the other cables first, is there anything i can do to make it just accept the dvi and not search?
 
Both my samsungs have an auto source option (auto, manual) in the OSD under settings - not sure if that one does tho.
 
Go to the OSD, go to 'Setup & Reset' then scroll down until you get to 'Auto Source'. You should be able to switch this to 'Manual' and once you confirm the change it should remember it.
 
Finally got paid and was about to pull the trigger at a place I'd found it for £130 to find they're now outof stockand will be for 6 weeks :(
 
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