Greebo said:
I have searched around and looked at reviews. A lot of reviews state the response is no worse than a TN panel - is this true?
You've got to remember here that the 215TW was released quite a while ago, over a year ago in fact, and so reviews at the time would be comparing it with TN Film based screens also released around then. You can compare responsiveness to a degree using the images
here. You can see that the 215TW is certainly nowhere near as fast as some of the other models around like the NEC 20WGX2.
The problem you have with the responsiveness of the 215TW is that it was part of Samsung's first generation of overdriven panels. Previously, PVA panels were pretty poor for gaming, with a maximum ISO response time (black > white > black) of about 12ms. Grey to grey transitions were much slower, and there weren't really any decent PVA panels for gamers. When overdrive technologies began to emerge, Samsung's first generation was specified with a supposed 8ms G2G response time. In practice however, the 8ms G2G PVA generation was nowhere near as good as that, and didn't really show any noticeable improvement in real use, when compared with the previous 12ms non-overdriven generation. If you look at the response time graph for the 215TW as recorded by Tom's Hardware you can also see that it's nowhere near 8ms G2G at any point:
There were some improvements across grey transitions since the non overdriven panels, but meanwhile other panel manufacturers were having much more luck boosting responsiveness in both specs and practice. You can tell by the images in the BeHardware review that the 8ms G2G generation of P-MVA panels (from AU Optronics) were greatly improved since their non overdriven generation. TN Film models were also showing good improvements. It wasn't until Samsung's second attempt when we saw their 6ms G2G rated generation, that we saw real improvement in practice for PVA panels.
For this reason, I'd be careful about saying the 215TW was suitable for much gaming. It obviously depends on your needs, your gaming habits and whether you think you would be susceptable to things like ghosting and blurring. You may well find it's perfectly adequate, but it's more of a gamble than other faster models out there for sure. The 8ms G2G PVA generation tends to be comparable in practice to the old non-overdriven 8ms TN Film generation, but certainly won't compete with modern TN Film offerings (Viewsonic VX922, Samsung SM226BW, Samsung SM206BW etc)
But they also say that the image and colours are better on the samsung over TN monitors - true?
PVA does offer it's advantages. Picture quality on the 215TW is supposed to be very good, nice and crisp and clear. Colour accuracy is good (after calibration certainly), panel uniformity is good. Black depth is also good on PVA panels as shown by the high contrast ratio. The panel is also 8-bit and so offers a 16.7 million colour palette without the need for frame rate control technologies used in TN Film models.
So how does the samsung compare with the viewsonic, belinea, nec etc 20" monitors? slightly worse on speed but on par on quality?
depends which models, but yes, i'd say responsiveness is behind other 20" models around, but PQ and other factors are certainly good.
hth
plenty of review links and user opinions 
