225BW

Samsung isn’t exactly celebrated for its monitors these days. The reason? Traditionally, its products have been overpriced, overstretched and overrated. But with the new SyncMaster B Series, Samsung has tried something novel – producing a mid-ranged, mid-priced LCD that performs superbly.

Measuring 22 inches and with a 1,680x1,050 widescreen aspect ratio, Samsung’s gunning for the consumer market and its movies. Sure, some of the SyncMaster series offer a 1,920x1,200 ratio, but that would have pushed an extra £100 plus on to the price tag.

The good news for creatives is that this size and ratio lends itself brilliantly to all aspects of design work – especially page layout. And while other locked-angle monitors in this category look great but have about as much flexibility as an anvil, the 225BW has an extensive swivel arm, so it can be positioned comfortably with the minimum of fuss.

The 225BW also carries a TN (Twisted Nemantic) panel that gives a very impressive 5ms response time. Normally colour repro would suffer as a result, but Samsung quotes a full 16.7M colour gamut, while the MagicBright profiler is excellent. The brightness levels are so high, even a calibrated 225BW has a ‘cool’ look to its blues and greens in OS X.

Viewing dark images and working with heavy colours is a slight weak point for the 225BW. Backlight bleed is pretty typical on cheap LCDs, but is just disappointing here, especially when other aspects of this monitor perform so well. But given the price, we won’t complain too loudly.