I have been using a Acer 22″ widescreen monitor for the last few months, but I needed another monitor last week so that my girlfriend can work on adding products to a couple of ecommerce sites that I run.  She had been using my Mac connected to the Acer 22″ and the wide aspect made her more productive than using a smaller screen so I decided to buy another 22″ for her.

I went to Pantip Plaza in Chiang Mai and looked at all the 22″ monitors for sale, which was easy because there were only two options, the Acer and the Samsung Syncmaster 226BW.  The Samsung looked the better monitor, and for only 12,900 thai baht I figured that on looks alone it had to be done, so I bought the Samsung and gave the Acer to my girlfriend!

The Samsung is a better monitor all round than the Acer AL2251w, which is not to say that the Acer is bad, far from it, but the Samsung is better.  One thing that may be an issue for many is the Samsung’s glossy screen.  It’s no problem for me as I have no light facing the screen, but if you work with a window behind you then it will be an issue.   On the whole I prefer do a matt screen to a glossy one, but the Samsung performs so well that it can be forgiven!

Like most 22″ screens the Samsung is 1680 x 1050 resolution.  On the Acer things looked a bit bitty compared to my Macbook pro which has the same resolution on a 17″ screen, but the Samsung makes it look smoother and nicer.  I have not tried the VGA analog socket yet as both my machines connect via DVI.  The Samsung can switch between analog and DVI at the touch of a button whereas the acer was tricky as you had to go into the menu to switch.

I don’t often pay attention to specs on a monitor, I trust my eyes instead.  The bottom line is simple, if you are looking for a 22″ screen then buy the Samsung 226BW and you will be impressed.

It says nothing on the box about Mac compatibility, but then few monitors do!  It works perfect with a Mac, no setup needed and no adaptors so long as your mac has a DVI socket (all Intel macs do).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Macintosh, PC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.