I bought myself a new LCD to replace the LG 20″ I had for about a month. I only used it for 10days… There was a problem with the backlight driver on the LG, upon doing some further research I discovered it was a common problem with that specific model. The LG I had was a 204WT-BF 20.1″ Wide. I had it credited and opted for something different, in fact I got a totally different brand. I decided to go for the 22″ Samsung SyncMaster 2243BWX Wide Screen LCD.
Boy, am I glad I did, it is an amazing piece of hardware it looks great! The display is warm and vibrant the refresh rate is very good, the glossy finish on the front makes it look quite classy and stylish. It truly is the best screen I have owned!
There are some cons though, there is some noticeable backlight burn on the top and bottom of the screen when the display is all black and the touch sensitive buttons on the front are almost invisible, especially in a dark environment when the screen is fully lit.
But apart from that the panel is brilliant! The colour representation is very good, the 1000:1 static and 8000:1 dynamic, contras ratio is exceptional. It also features a height adjustable stand which can pivot and swivel, it can also rotate a full 90 degrees, to have a kind of “tetris” look. They even include a cleaning cloth! 
I noticed a few things about larger panels which isn’t that obvious initially, the native resolution is 1680 X 1050, this is quite big and which, if you intend gaming, may be a bit big for your hardware to handle. I would suggest a graphics card upgrade if you have an old card, I am running an ATI 3870 HD so I don’t notice it but some lower end graphics cards may suffer at the big resolutions. Nothing stops you from running at lower resolutions, but you will notice the visually quality is not that great when running a panel at anything but it’s native resolution. This panel is 22″ so “pixellation” becomes more visible when watching compressed movies. So watching a movie on a 17″ normally aspirated screen may be acceptable but watching the same movie on a larger display will result in pixel artefacts becoming more visible, especially when sitting close to the screen, I noticed that even DVD’s looked grainy when watched from close, but stand a few steps back and it looks great. This is a problem with those large 40″ and up LCD TV’s too, the larger the display the more “room” you need to appreciate lower resolution content like DVD’s or SDTV.
All in all I am very happy with this screen, one thing I still have to find out is; I have the SyncMaster 2243BWX, it is supposed to have a 2 port USB hub, but the unit I received is lacking one. I am aware that the SyncMaster 2243BW, doesn’t have the USB Hub, but the SyncMaster 2243BW(X) should, in fact the only difference I know of between the BW and the BWX is the hub. I don’t need the USB hub, but if it was advertised I want it, nothing in life is free….
I can highly recommend this panel to anybody considering to buy a new LCD panel or wishing to upgrade their current display solution.
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